Just days before his gig in the “Best Job in the World” ended, Briton Ben Southall was stung by a deadly Irukandji jellyfish.

Southall, 34, was jetskiing with his friends when the tiny, extremely venomous creature tagged him:

I was enjoying a post Christmas jetski session with some friends at a quiet beach on Hamilton Island and as I climbed off the back of the ski and onto the beach felt a small bee-like sting on my forearm, I didn’t think too much of it at the time as it disappeared very quickly and left the beach to head to a sports massage appointment I had.  As I arrived I noticed that my feet and hands were tingling slightly and before I started my treatment commented on the chain of events which had led to this – the member of staff immediately suggested that I get the symptoms checked out and within minutes had the islands security there to escort me to the doctor’s room, only a few hundred metres away.

Southall, who describes himself as “very lucky,” is fine after a few hours of “uncomfortable pain” and tweeted the following message to well-wishing Twitter followers:

Thanks for the concern everyone, I’m feeling 100% again after the jellyfish incident but have learnt my lesson! Happy New Year to you all

Southall beat out around 34,000 competitors to land the gig, exploring the Islands of the Great Barrier Reef and blogging about it while crashing in a multi-million dollar villa and collecting a “large salary.” At the conclusion of the job, Southall will spend 18 months working as  the “Best Job in the World Queensland Tourism Ambassador.”

Dude with “Best Job in the World” stung by deadly jellyfish is a post from: The Inquisitr

The latest round of blogging/ blogosphere is dead angst started with a classic piece of link bait from Paul Boutin in Wired, and was followed up this week an article in The Economist arguing that blogging is no longer what it was because it has entered the mainstream, then a post from Nick Carr arguing that the blogosphere is dead.

The Economist’s piece is the better of the two, arguing that the top of the blogosphere is today indistinguishable from the mainstream media. The correlation between change and pioneers calling death is notable; profound may not be the best description but it most definitely is accurate and a line so well put that it will likely be used many times again in the future.

Carr though makes the mistake of taking the blurred lines at the top of the blogosphere as somehow being representative of the blogosphere as a whole being dead. It’s a myopic mistake often made by those at or near the top themselves who spend little time outside of that space; a classic case of being unable to see the wood from the trees.

The blogosphere is alive, well and kicking.

In arguing with Carr, it’s important to recognize that I actually agree with most of what he has written. Blogging has come to be dominated by large commercial concerns in a short space of time. Top blogs have often become bloated, and are often difficult, if not impossible to differentiate from mainstream media sites. However, there are millions of reasons why Carr’s equation that the blogosphere is dead based on a sample size weighed exclusively at the top.

Millions of blogs are updated daily around the world, and that figure only applies to traditional standalone blogs. Blogging is a feature built into social networking platforms, and tens of millions update their Facebook or MySpace pages daily, or any number of related social networking services. Twitter has led the boom in microblogging, and although we may argue about recognizing Twitter as a blogging service, it is in form a style of blogging, be it different to the traditional long form.

The blogosphere isn’t dead because the top 100 blogs are commercial concerns; these figures only prove what The Economist argues, that blogging at the top has become mainstream.

Blogging 2.0

Blogging 2.0 has emerged in response to the blind commercial shift at the top of the blogosphere. The idea of linking and sharing was the foundation of blogging, so isn’t new, but the tools in the blogging 2.0 space allow people to re-embrace that strong link economy tradition that has slowly disappeared at the top. It’s not that linking and sharing ever stopped either; I spent a lot more time on political blogs lately, and the traditions of blogging are alive and well, even without the use of blogging 2.0 tools. But the rise of blogging 2.0 is a counter-point to the shift away from those traditions.

Blogging as a term is becoming irrelevant

A better discussion is not whether the blogosphere is dead, because ultimately it isn’t nor perhaps will it ever be, at least for a long time to come, but whether blogging as term is irrelevant.

It is difficult to identify a top blog from a mainstream media site, not only due to the move towards commercialism at the top of blogging, but as mainstream media has itself adopted blogging, or blog like tools (such as commenting) as they scramble to survive.

