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Blogging 2.0 – Blogging, Podcasting Growing UP -Yes They Are Mainstream November 7, 2008

Posted by John Furrier in Technology, social media.
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The economist has a great story about blogging and how it has gone mainstream. I would add podcasting to that list as well.  I was there when blogging started and podcasting and yes it is true both are mainstream leaving many of the pioneers like me and Jason trying to figure out the roles in the new order.  The fact is most pioneers can’t compete with mainstream professionals. The economist talks about Jason Calacannis as the example of blogging pioneer.  Jason is a great blogger and has shown the way for many.

Jason is a pioneer in blogging, but the real reason (my opinion) that Jason stopped blogging was because he had a company to build and run – Mahalo which is in big trouble.  Email makes sense for Jason because it is more controlled, and it keeps his social graph and influence in place verses the treadmill we call full time blogging.

When I started PodTech in the early days of 2005 had a huge audience and my show was very popular – millions of people were exposed to my podcast (thanks to blogging and itunes).  I gave that up to try to run the company that was venture backed.  Now I’m considering doing it again.  See poll on the side bar.

Back to Pioneering or Blogging and Podcasting 2.0

I see blogging changing so called Blogging 2.0.  It will more about real time collaboration.  More about experts not generalists.   In fact other blogger agree at web 2.0 summit I spoke with Toni Schnieder CEO of WordPress and he agrees.  They are seeing massive uptake on expert or specialism blogs.  Also this reaches deep into the web.  Toni mentioned that wordpress has over 200 million unique users – that’s massive.

I have launched a new blog in June called Broadband Developments www.BroadDev.com which is a prototype for a collaborative blogging hub.  So far the results are working.  We’ll see if that can be a model for Blogging 2.0 – experts working together.

NewTeeVee Conference – Insider Conference On New Media October 31, 2008

Posted by John Furrier in Technology.
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This is a completely voluntary post by me to promote NewTeeVee’s event. I’ve put the logo on the site because they are doing great work in covering a new emerging sector. Blogging and professional coverage set by the standard Om built at GigaOm. Liz and team have very focused and relevant content when it comes to new TV models.

Want to know why Hulu is successful? Want to know why P2P might be a reality sooner than you think? What are the programming formulas online? What’s the big ‘real’ trends. How do you invest in this market online? What moves should you make? How do you make money?

All the holy grail questions will be raised. Answers maybe? It is definitely worth going. Here are some discount specials for late sign ups.

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NewTeeVee Live is a must-attend event for anyone who develops, distributes, invests in or sells online media products and services. Last year’s conference sold out early and garnered rave reviews for it’s mix of influencers, tastemakers and media industry thought leaders who made the deals.

Come meet the senior executives from ABC, FOX, Netflix, Hulu, Disney, Lucasfilm, Comcast, YouTube, Sling Media, Level 3, Microsoft, and more who are driving the decisions that effect the future of online video. Hear from the producers of hit shows CSI: Crime Scene Investigation and HEROES as they discuss how online video is changing the art of storytelling.

Also, we can’t leave out the biggest breakout video stars from online shows Fred, The Guild, What the Buck, Boing Boing TV, Alive in Baghdad and Ill Doctrine.

Be there this year as we ask the tough questions. Hear from the best business brains in online television as they answer your questions on what has worked for their business and what have been lessons learned.

NewTeeVee Live: Television Reinvented

November 13, 2008
Mission Bay Conference Center, San Francisco, CA

Sponsorship Opportunities

Don’t just attend NewTeeVee Live this year. Get in front of this highly influential audience of digital media executives and be seen as a market leader. We can create a customized sponsorship package that fits your goals. Get in touch with Mike Sly at sly@gigaom.com or call at 415-235-0358.

Here’s a selection of the speakers with whom you’ll want to meet up and swap ideas

  • Anthony Zuiker – Executive Producer, TV Show CSI
  • Reed Hastings – CEO, Netflix
  • Jason Kilar – CEO, Hulu
  • Jesse Alexander – Writer, Producer, TV Show HEROES
  • Alexis Rapo – VP, Digital Media, Disney-ABC Television Group
  • Hardie Tankersley – VP Online Content & Strategy, FOX Broadcasting
  • Blake Krikorian – CEO, Sling Media
  • Dan Beldy – Managing Partner, Steamboat Ventures
  • Miles Beckett – CEO, EQAL
  • Ben Ling – Director of Platforms and Syndication, YouTube
  • John Edwards – CEO, Move Networks
  • Mark Taylor – SVP, Emerging Opportunities, Content Markets, Level 3
  • David Verklin – CEO, Canoe Ventures
  • Eric Schmidt – Director of Media Delivery and Monetization Evangelism, Microsoft
  • Tania Yuki – Senior Product Manager, comScore
  • James Slavet – Partner, Greylock
  • Greg Douglass – Managing Director, Media & Entertainment, Accenture

