blogs

Google take-downs of Blogger blogs raise the ownership question

Laura Scott — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 18:14:01 +0000

If it isn't in your possession, is it really yours?

Google shut down several blogs without prior notice:

“We’d like to inform you that we’ve received another complaint regarding your blog,” begins the cheerful letter received by each of the owners of Pop Tarts, Masala, I Rock Cleveland, To Die By Your Side, It’s a Rap and Living Ears. All of these are music blogs – sites that write about music and post MP3s of what they are discussing. “Upon review of your account, we’ve noted that your blog has repeatedly violated Blogger’s Terms of Service ... [and] we’ve been forced to remove your blog. Thank you for your understanding.”

Jolly as Google may be, none of the bloggers who received these notices are “understanding” in the least....

...“When we receive multiple DMCA complaints about the same blog, and have no indication that the offending content is being used in an authorised manner, we will remove the blog,” explained product manager Rick Klau.

All that content is presumably gone. If the site owners want to get at it, they have to convince Google to let them. That doesn't sound much like ownership to me.

What do you think?

(See the Twitter reactions tagged #Musicblogocide2k10.)

Yet another Top 100 list! Cue the crickets!

Laura Scott — Sun, 20 Apr 2008 23:37:13 +0000

Now that we mere tech plebes have been blessed with yet another definitive "Top 100" list of bloggers, I can rest and relax, knowing that order has been imposed upon the universe.

...below are the top 100 tech bloggers/authors, based on the total number of headlines they have had on TechMeme from January 1, 2008 to today....Since a lot of the top leaderboard blogs are multi-author, this helps to shake out who’s actually writing the popular stories.

Am I alone in feeling that anybody who claims to be in a position to declare a "Top [capital 'T'] 100" list of bloggers somehow is denying the incredibly diverse reality of the intertubes? Surely there are many ways to measure a "top 100" list besides mentions on a single SV/SHR-centric tech site, no matter how popular. Certainly my list would be different than yours, or TechMeme's. Especially when it comes to tech blogging. Really, most of the really interesting tech stuff is not happening under VC funding -- which I feel renders it all but invisible to most of the SV blogmedia world. Isn't most of what is called "tech blogging" really blogging about venture-financed tech? That's quite a subset of all of technology, and "Top" only in a rather narrow sense.

Maybe they should call it "Top 100 Industry Bloggers"?

/rant

/yawn

No doubt many on this list are very interesting bloggers. For the most part, they haven't crossed my path. Precious few are among the 500 blogs in my RSS reader. I guess I'm just too geeky.

The best show on the web, grasshopper

Laura Scott — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 03:15:59 +0000

I've seen a lot of interesting stuff on the web, but really, for a regular show with snap, among the best is Epic-Fu. Check this one out from a few weeks ago:

Zadi Diaz has been a star for a while, but I'm just catching on, thanks to TiVo. Fun fun, and often really pretty weird. Good fun stuff.

It's not Choice, Seth, it's Voice

Laura Scott — Sun, 07 Oct 2007 16:46:44 +0000

Seth Godin is worth reading because he so frequently comes up with some interesting insights about this modern world that's evolving and growing before our eyes. But I think here he gets it this wrong:

If I had to pick one word to describe what's new, what's different and what's important about now vs. then, it would be "choice."

The choice of more products.
The choice of more retailers. Many a click away.
The choice of more consumers to ask for an opinion.
The choice by marketers over who to market to (precision increases).
The choice of workers to be virtual or flexible or change careers.

He goes on with some for-instances.

The thing is, I don't see choice as being some "new" 21st-century phenomenon. In fact, in many ways, there's less choice today than there was 25 years ago. There may seem to be more banks around, but what I've been seeing is massive bank consolidations. The local banks in my area are being absorbed by -- or absorbing -- other banks. I can buy insurance for my company from any number of brokers, but they're all selling the same thing, often the same underwriters, especially when it comes to health insurance. There may appear to be more credit card offers out there, but these companies have been consolidating so rapidly, I think I have one single card in my purse that has not merged and changed names in the past 2-3 years.