I’m proud to call The Inquisitr a blog, but I’d suggest that the majority of people visiting this site will never realize that we are a blog, and I don’t really care that they don’t. The label isn’t important, because it’s the content that counts. I laugh when I read surveys showing that less people are reading blogs, because other surveys have also shown that many people can’t identify a blog anyway; blog readership isn’t in decline, it just comes back to that blend of blogging and mainstream media that means that blog readers may not know that they are reading blogs.

Blogging will not die, at least in the short to medium term, but the need to call what we are doing blogging may die in the space of years, as it is already in many ways. The blogosphere as such may also die but only in description, because the relationships, link economy and product will always remain, even if it no longer earns a distinct title away from the mainstream or other forms of online publishing.

Conclusion

The ability to reflect on where we have been, and where we are going is important in understanding the space and its apparent place in history. The future will be blogged, even if its called something completely different. The blogosphere will go on, perhaps in different ways not yet imagined, but ultimately it comes back to the people and camaraderie that has delivered us to this point. Long live the blogosphere.

The blogosphere is alive, well and kicking is a post from: The Inquisitr

The first part of the 2008 State of the Blogosphere report has been released, and the numbers show some interesting trends. The primary number is that active blogging (as measured by Technorati) is in decline. According to Technorati, only 1.5 million blogs have been updated in the last 7 days, out of 133 million blogs tracked. The number over 120 days goes out to 7.4 million blogs, but it’s still a small number in the bigger scheme of things, particularly in 2008. Marshall Kirkpatrick at ReadWriteWeb goes so far as to headline his post “Technorati Numbers Indicate Blogging Is Niche and Slowing” and at first glance it wouldn’t be hard to agree.

But the headline is wrong. Blogging isn’t declining, nor is it in any way, shape or form niche. The numbers highlight the changing nature of blogging, and an evolution into a social media space today where we may see a decline in stand-alone blogging, but not to the exclusion of blogging as a concept. The definition of blogging is the challenge, and Technorati doesn’t track the new wave of blogging platforms.

Blogging as a social networking service

Years ago I got into an argument about what should be included in a count of blogs. At the time MySpace was growing rapidly, and offered blogging as a standard feature. I argued then that if MySpace users were using the blogging feature within MySpace, that their blogs should count in any collective assessment on the state of the blogging world. Years later, MySpace blogs still aren’t tracked by Technorati, and yet there are hundreds of millions of users on MySpace: even if a small percentage blog, and a smaller percentage again do so regularly, we’ve could have just easily doubled the active blog counts in this report.

That blogging was offered as a service within a social networking site in 2004 was a novelty, but in 2008, there’s very few social networking platforms that don’t offer their users a blog, or the ability to undertake blogging like activity. Where as in the past, if you wanted a blog you had a stand alone blog, say self hosted or on a service such as Blogger, today blogging is everywhere. As people have found alternative blogging platforms within social networks, some have abandoned their stand alone blogs and switched instead to blogging within social networks….and yet they aren’t counted here.

Social sharing

I post a thought or a link to a page that can be seen by others. Readers can comment under the original entry. The item can be linked to, is indexed by Google, and has its own URL. Sounds like a simple description for a blog doesn’t it, but I didn’t just describe a blog, I described FriendFeed. Social sharing sites are part of the evolution of blogging, and at their core are really hosted blogs with improved sharing and networking. Every activity on FriendFeed is blog like, but they’re not counted in blog numbers. Why is FriendFeed or similar services excluded when we consider any “decline” in blogging. Like the social networking sites, FriendFeed highlights the changing nature of blogging, away from a standalone site towards the social space, and these sites are booming.

Micro-blogging

We might argue over the use of the term “micro-blogging” to describe services like Twitter, and yet the name serves a purpose. Twitter is part of the evolution of blogging, and micro-blogging can be pointed to as one of the driving forces behind the decline of traditional stand alone blogs. Anecdotal evidence would suggest that many Twitter users now blog less. We know that Twitter users are more likely to share a funny link or quick thought on Twitter where in the past they would have shared via their stand alone blogs. Twitter has become a substitute for much of the noise that use to happen in the blogopshere, but Twitter isn’t counted in the blog numbers. We may not call posting to Twitter blogging, but it shares a common genealogy with blogging itself, and is a blogging type activity.

