October 28, 2005 in Media, Media Orchard by sbaradell@ideagrove.com
Miered in Controversy

Don’t look now, but CNN thinks “miered” may be the new “borked.” (Via Nicole Stockdale.)

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October 28, 2005 in Media Orchard, Media Relations by sbaradell@ideagrove.com
Remember, the Audience for Your Press Release is Everyone

The Seattle Times editorial page today bashed the New Times-Village Voice merger as the next step in “the dangerous march toward monolithic media.”

This shouldn’t come as too much of a surprise, since the Times is a holdout from the days of family-owned, single-property newspaper companies — companies that, with few exceptions, have been snapped up by conglomerates in the past 25 years (or become conglomerates themselves).

What I found interesting is the peg the Times used for condemning the merger: the wording of the announcement news release, which touted the combined companies’ ” portfolio of newspapers and online assets.”

Sniffed the Times: “Readers are ill-served when newspapers cease to be viewed as newspapers but as assets in a portfolio.”

As I’ve advised before, in today’s transparent, Web-enabled world, news releases now have to be written with the assumption that everyone will read them — not just the financial and business media.

Slowly but surely, companies are learning this. Before the late ’90s, CEOs routinely communicated to their Wall Street investors (through news releases as well as conference calls) in a very different way than they spoke to employees and customers. A layoff, for example, is often a positive for a company’s stock price, while it’s obviously anything but positive for employees. And investors love to hear that a company’s products are earning higher margins than those of the competition; but a customer might see or hear the same message and think, “I’m getting ripped off!”

Corporate communicators have worked to close this gap. But mistakes still happen.

In this case, given concerns that the New Times-Village Voice merger ran counter to the anti-establishment legacy of alternative journalism, less corporatespeak would have been a plus.

 
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October 28, 2005 in Media Orchard, Social Media Marketing by sbaradell@ideagrove.com
Technorati and the Search for Intelligent Life in the Blogosphere

The blogosphere is vast and unwieldy. Humans, as a rule, hate vast and unwieldy — which is why we attempt to neatly order and explain everything we do. Whether you’re a scientist using a telescope or a preacher using the Good Book, it’s the same impulse.

Naturally, then, the measurement of the blogosphere is a huge priority for the universe of bloggers. People want to know their place … where they fit in … what it all means.

Just as humans desire to know whether their prayers are truly heard, they also wonder if all this typing, linking and jacking around with Blogger and TypePad is truly worth it.

And so they turn to either the science or religion — depending on your perspective — of Technorati.

What exactly is Technorati, and what does it do?

According to the San Francisco-based company, it is “the authority on what’s going on in the world of weblogs.” It is “currently tracking 20.2 million sites and 1.6 billion links.” It is “a real-time search engine that keeps track of what is going on in the blogosphere.”

But, according to Sacred Cow Dung, it is “a blind man” — as in the Buddhist parable, The Blind Men and the Elephant. Just as a blind man may touch the trunk of an elephant and believe it is a plough, so Technorati may provide accurate data but not a true picture of the blogosphere.

In the SCD blog’s meta-analysis, “Measuring The ACTUAL Blogosphere Part 1,” Chris Mayaud offers a comprehensive breakdown of Technorati’s strengths and weaknesses. Among his conclusions:

If we use Technorati’s current estimate … 95% of the total number of blogs out there HAVE NO LINKS LINKING BACK TO THEM. Therefore, Technorati Link Analysis only works for the top 5% that actually have links and is rendered useless to measure 95% of the blogosphere.

If you are just starting out and want your blog to move into the top 5% of the blogosphere (according to Technorati Rankings) — just go to blogger.com and create one “dummy” blog with one link to your blog and that single link is worth over 18 million in rank and drives you into the top 5% of all blogs.

Mayaud’s summary of the Technorati view of the blogosphere:

As of 10/7/05,the total number of blogs “measured” by Technorati = 18,900,000

- Less than 450 blogs have over 1000 blogs linking to them = 0.002 %
- Less than 15,000 blogs have over 100 blogs linking to them = 0.08 %
- Less than 180,000 blogs have over 10 blogs linking to them = 1 %
- Less than 800,000 blogs have at least 1 blog linking to them = 4 %
- Over 18,000,000 blogs have 0 blogs linking to them = 95%

In other words, using link analysis, Technorati can only “rank” among the top 5% of all blogs and — judging from their data — their methodology starts to fall apart pretty quickly after the top 0.1%. This makes sense since the relative value of a link depends on where you are in the curve.

- For the Technorati 10, it takes thousands of links to move one place in rank.
- For the Technorati 100, it take hundreds of links to move one place in rank
- At 50,000, one link is worth over 2,000
- and your first link is worth over 18 million.

Chris adds that he’s not picking on Technorati; it’s as good a tool as there now is for measuring blogs. He directs his wrath more at the “gung-ho blogosphere pundits and conference promoters” — the high priests — who are using data that they know doesn’t tell the whole story.

I’ve been a little fixated on Technorati lately, as this post and this post illustrate. I can’t say I found Sacred Cow Dung’s analysis comforting, but at least I’m not alone in questioning what we really know about the blog universe.

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October 28, 2005 in Media, Media Orchard, Social Media Marketing by sbaradell@ideagrove.com
Changing One Thing Can Make a Big Difference

Kathy Sierra of the Creating Passionate Users blog writes:

A manager at Sun asked me this question in a recent con call: “If you could change only one thing about our courses, what would make the biggest difference?” That’s just cruel. One?

My answer was, “cut the content in half but keep the course duration the same.”

In that spirit, I tried to force myself to come up with more “someone is holding a gun to your head and telling you to pick just one thing to make a difference” answers.

She offers useful tips for bloggers (“reduce talking about yourself by 80%”), non-fiction writers (“write conversationally”), graphic designers (“reduce trapped white space”), marketers, photographers and others. Check it out.

I’d offer some suggestions, too, but I prefer to talk about myself. ;)

 
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October 28, 2005 in Content Marketing, Media, Media Orchard by sbaradell@ideagrove.com
Curling Up With a Good Laptop, Cont. — MSN To Offer Book Search

From MediaPost:

MSN HAS BECOME THE LATEST large Internet player to attempt to make the contents of books searchable online. The company this week announced that it had joined the Open Content Alliance in preparation for the launch of its own book search next year.

Rival company Yahoo! earlier this month said it had embarked on a similar initiative. Both are following in the footsteps of Google, which started scanning in books from libraries and universities last year.

The Google initiative proved controversial with publishers, who claim that scanning and posting portions of books potentially violates copyright law. Google allows copyright holders to opt-out of the index, which prevents the books from being searchable–and this summer, Google suspended a portion of its book scanning program until November. Still, Google currently faces copyright infringement lawsuits by the Author’s Guild and the Association of American Publishers.

MSN is hoping to avoid similar problems by only targeting works in the public domain or uncopyrighted material. The company said in a statement that it would respect all copyrights and work with rights holders to agree upon protections for copyrights.

More on this topic here.

 
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