Bob Warfield takes on Seth's idea and riffs a bit on "scarce," as if it were the opposite of "choice," but then points out:

The web moves in punctuated equilibrium. Most of the time, choice is illusory. It consists of thousands of minor variations on what are just a few common themes. Most people crave consistency, because they can’t handle too many real choices. And yet thousands of minor variations are strangely unsatisfying. We can invest all the time, seek all the answers, work hard to get to depth, and we’re left wanting more, or at least wondering if this is it. Delivering something deeply different to break us out of the drone of all that mundane choice is valuable.

Seth does hit on one thing, though: "More choice in who to listen to (and who to ignore)."

That's true. However, I feel that is only a symptom of the real paradigm shift in our economy and culture today:

Voice.

Every day, in the "old media" of traditional broadcasting and newspapers, we see closed-minded -- and I'd say willfully ignorant -- attitudes expressed about how unimportant blogging and social media are. But they are speaking from platforms that are feeling a bit disempowered by the new media.

The new media are what have given people their voice. And it's not just that now we can hear what people used to just shout back at the television. We (the people) are changing. It's amazing what happens when you get a sense that maybe, this time, when you speak out you will be heard. That's profound. It's revolutionary.

People can talk back. Talk back to companies. Talk back to politicians. And, most important, talk to each other. We have more choices to listen to because we have more people saying things.

We have voice.

What do you say?

Blog Day on the 31st

Laura Scott — Fri, 17 Aug 2007 22:05:19 +0000

Blog Day is coming.

BlogDay was created with the belief that bloggers should have one day dedicated to getting to know other bloggers from other countries and areas of interest. On that day Bloggers will recommend other blogs to their blog visitors.

With the goal in mind, on this day every blogger will post a recommendation of 5 new blogs. This way, all blog readers will find themselves leaping around and discovering new, previously unknown blogs.

Cow blogging

Laura Scott — Fri, 23 Mar 2007 07:11:32 +0000

One of my favorite "old media" tech sites, Creative Cow, has launched a community blog site. With anticipation, I clicked on the link in the email announcement and as soon as the page loaded I had to laugh.

The Cow uses Drupal!

The Creative Cow has been a fabulous resource for tech talk on video, HD, DVD. It's a truly grassroots effort, forged in the 1990s, when many in video, television and film were spinning from (or left hanging by) the enormous upheavals that took place as "desktop" postproduction and digital video cameras started to disrupt the long-standing hegemony of the multi-million-dollar production houses. What system do I buy? What video card is best? How do I change my BIOS to get the most video performance? My system has been EOL'd by the manufacturer -- what now? Oh no, the blue screen of death -- what now? How can I make this effect? Anyone know a sound recorder in Santa Fe?....

My blog account has not yet been approved, but I see that they've adopted a wysiwyg editor. (TinyMCE? Oh dear!) Still, it's nice to welcome a "web 1.0" powerhouse in old media into the "web 2.0" world.

On politics, when you add "social" to media

Laura Scott — Thu, 22 Feb 2007 00:34:43 +0000

Over recent years, we've seen how social media and "web 2.0" sites have changed how we use the internet. Now we're starting to see how we use the internet change how we think about and interact with non-internet things.

Take politics. If you've been paying attention to the news lately, you've seen how presidential candidates have implemented community-style websites as key parts of their campaigns. A quick glance at the BlogHer Politics & News blogs shows more and more posts relating to how the very fabric of campaigns is changing as candidates and their campaign staffs learn how to navigate the waters of the blogosphere.

The blogosphere isn't just covering the political challenges of the day -- it has become a big political challenge of the day.

Of course, this kind of thing isn't quite new. The disruptive nature of "web 2.0" has been the focus of forward-looking businesses for some time now. On SiteProNews, Kalena Jordan writes that social media is "The Instant Brand Killer":

The good news is that social media is user driven. The bad news is that social media is user driven. Yes, there's the rub. Users are fickle creatures - they can love a product one minute and then drop it like a lead balloon the next, depending on their experience with the product, a rumor, or whether they have had their morning coffee yet. And if their experience is bad, the noise is generally louder. To protect their reputations it's not just journalists that companies have to impress these days. It's anyone with a computer and an Internet connection. Love it or hate it, the user community now has enormous power over the online reputation of a company or brand.