Conclusion

The challenge for those of us who work in the blogosphere is to address the notion, presented in these numbers, that somehow blogging has past its peak. Traditional blogging has past its peak, and it was always going to, but people are not participating less, they are actually participating more, and blogging, and blogging like activities are more popular than they have ever been. The new blogosphere is social, interconnected, and more varied than we could ever have imagined.

Technorati numbers highlight the changing nature of blogging is a post from: The Inquisitr

But wasn’t blogging suppose to be fun? How is it that for significant numbers of bloggers, the fun has been replaced by the very things we attempted to escape as worker bees in the past?

Balancing act

Having worked at the blogging grind in the past, I know how easy it is for blogging to cease becoming fun. The irreverence that helped define blogging is for many blogs a thing of the past, instead our growing status as outlets of news has delivered a serious blogosphere, that struggles to laugh at times. It’s one of the reasons I started The Inquisitr: there’s a place for serious tech news and thought, but I was tired of frying my brain looking for a next Crunchmeme headline when I knew others were having fun. It’s why you see celebrity stories next to Jesus sitings along with the serious stuff here at The Inquisitr. To me, this is fun, because I can be writing about a Microsoft acquisition one minute, and big foot the next. The key for me is the mix.

But not everyone can deliver balance in their blogging lives. The economics of blogging dictates that we should remain focused on what drives the next page view and ad sale.

Are two blogs better than one?

We can’t all start a site like The Inquisitr, and I’m fortunate to have been able to start it, but you can offer balance by starting another blog. That could be your personal blog, or a new site, where you can be yourself, post on what ever tickles your fancy, and bring some fun back to the mix. My personal blog for me has long been completely unfocused and all over the place in terms of what I write. It doesn’t win any records for page views (although occasionally it actually goes well), but it’s exactly the way I want it. A site where I don’t care about traffic, a site that allows me to speak my mind on what ever subject, no matter how boring it may be to some. It was my fall back during my darkest hours, the one place where I was usually me, and it even served to notify me when I was near breaking point. It was a barometer of me, and it can be for you. We may love writing, but freestyling it without care can deliver a balance that many of us lack.

Anonymity is a Blogspot blog away

Naturally not everyone can afford to be as open as they’d like, and often we are restrained on what we can write about away from our main blogs, legally or because of the damage our thoughts may sometimes cause. Aaron Brazell once told me that the best therapy you can have is posting anonymously on a Blogger blog. No one may read you, but there’s nothing better than letting go. Anonymous blogs can deliver the fun quotient you are missing, they may service as a platform for experimentation, or simply they may help you remain sane.

Conclusion

Blogging is still fun, even if more and more people take it more seriously. That I can write a post in my underwear in bed on any topic I please is fun compared to the corporate restraints and structures in my past working life. It’s fun meeting new people, sharing ideas and learning, and yet for some drudgery is only a post a way. Keep mixing it up, try new things, experiment, take a day or two off and always remember that blogging should be fun and not just another job.

Are we having fun yet? is a post from: The Inquisitr

It’s easy to be sentimental about “the good old days” of blogging, and I could wax lyrical about the community spirit that has seemingly been lost as blogging has grown up. Without being able to quote empirical evidence, take it as a given that the collective sense of community once shared by all bloggers in no longer. This is not to say that community doesn’t exist, but it has become fractured, splintered into group silos where most of the outward linking has been replaced by cross linking within a clique or no linking at all, where trolling has become an acceptable practice, and where the focus of shared experiences have been replaced by the differences that keep us apart.

Mark Rizzn Hopkins notes in a post today that opposition to Blogging 2.0 may be reflective of a more selfish blogosphere. I’ve written a fair bit about Blogging 2.0 previously here at The Inquisitr, but I don’t believe I’ve ever looked at the reasons why Blogging 2.0 has emerged.

Blogging 2.0 is the blogosphere’s first counterculture movement

The origins of blogging go back to pages of shared links highlighting great content outside of the site itself. Over time blogging evolved from outward links into points of content, and the linking ethos that shared traffic outwards was replaced by a culture that focused on inward links. Blogs as a destination for content became focused on pageviews, most often linked to driving advertising, and profit. Blogging as a unselfish act of sharing turned into a self-focused milk every pageview play, with a strong focus on search engine traffic. If in 2003 I had accurately written about what blogs would be like in 2008, I would have been laughed at, the shift in 5 years has been that dramatic.