Not surprisingly, businesses and individuals alike clamor for the attention and mostly enjoy the limelight that social media can bring. Others hate the intense scrutiny that often accompanies the popularity. An example is usability blogger Kim Krause Berg's unpleasant first experience of Digg - I Don't Digg Being Dugg (http://cre8pc.com/blog/archives/198).

Users aren't the only fickle creatures. So are voters. Now, after working primarily the margins in prior years, we're seeing social media play a similarly disruptive role in politics -- especially presidential campaigns -- as it has in business, by taking control of the message away from the campaign managers and placing it into the hands of the people ... all of the people.

Whoops!

The mix between political and blogging communities can get rough, and the politicians aren't always coming off well. It doesn't seem like they were quite expecting that. What with the choice by several campaigns to make their announcements online first, rather than on network news or talk shows (or comedy shows), perhaps the campaigns didn't quite know what they were getting into -- especially with regards to the inevitable trolling and flare-ups that can happen in the political blogosphere ... or how some loud, well-financed political operatives can get at politicians who've committed themselves to listening.

As a result, DC insiders are already getting gun-shy when it comes to the internet. Get a kick out of this post from Liza at culturekitchen:

I was told by a party insider they could not link to this blog because I used the word "panties" in one of my posts.

Yes people. Like 9 year-olds, Democrats are skittish of the word used for a girls' cootie catcher.
Do I have to be a multi-millinaire political socialite or a couple of guys dressed in blog drag for it to be acceptable? What of the DNC linking to the aforementioned blog back in 2004 when it had a media dilettante who's shitck at said blog was to endlessly pepper her posts with sodomy jokes?

Does choosing not to link to this blog have something to do with common decency or is it just out right censorship?

What will happen to the American political culture that has been safely ensconced in the one-way announce-only paradigm of the mainstream media, as it continues to interact with a voting populace that has platforms to talk back? It's already proving a volatile mix.

And we're only just getting started in this campaign.

Recently, Lynn d Johnson wrote about a new political website, techPresident:

The 2008 election will be the first where the Internet will play a central role, not only in terms of how the campaigns use technology, but also in how voter-generated content affects its course. TechPresident.com plans to track all these changes in real-time, covering everything from campaign websites, online advertising and email lists to the postings on YouTube and who's got the fastest growing group of friends on Facebook.

Our team of bloggers is made of veterans of the 2004 and 2006 elections, ranging across the political spectrum. Their expertise covers everything from website design to the latest in mobile tools and social networking sites. And we'll look closely not just at what the campaigns are or are not doing, but what voters and activists are doing online to independently affect the election.

One sample:

Marianne Richmond at Blog the Campaign in 08 takes a look at the blog on Hillary Clinton's site and find something missing: Hillary.

Mitt Romney is trying his best to replicate Barack Obama's Facebook popularity. However, the University of Arizona's student paper, the Wildcat, points out: "Of the 36 posted photos of Romney's life and campaign, he seems to only interact with white people. (Note to the Romney 2008 campaign: These things can be both an asset and a liability.)"

It will be interesting indeed to see how the carefully managed, massaged, powdered and spun presidential campaigns fare in the wild and wooly world of social media, where you don't need to buy expensive airtime to be heard, where spin from ads and corporate media has limited effect, and where news can spread like wildfire.

If we are now the machine, which candidate will we choose before the election even takes place?

[Cross-posted on BlogHer.]

On the quest for finding a favorite favorites function

Laura Scott — Wed, 08 Mar 2006 16:07:06 +0000

Since they launched it a week or so ago, I've been playing with the Technorati Favorites feature. I know that this kind of centralized site tracking is nothing new, but call me a curmudgeon for not appreciating Yahoo's pernicious tracking of all your browsing everywhere. Yes, there are alternatives, but this is where I am this week. (I reserve the right to change my mind tomorrow, though.)

One problem with the favorites is that Technorati leaves so little space for actual content. Count me as one of the people who has a monitor larger than 800x600, and find a lot of dead space on the page. This screenshot I took just now has about 550px of live content, and the rest of the roughly 1300px of width is dedicated to a sidebar laden with ads and promotions (about 220px) and a whole lotta white space (some 500px worth). For a page that's supposed to be my resource for tracking sites I like, it's not very efficient.

(Side question: How many Technorati-savvy users actually use 800x600 monitors these days?)

With such limited real estate available, I think I'm going to have to go back to a desktop solution, even though that doesn't feel as fun. At the very least, I think I'm going to have to drop BoingBoing from the list -- they are just too prolific. My faves page has become a BoingBoing feed. I'll just have to go there on my own.

The 100% storage claim goes missing (oh, the irony!)

Laura Scott — Wed, 08 Mar 2006 01:49:06 +0000

I just thought this was rather hysterical:

And slide 19 (in the notes) talks about how their work is inspired by the idea of "a world with infinite storage, bandwidth, and CPU power." They say that "the experience should really be instantaneous". They say that they should be able to "house all user files, including: emails, web history, pictures, bookmarks, etc and make it accessible from anywhere (any device, any platform, etc)" which leads to a world where "the online copy of your data will become your Golden Copy and your local-machine copy serves more like a cache". And, they say that they want "transparent personalization" that uses user "data to transparently optimize the user's experience ... implicitly."

And then....

Update: It appears Google suddenly removed the PPT file. Ugh. Well, sorry, but, unless you moved quickly, looks like there's no way to see it anymore.

Update: Google just made a PDF version of the slides available.

Unfortunately, this new PDF version of the slides no longer has the notes attached to each slide, so you can't see some of what I was referring to in my comments above.

...which only goes to show that, despite what Google claims, your local cache can often prove to be more reliable or trustworthy than some corporate-approved centralized copy.

But maybe everyone will thank Google for optimizing there experience in this instance....

Thinking 2.0, or how "web 2.0" structure affects online thinking and information sharing

Laura Scott — Fri, 03 Mar 2006 02:05:09 +0000

The notion that PowerPoint has helped forge modern business thought is an old one. (The idea is that since business management makes decisions using PowerPoint presentations, the decision-making process gets boiled down to a few bullet points -- what would fit on a PowerPoint screen -- and this can preclude more in-depth discussion and analysis.)

So what about in the blogging realm? Are blogs being streamed into a certain format? I'm not talking about efforts to make all online content conform to common content structures. This is about how we're seeing blogging change.

Much attention is paid to the economics of it.

But what about the technology of it. On BlogHer, mir ponders this:

First of all I read the really intense discussion about "growing a pair" the other day on Blogher.

Then I read the post about Dropping the A-list mentality and the discussion of maybe, women converse and communicate in a different way online.

Then I read Danielles post in which she self-identifies as a negro, and then wonders aloud what audience-impact her choice of descriptor will have.

Finally I read What is technorati anyways? and picked up some ideas about tagging, and popularity.

So what's my point? My point is that i guess I am framing my role here, not just as the editor of book and literary blogs, but as someone who combs through the data and sometimes pulls out important factlets about the words we use. What they are good for, the damage they can do, and the fact that a vocabulary used in a techno-social setting is a very powerful thing indeed.

Then she asks:

I am fascinated by the way colloquial language creates order or disorder on the web, and also how only words that have weight survive. What does that mean for the unpopular tags?

Unlike a library, where books stay in view long after they are relevent, how are tags creating a heirarchies of taxonomic/linguistic power in web content?

How (if we want to), can we subvert a power structure that is based on algorithms and on usage, rather than the real strength behind language, which requires that the reader understand the words (if not the authors) intention, and the context the word is being used in?

Some interesting things to ponder here.

Drupal sites back on the Technorati rails

Laura Scott — Thu, 02 Mar 2006 19:24:36 +0000

Yesterday, Technorati responded to my inquiry:

I've taken a look at the issue regarding picking up your pings for "www.pingv.com" and "blogher.org". After making a small adjustment, I've sent our spiders to revisit your pages and your blogs have been indexed with your most recent posts.

This leads me to believe that perhaps their spiders were not optimized for these sites. Whether that's related to Drupal or not, I don't know. I appreciate their timely response. (Marianne Rchmond has praise for Janice Myint, who was the rapid responder to my trouble ticket as well. Thanks, Janice!)

All of our Drupal-powered sites (including BlogHer, pingVIsion and this humble blog) seem to be tracking properly on Technorati now.