Blogging 2.0 runs counter to the prevailing ethos in blogging, which is maximize your Google juice, your page views, your links in, and refrain from sharing that traffic with others, without putting the end user first. Blogging 1.0 is all about maximizing the opportunities for the blog owner while ignoring community, where as blogging 2.0 maximizes the experience for the end user (reader).

In focusing on the experience for the end user, via linking, sharing and enabling the conversation across many places, blogging 2.0 rallies against today’s accepted norms.

Embracing Blogging 2.0 isn’t costly

Giving up accepted norms to embrace a counterculture is never easy, and yet embracing Blogging 2.0 doesn’t mean having to give up traffic and comments. See my May piece on Blogging 2.0 and Professional Blogging. The short version: services like Disqus actually encourage more commenting, creating a richer environment for you blog. FriendFeed can help your content be discovered and drive traffic.

Conclusion: Viva la revolution

No counterculture evolved without an unmet need. Blogging 2.0 seeks to fill the void left by the evolution of blogging into a format that no longer focuses primarily on community, a less friendly space. Blogging 2.0 tools are still evolving and emerging to fill this void, and we are still fairly early in to the process. The growing popularity of everything from Twitter through to FriendFeed, Disqus and many other fine services show that people are seeking a change for the better. The counter revolution of Blogging 2.0 has just begun.

The Changing Blogosphere and Blogging 2.0 is a post from: The Inquisitr

I do agree with Steve to a point. There are many me-too blogs that report the same thing and regularly link to the same sources, creating the mainstream monster that Techmeme has become. But to be fair, there is a market in playing the me-too card, otherwise people wouldn’t be adding to the echo. However to suggest that all tech blogging is boring because a portion of it is, is a false stereotype that cannot go without response.

Tech blogging is only as boring as the feeds you read.

On Friday I posted an OPML file of 70 blogs I’d found via FriendFeed. Fresh voices that perhaps weren’t being heard much, with the exception of FriendFeed. Sure, you get some iPhone news and some mainstream stuff thrown in, but the difference in the mix for me is telling, as I now open the folder with those feeds in it in preference to other feeds in the morning.

The problem with original, interesting content is that it’s not always easy to find, and if you’re not linking to the latest Twitter/ Yahoo/ Microsoft/ Google/ Facebook story on Techmeme, you become even more invisible.

But just because interesting content is hard to find doesn’t mean it isn’t there.

I’ve also written previously about my own struggle within the quality equation here at The Inquisitr. When I started this site I wanted it to be different, hence the mix of content (tech, pop and odd) it provides. But over time you’ll have seen a lot less mainstream news reported here as well. The important stuff JR covers well during the US day, then when I get on I try to pick the things I’ve found that interest me, things I’d note that have meant after climbing as high as 29 at one stage, The Inquisitr has now completely dropped off the Techmeme Leaderboard. Let me say again that it’s far easier to recycle mainstream echo from elsewhere (even with a touch of your own spin) then it is to source different, interesting, and hopefully not boring content. I wouldn’t dare suggest either that we always get it right (we don’t), but it’s a goal I’ve enjoyed working at.

I know others are heading in a similar direction. Robert Scoble is perhaps more interesting than he’s ever been, and I know he credits a part of that to FriendFeed, although I wish he wouldn’t link to FriendFeed streams that are blocked for other people (or as is more likely the case, just me). The mere fact I read Steve’s article on WinExtra is case in point: Steve is the walking, talking example of a different, interesting voice in the blogosphere, and although I may not always agree with him, I’m better off for reading his blog, and more recently, even joining him in a podcast.

If you’re stuck reading the same old stories over and over again, mix it up, find some fresh feeds, and contribute to fixing the problem.

Tech blogging is only as boring as the feeds you read is a post from: The Inquisitr

It’s an issue I’ve been grappling with since the day The Inquisitr launched. I know that the days I post more, the traffic goes up as a rule, and yet I know, particularly in the first month, that pumping out posts on the latest hot news item of the day wasn’t a satisfying experience for me. If I don’t like the content I’m producing, how can I expect an engaged audience to like it as well?

The Quality Equation

If you’re a blogger, ask yourself what defines your blog? Is it a range of Digg focused lists, are you simply chiming in on the latest big news story because everyone else is? Does this deliver something unique, or is it simply a page view chasing game?

Blogging 2.0 is quickly defining itself by original content. You can see the quality posts by visiting FriendFeed, or popping across to QMeme, which itself pulls data from what’s popular among the 1200+ people I follow on FriendFeed. New voices are being heard, people who don’t shout the loudest or write posts for the sake of being controversial because it makes for a quick Techmeme headline, but people who write what they honestly think, but in a way that makes a positive contribution to the blogosphere. I know they’re the sorts of people I want to read, and I hear the same thing from many others.

Long term gains

The hardest part of shifting to a 2.0 way of thinking is giving up the quick traffic fix the old ways often deliver. The Inquisitr actually went backwards in terms of traffic in its second month as I came to realize that I didn’t want to chase the hottest story, but has slowly started to build traffic again as (hopefully) readers have found The Inquisitr offers something unique, on top of our eclectic mix of content.

Shifting away from the glib headline, the me-tooism of the Crunchmeme-osphere, the need to yell the loudest and offend the most is like quitting drugs, not always the easiest thing. I’m betting that as a goal it will deliver long term, sustainable engagement that translates to traffic over the medium to long term for anyone who pursues this for their blog. If it doesn’t, look for The Inquisitr listing on eBay in around 4-6 months time

You can measure engagement

Engagement as a selling proposition isn’t always easy. Advertisers and others looking in at your blog will naturally migrate towards pageviews, and if you’re not shouting the loudest, there’s every chance that your page views wont be quite as high. I’ve been discussing engagement with some potential advertisers recently, and I’m pleased to note that more and more, advertisers are taking into account engagement as well as pageviews. The Inquisitr isn’t about to break any records in the page view stakes, but I’m immensely product of the Technorati rank, with the site about to break into the Top 5,000 blogs online mark, and I’ve notice that advertisers are already aware of this when I talk to them.

Participation

One other defining feature of Blogging 2.0 is the level of community participation. The days of building a blog and expecting people to find it have long past. Participation is part of the quality equation that defines you as a blogger, and by relationship your blog. My own preference for active participation is via FriendFeed, but I hear of other people being active on services such as Plurk and getting similar returns. Forums are still alive and kicking, and you can take your pick of social bookmarking/ voting sites. The quality of your participation can play a role in defining the perceived quality of your posts.

You might also find that by reading and engaging with smart people, people with different viewpoints, or from different backgrounds, that the quality of your writing improves as well. There’s no better way to improve yourself as a writer than reading excellent content elsewhere. You don’t copy it, but you absorb the various inputs and turn them into an improved you.

Conclusion

The old ways of blogging are slowly dying out. Community, participation, quality are all words that need to be at the front of your thinking. Ask yourself as you write a post whether you actually think it makes a good read, or whether you are only writing it on the off chance it ends up on Techmeme or Digg. In the massive sea of noise that is the blogosphere, will people remember what you write and come back from more, or will they forget you 5 minutes later?

The Quality Equation in Blogging 2.0 is a post from: The Inquisitr

I’ve already covered a number of aspects relating to Blogging 2.0 (the user | professional blogging | advertising) but a recurring theme I’ve seen, both through emails received, comment threads and discussions elsewhere, is that people perhaps don’t yet know the best ways to embrace the new paradigm of blogging. Here’s what I’d recommend for blog owners.

Please note that the focus is on a blog owners viewpoint while looking at blogging 2.0 in terms of promotion and value adding for a site, so my apologies in advance if the traffic implications and marketing angles upset anyone as I’m not exploring the end user benefits here. Ultimately these recommendations are great for readers/ end users as well, and as I’ve argued previously, blogging 2.0 can be a win/ win for everyone involved.

Comments

Locally hosted walled comment services on blogs are dying. Users are expecting common standards, enhanced layout and unified tracking when visiting blogs. Services such as Disqus and Sezwho deliver this functionality.