A Technorati update

Laura Scott — Wed, 01 Mar 2006 15:38:47 +0000

Reading my earlier post in the light of day, I see that it comes off much snarkier than I had intended. I did not mean to imply dark or nefarious reasons for the slow tracking, and really wanted to plug Technorati's new faves list as a way to promote BlogHer.

As mobilejones notes in a comment to my post on BlogHer, BlogHer is being tracked very well by other search engines and trackers. So perhaps I'm being unfair to Technorati in the title. Still, they have the brand recognition, so we -- I -- want to figure this problem out.

The BlogHer listing is now only slightly out of date. This could be because of my manual pinging of Technorati last night -- perhaps there's a couple-hour delay these days.

Alas, manual pinging has done nothing for the plight of the pingVision site. I just added rare pattern to my faves list, and Technorati shows it as 103 days out of date -- which is only 84 days off, if you don't count my post made last night.

For the geek-minded reading this, BlogHer, pingVision and rare pattern are powered by Drupal and automatically ping Technorati through ping-O-matic. In an email, another web developer wrote me suggesting that perhaps the problem is with ping-O-matic. I don't know, when manual pinging of Technorati doesn't seem to have an effect. Still, I don't think anything is conclusive yet. We'll have to see.

(I've contacted Technorati about these issues via their contact us form. I am awaiting a response.)

If you build it, and Technorati doesn't track you, will they come?

Laura Scott — Wed, 01 Mar 2006 05:06:58 +0000

Here's something I posted on BlogHer....

I think that, given the incredible activity on BlogHer these past few weeks, the answer is undoubtedly "yes." [Remarks on site stats deleted. -LS]

~~But I have to wonder about Technorati and their inability (or unwillingness?) to track BlogHer.~~ What prompted me to write this is that, as I was adding BlogHer to my Technorati faves list, I saw that Technorati did not have any up-to-date info on BlogHer.

I manually pinged Technorati but after some 20 minutes now, still no change.

(And this isn't nearly as bad as seeing our business site listed as not having been updated in 186 days! Granted, we don't blog there every day ... it's been a few weeks now ... but the last posts were earlier this month! Anyway....)

Some might ask: Why not say Technorati schmechnorati! and be done with it? Do we all need the A-list mentality, as Jory asks? Is mobilejones right? Does Technorati even matter in this MySpace world?

At this point, I have to laugh at myself, because I noticed all this while participating in Technorati's latest popularity measure -- which is very undemocratic, tends to mainstream traffic, and generally rewards the already-successful. And here I was excitedly playing along! (Aren't I the disruptive little blogger now?)

Still, when the question remains, "Where are all the women bloggers?" -- the best answer is right here, on BlogHer, in the blogs written by these amazing contributing editors, and in the blogrolls. Of course, list obsessions are a big deal for some bloggers -- and was a topic in last year's conference. And so, by the way, was Technorati's apparent blindness to women's blogs in general. Yet, as Charlene Li noted last year, people pay attention to lists. Maybe we shouldn't sneeze at them.

Subverting the mainstream is part of the disruptive nature of the long tail -- and the Cluetrain will win out, in the end. But part of "success" -- which, in this case, we can consider being noticed -- comes from gaming the system, and while we may pooh-pooh such gimmicks and tactics when it comes to our own blogs, it behooves us to do the little things that can add up to a slightly improved collective visibility. (And I know, we want to get the pretty buttons going, too! Soon!)

So here's a link which adds BlogHer to your faves list (if you are registered there):

Maybe if enough people do this, the Technorati boys can't help but notice that there's a living, breathing website here. (Will this post change things, as public pleading did for Alexandra?)

(ps - And no judgments, please, on my other faves. I was just getting started when I saw what it said about BlogHer.)

Updated 1 March 2006, 1:07 PST

Through the progressive lens, a foreshortened view of blogs

Laura Scott — Tue, 07 Feb 2006 08:25:38 +0000

Today, Lakshmi Chaudhry has an interesting article up on In These Times: Can Blogs Revolutionize Progressive Politics?

The article runs down the usual dichotomy blog observers dwell on: how blogs are at odds with mainstream media. Prospects for how blogs might change the future are measured not in how the interactive media form is changing our culture and the very way we engage with the world, but in whether blogs can generate a specific outcome in the 2006 elections.