There are a number of advantages: these services filter spam, offer user profiles and centralized tracking services, and enhance the comment layout on your blog. They’re all great benefits, but the number one reason you should make the switch: using these services increases the number of comments you get on your blog. Likewise not using them may drive conversations elsewhere. I know personally I’m far more likely to comment on a blog running Disqus now than one without, and it’s a common thing I hear now. Think of it in these terms: a Disqus user is already logged in so doesn’t have to enter personal details to make a comment, ie: the barrier to entry for commenting is lower. They can also track responses from a common page so are more likely to make repeat comments on a post than would otherwise be the case.

The tried and failed argument against these sorts of services is you lose control of your comments and that the search engines can’t see them. This simply isn’t the case. Sezwho hosts the comments locally. Disqus does host the comments on a central server but if you use the API wordpress plugin they can be seen on your site by search engines. Further you can pull your comments out of Disqus at any time and import them back into WordPress.

All up if you’re still thinking about it, you have a lot to gain by trying one of these services, and very little (if anything) to lose.

Twitter

Everyone accepts RSS, but are you offering your latest blog posts via Twitter? There are two options, you can post your latest posts to Twitter using your personal account (and I do for my personal blogs) or you can set up a dedicated account for your site that allows people who are interested to subscribe to receive the latest updates (which is what I do for The Inquisitr). If you’re not producing a lot of content you can do this manually, or there’s a Twitter plugin for WordPress that will do it all for you.

Take it as a given that you should also be engaging on Twitter as well, as opposed to simply spamming it with your links. Most people will happily accept the occasional link via a personal account, but over do it and you’ll lose followers. Some times it’s best to keep things separate and give people a choice.

FriendFeed

FriendFeed has become a little controversial in some blogging circles with accusations that the site steals conversations from blogs. But I simply ask in return: if this is the case, wouldn’t the same be true of Digg or Reddit, who also have conversations around links to stories on external sites?

Whether you love FriendFeed or hate it, there is one certainty: you can’t stop conversations from occurring there. You can chose to ignore it, but others aren’t, and if numbers are you goal in blogging, your rivals may well be embracing FriendFeed and benefiting from it.

Like Twitter, participation yourself is important, however the lines between self promotion and conversation are blurred as FriendFeed pulls data in from across various services, including your blog. Still, this function is only ever as good as people following you, so being an active and good member (like Twitter) will increase the number of people following you, and potentially the traffic you get from the site. I’ve found that FriendFeed is constantly in the Top 10 referrers list for The Inquisitr for example.

The other way you can embrace FriendFeed is by incorporating FriendFeed actions on your site as I have here at The Inquisitr (if you’re on the full post page you’ll see FriendFeed at the bottom about 15 minutes after this goes live). Glenn Slaven’s excellent FriendFeed Comments WordPress Plugin is highly recommended. The conversation is going to take place with or without you, why not embrace it and make it part of your site as well?

Widgets

Did you know we have widgets for The Inquisitr and they didn’t cost us a cent? The Inquisitr widget to the right was designed in SproutBuilder, arguably the most friendly online widget building platforms there is. If you can write a Word document, you can use this.

The idea with widgets is similar to Twitter and FriendFeed above: you want to give your users as many subscription opportunities as possible (remember Blogging 2.0 is ultimately all about the user). Widgets like this one can be embedded in iGoogle and Netvibes, used on social networking profiles and if your readers are really included can be embedded on their site as well.

I’d recommend giving SproutBuilder a shot, and also take a look at WidgetBox as well.

Switching To Blogging 2.0 is a post from: The Inquisitr

Blogging 2.0 brings new challenges and distribution models, but does it necessarily affect advertising, and if it does, how might the game change?

Blogging 1.0: the electronic newspaper model

It may surprise some to know that the blogging 1.0 reveune model wasn’t really original. The first wave of blogs relied on selling advertising on their site while giving away the content for free, the exact same model used by free newspapers around the world today. Blogging also borrowed from traditional newspapers through RSS and email subscription models; sure these were free subscriptions but like traditional newspapers subscriptions deliver guaranteed traffic to the content, either directly or sometimes indirectly through RSS (although as the chart notes RSS can have advertising as well).

Blogging 2.0: a new ball game

Blogging 2.0 builds on the blogging 1.0 model but takes the conversation to many sites, not just the original site. As noted in the chart services like Disqus and FriendFeed do feed back to the original site, but they also cross each other as well; conversations can and do occur independent of the original site and in a way that (currently) advertising has no role.

The question for anyone aiming to make money from blogging is whether giving up some of this conversation can overall improve the standing and long term traffic of a site. I’ve already argued in the affirmative on this, but the question then becomes, can we monetize the conversation?

Distributed revenue: the 99 million dollar question

There is no current model for sharing wealth across the 2.0 blogging services yet. A traditional model may have the external service placing contextual advertising against the conversation, but then you get the leach problem highlighted best by Shyftr: a service that republishes full content and keeps the conversation to itself, becoming nothing more than a copyright infringer. Services like FriendFeed walk a fine line around this: they are doing the right thing by not republishing the full feeds, and subsequently driving traffic back to the original source, but they are also building a user focused business on top of external content. Currently FriendFeed doesn’t show ads, but eventually they’ll have to unless they’re a flip or flop play like Twitter (no business model, built only to be acquired).

When I spoke on a panel at CeBIT earlier this week on Future Trends one of my main points was the build it and they will come philosophy of user generated content was dying. Companies that wanted users to contribute, or even as we’ve seen with Microsoft this week, users to simply use the service, have now got to give back. Why cant the model apply to something like FriendFeed or Disqus?

Revenue Sharing

Revenue sharing is an old fashioned concept, but as the build it and they will come days pass the model is spreading throughout the greater 2.0 world (its been prevalent in blog networks in CitJ sites for years). What if Disqus and FriendFeed tomorrow said we need revenue, we are going to show ads, but because we value our users and the access to content (but directly and indirectly) they provide, we’re going to share a percentage of every dollar we make against that content (comments, personal or group) or the content you seed (the link/ headline + threads on FF). Maybe even for good measure throw a usage factor in there that rewards users based on their direct participation as well.

For Now

For now the advertising rules of blogging 2.0 don’t differ that much from blogging 1.0, it’s still all CPM, CPC and CPA. We are seeing some 2.0 styles of advertising such as widget based advertising and this is changing the game from older style advertising to ads that contribute to the user experience as opposed to take away from it. We will see even more new and innovative advertising ideas in the coming year, and I predict we’ll also start seeing advertising solutions that tap into the blogging 2.0 cloud. 2008 for Blogging 2.0 will be a repeat of 2004 for Blogging 1.0.

Blogging 2.0 and Advertising is a post from: The Inquisitr

One argument against blogging 2.0 is that in taking the conversation away from blogs exclusively, professional blogging will become extinct, on the presumption that blogging 2.0 reduces page views.

Old models die hard

There is no argument that the traditional blogging 1.0 professional blogging model around maximizing a blog as the center of the conversation is a model that has served blogging and professional bloggers extremely well. But it’s a model that pre-dates the rise of social networks and really Web 2.0 itself (blogging was co-opted into being a part of the 2.0 movement, but its functionality is older). Blogging 1.0 has revolved around insular communities in walled gardens, with nothing other than the occasional link out or pingback as any recognition of a greater conversation.

The reality is that Web 2.0 is finally catching up to blogging. The walled gardens of singular blogs are making way to social interaction across multiple platforms.

The traffic equation

Those against blogging 2.0 argue that enabling the conversation across multiple platforms results in less traffic to the originating site, diminishing returns on advertising and therefore threatening the viability of those sites. The short argument is that blogging 2.0 kills professional blogging.

The argument would seem to be based on a lack of understanding of the possibilities blogging 2.0 provides. Embracing blogging 2.0 may result in some short term traffic loss (anecdotaly, but I cant back this up with figures), but over the medium to long term it actually drives new readers and new traffic to a site. Take for example two services I’m using now: FriendFeed and Disqus. Neither republish content in full and instead provide new traffic to any site using them. We don’t argue that Digg is killing professional blogging despite Digg having comments and links back; FriendFeed offers a similar service, with popularity based around comment activity, as opposed to direct voting.

The Shyftr Exception

There is one service I have some concerns with in terms of blogging 2.0 and professional blogging, and that’s Shyftr. I have deep reservations about a service that republishes content from other sites in full then builds a conversation around that content without feeding back. FriendFeed was doing something similar when it launched and they quickly switched back to links as people protested against the practice. Ultimately it is all about the user, but enabling a conversation across many platforms should be an inclusive experience that is beneficial to all involved. Blogging 2.0 shouldn’t be to the detriment of one party (the original content creator), where as Shyftr is a walled garden that benefits from the efforts of others without giving back; it’s a wolf in blogging 2.0 clothing and in another age we would have called it a splog and DMCA’d it.