An Internet-fueled victory at the polls would certainly be impressive—no candidate backed by the most popular progressive blogs has yet won an election. But electoral success may merely confirm the value of blogs as an effective organizing tool to conduct politics as usual, cementing the influence of a select group of bloggers who will likely be crowned by the media as the new kingmakers.

Winning an election does not, however, guarantee a radical change in the relations of power. Technology is only as revolutionary as the people who use it, and the progressive blogosphere has thus far remained the realm of the privileged —a weakness that may well prove fatal in the long run.

In 2006, the biggest question facing blogs and bloggers is: Will their ascendancy empower the American people—in the broadest sense of the word—or merely add to the clout of an elite online constituency?

I don't think I agree with that conclusion -- or even the question. And I think the problem gets down to preconceptions of what a blogger is.

Blogs are literally vox populi—or at the least the voice of the people who post entries and comments, and, to a lesser extent, of their devoted readers. Telling bloggers that they’re wrong or to shut up is somewhat like telling respondents to an opinion survey to simply change their mind. When journalists reject bloggers as cranks or wingnuts, they also do the same to a large segment of the American public who seeblogs as an expression of their views. Such dismissals feed the very alienation that makes blogs and bloggers popular.

The irony is that bloggers are most powerful when they work in tandem with the very media establishment they despise. “Bloggers alone cannot create conventional wisdom, cannot make a story break, cannot directly reach the vast population that isn’t directly activist and involved in politics,” says Peter Daou, who coordinated the Kerry campaign’s blog outreach operations. Blogs instead exert an indirect form of power, amplifying and channeling the pressure of netroots opinion upwards to pressure politicians and journalists. “It’s really a rising up,” says Daou.

Can this online rebellion lead to real political change? The prognosis thus far is encouraging, but far from definitive. [emphasis added]

See, this is where I have a problem. I submit that the only reason we have what might be called "Establishment Bloggers" is because, today, the information media environment is still dominated by the international media conglomerates. Of course blogs can't take on the mainstream media alone right now! Blogs are totally outgunned financially and in terms of audience.

But there's no reason at all to assume that things will stay this way. Because what we're seeing is a cultural and economic transition from the hit-driven, passively experienced information and entertainment marketplace to the long-tail-driven, actively engaged information and entertainment marketplace. And the megacorporations are institutionally not well-equipped to take advantage of this, for while they have the money, they do not have the vision. And their corporate cultures are lost in ideas that no longer can thrive, yet are beholden to the interests of a well-fed management that generally has treated content producers with disrespect, if not outright contempt.

It cannot last.

Let's go back a little bit. Once upon a time, television was considered a toy for the wealthy. I have heard enough stories about that day when the Phelps' or the Johnsons got the first TV on the block to make it clear to me that the world was a lot different then.

A lot different.

Flash forward to the 1990s and everyone had a television. Heck, everyone had three televisions! By the time the dot-bomb happened, the only people who didn't have televisions were people who deliberately chose not to have televisions. What once was a luxury item for the upper middle class became a staple item for just about every American's life.

There's no reason to assume that today's blogging demographics will be any different.

To be sure, there are barriers that separate the blogging public from the non-blogging public -- but ultimately they are not economic. I know enough working moms, disabled poor and unemployed students who are blogging to know that the assumptions of an economically-defined "blogging elite" are way off target. While one needs a computer to blog, it doesn't have to be an expensive one. And unless one is of the baby boomer generation, and did not grow up to some extent with computers around, having a computer in the house increasingly is seen as essential -- for shopping, for job hunting, for keeping in touch with friends and family. When you can buy a Dell for $250, and use free blogging software or a free blogging service, the barrier to having the tools to blog is rather low.

And it's not like you have to spend all day blogging. Nearly all the people I know blog in their spare time, in addition to one or two jobs, family commitments and so on. You don't have to be part of the idle rich to blog. So let's just dismiss notions that blogging is done just by "the privileged."

Rather, the dominant demographic distinction is along educational and cultural lines. Let's look at the latter first.

Take television: Today, people are starting to find they don't have as much time for television. And so people try to squeeze it into other parts of their day: in the car, in the shower, on in the background while eating or getting dressed or paying the bills. Once upon a time, some 58% (if memory serves) of the television viewing audience watched the last episode of M*A*S*H. Today no show comes close to that. Not by half. Not by half of half. And it's not just because people are watching more channels. It's because more and more people are finding that they just don't have time to watch.

There's also a new generation now that doesn't watch at all. No news, no cartoons, no sitcoms, no Law & Order.... The TV sits there, turned off, unused. They don't want to watch. They'd rather be online. Or gaming.

The other main divide between bloggers and non-bloggers, I believe, is education -- and while that to an extent can be proscribed by economic class, it's not impossible to obtain. In fact, those fortunate enough to have gone to a competent high school probably learned how to write well back when they were learning how to drive well. (Me, I couldn't write a coherent paragraph until my last third year in the state university, and I got two tickets for speeding and one for rolling through a stop sign before I turned 18.)

The format of blogs today is the written word. And let's face it, you have to have at least some education to communicate in writing. If you can't write what you mean, then blogging probably won't work out too well, because nobody will understand you! (And if you podcast or vlog, you need to be able to competently put the piece together, which also takes some technical and/or learning skills -- in addition to communication skills. And, of course, you'll have to have "it" -- that compelling presence that makes people want to listen or watch.) But education can be obtained, and it's an area where the poor can out-perform the trust-fund babies.

Yet given these economic and cultural barriers to blogging, it may seem to some that blogging is doomed to marginalia in the media realm. But these barriers to blogging are going to fall, and rather quickly. Why? Because while blogs will almost certainly morph -- into visual and aural communications in addition to textual -- one thing will not change: the interactivity of (what we call) blogging.

On the web, people interact. People find their voices and express themselves -- which is a far cry from the common television experience. Bloggers are not couch potatoes. Bloggers do not sit back and watch whatever is on. Bloggers do not sit passively through commercials. Bloggers choose.

It is the active, interactive, decisive way of getting information that defines blogging more than stereotypical notions of Joe Bloggs sitting at his computer in his PJs. And it is the active, interactive, decisive way of connecting with the world that is just starting to sweep through the media world today.

I would go so far as to say that there's no way blogs -- or what blogs become -- won't transform our society. They're already transforming our culture. And while the mega-media companies are the big players today, and still dominate, in the end they will have to adapt or die, because times, they are a' changin', and they won't wait for nobody.

Yet Chaundhry's analysis remains plodding in the present:

But many like Daou remain skeptical about the power of blogs to directly impact politics at the grassroots level. “You’re not going to go out there and mobilize a million people and have them all come to the polls and donate money. Blogs will never do that,” he says

And they may be even less effective in areas that are traditionally not as internet-savvy as the rest of the country, be it the rural red states or impoverished inner cities. Creating a virtual “community center” is unlikely to compensate for the Democrats’ disadvantage on the ground. Due to the eroding presence of unions, Democrats no longer possess a physical meeting place where they can target and mobilize voters—unlike Republicans, who rely on a well-organized network of churches, gun clubs and chambers of commerce.

"Never" is a word rarely proven true. And viewing blogs through the lens of today's economy and today's demographics is a mistake. We do not stand at the end of time. Our society is changing incredibly rapidly. And the old paradigm of hierarchical authority presenting information from the mount will gradually fade away to a world of lateral networks, interconnections and multilateral conversations. What that eventually will look like, who can say? But it won't look like Fox News or the Washington Post.

Splog soup: How to make RSS spam jambalaya

Laura Scott — Thu, 02 Feb 2006 18:51:40 +0000

First you pull in multiple RSS feeds. Then you mix thoroughly until you have a mishmash of keyword phrases. Bake at 350 degrees and post to spam site.

This one I discovered during a vanity search on Technorati: conferencing [dash] solution [dot ] biz [slash]conferencingonlinephone/?p=2 (no linky goodness for spammers). The "post" appeared with my name, so of course I had to go look.

What kills me is that these nefarious types must get results from these and other underhanded tactics, or else they wouldn't do it ... right? So who's following the spam parade? Who's clicking through? Who's buying???

Obviously, "just say no" doesn't work.