The new age of professional blogging

If blogging is evolving, so is professional blogging. The age of the professional blogger has not passed, and we will see new stars emerge in the blogosphere, but the path to success is changing. If blogging 2.0 is all about enabling the conversation across many blogs and supporting sites and services, professional blogging 2.0 means engaging in those conversation as well as seeding them. The build it and they will come age has passed (not only in blogging but more and more with all 2.0 services), tomorrows A-List professional blogging class will not only be creating original content, they’ll be engaging in conversations across the blogosphere on the many emerging blogging 2.0 platforms we are now seeing. The us and them model of traditional publishing is dead, tomorrows A-List are probably on FriendFeed and Disqus now engaging their readers and contributing to the conversation.

Footnote: I understand that Shyftr is trying to build a new model and I give them credit for that, and some may take these comments as being unduly harsh, but the model needs work because ideally this new wave of blogging shouldn’t punish or take from others to benefit one service. True distribution and engaged content sharing, and the benefits there in can and should be enjoyed by all.

Blogging 2.0 and Professional Blogging is a post from: The Inquisitr

Ultimately it’s all about the user.

Years ago I got into a debate with Scoble over full feeds vs part feed where I strongly argued in favor of part feeds on two grounds: one that it limited the ability of spammers to republish your content, secondly because a part feed drove traffic back to the main site if people wanted to read all the content. That last point worked on a premise that RSS Readers took viewers away from the site and therefore publishers missed out.

Sound familiar?

MobileJones on Twitter: “FriendFeed is like is not in the best interests of those who create the content.” Chris Saad on Twitter: “discussion should occur around the target object – if its a blog then in the comments – not on friendfeed.”

I can sympathize with both in this case, but when I look back at my argument in favor of part feeds I was blinded by being a publisher without looking at the argument from the viewpoint of the end user. End users always wanted to read full feeds in their RSS Readers, and that general debate has passed into history; full feeds won, and no sensible publisher today would only provide a part feed to readers.

The argument around services like FriendFeed is similar: from a publishers viewpoint you are giving up some control, you are losing some of the conversation away from the main destination. But what do your readers want? You can’t stop a conversation occurring on FriendFeed, but you can do things like including that conversation on your blog (as I have here at The Inquisitr). You can embrace that conversation by taking part in it, and FriendFeed doesn’t republish the full feed so ultimately a thread on FriendFeed with a lot of activity is actually driving additional (and often new) traffic back to your site.

It’s a similar case with Disqus, a service we’ve implemented here at The Inquisitr over the weekend. Control is the number one argument against Disqus, and yet the same question should be asked: what do your readers want? Fred Wilson claims that using Disqus has resulted in a huge increase in comments on his blog, supporting the notion that users want a common comment platform with centralized tracking. But better still: more people participate in conversations on your site (in theory) because of the additional feature set. Sure, you lose full control, but in return you get something back.

Blogging 2.0

If blogging 1.0 was about enabling the conversation on each blog, blogging 2.0 is about enabling the conversation across many blogs and supporting sites and services. The conversation has matured and no longer is it acceptable to believe that as a content owner you hold exclusive domain over conversations you have started. Users/ readers today demand more than a conversation on one site, and blogging 2.0 facilitates this.

Acceptance

I’ll be the first to admit that accepting the new paradigm of blogging 2.0 isn’t easy. I started this site still firmly entrenched in the thoughts of blogging 1.0, having not run my own large blog in two years, but likewise having been schooled in blogging since it first came to prominence in 2002-2003. I’ve come to the conclusion that what is happening in blogging 2.0 is something that I can’t stop nor change, so it is something I’m going to fully embrace, for all the inherent risk part of me is telling me it represents. I accept that others will rally against this: it’s human nature to do so, but no amount of protest will change the evolving reality of blogging 2.0. My advice to others: embrace it, or miss out.

Blogging 2.0: It’s All About The User is a post from: The Inquisitr