We’ll be exploring the following topics

  • The truth about online video advertising
  • Bridging the gap between television and online
  • Online video investment trends
  • Managed versus unmanaged content
  • Live webcasts of major events: the inside story

Register Now

Take advantage of our Late Bird Special to celebrate the finalized speaker lineup. You’ll receive the Early Bird ticket price again (that’s $100 off). Get it until midnight October 31. Register now with code LATEBIRD.

Blogs More Effective In Web 2.0 Advertising October 28, 2008

Posted by John Furrier in Technology.
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I saw this from Caroline McCarthy at Cnet today and agree with this study. In the many years of research in online advertising and web 2.0 it is very clear that one of the roles a blogger plays in their area of coverage is one of newsmaker and analyst.

I did a speech at MIT in 2006 called “The Blogosphere:  New Navigators.”  – in this speech I predicted that certain blogger would asend to the highest trust level in communities to earn a place of trust.  Why? Because to be an effective blogger you have to know about the sector your covering.  To capture news, get scoops, provide content value, you need to know what you’re talking about.  Bloggers provide a real time service for users.  Often bloggers make mistakes, but more importantly to users they provide links to other sources that delivers on the real time alerting or redirection of attention and interest (this is what normal users are looking for).  Of course bloggers self correct or get corrected from their audiences.  This content cycle is two way and very effective in content development, story development, fact development, and opinion development.  This makes them valuable to users.  (side datapoint:  the best analysts of top firms have become bloggers – why?? ..Point made)

I am shocked to see marketing people pass on sponsorship of the top influencial blogs in their sector.  Yet pay 100k for an analyst firm to do some survey.  Blog advertising and sponsorship is the best game in town for marketing executives.  Here I posted about the Future of Blogging last week.

Of course I’m biased but do see direct results everyday.  Tell me if you agree?

Future of Blogging – Blogging is Changing For The Better – It’s About Collaboration October 21, 2008

Posted by John Furrier in social media.
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Update: This post from Scott Rosenberg is worth reading on the topic. Well written and spot on.

Paul Boutin wrote a post today saying that blogging is so 2004 using Jason Calacannis and Robert Scoble as proof points that it’s dead. Matthew Ingram slams Paul in his post here.

Lets face it blogging is two things today 1) online magazine format and/or 2) collaborative blogging effort or platform. Paul’s argument talks about solo bloggers trying to compete with online magazines and the difficulty in competing with their volumes of posts. But Paul Boutin misses the point that the collaborative side of blogging is just as relevant as trying to get on the page view treadmill. The trend is toward collaborative blogging not walled garden ‘protect pageviews at all cost’ type blogging.

Fact is Jason and Robert are broadcasting. They are not really collaborating with anyone. Jason promotes his brand and his new company. Robert the same except Robert is more conversational often amplifying what other people say. They both don’t have enough original ideas and content to compete in the market today on the pageview model. That is why they go private and/or use other tools.

Blogging is a team sport and the online magazines like Techcrunch and other don’t team up. In fact they create walled gardens to defend their page view status – unlike collaborative bloggers who earn respect and money from their content – in the form of consulting or thought pieces. Look for the distinction between bloggers who are generalists and specialists. That will level set the blogging market soon.

Matthew, myself, and many more have opinions worth sharing and collaborating on. That collaborative nature of these blogs can work together to curate content as a group. I predict that corporate blogging will go the collaborative way. I’ve been talking to Intel and Cisco recently that their blogging armies are organized wrong. Both company’s bloggers are just mailing in the blog posts not really aligning with any groups to collaborate. Mainly because PR handles the blogs and are used to monologues not dialogs. Instead the opportunity for corporate blogging is to work with other bloggers. This new approach and opportunity generates great content for users.

Blogs have evolved and will continue to evolve into monolithic entities or group produced content engines. The future of social media will be more group based. The future of online advertising will be more monolithic based.

Blogging isn’t dead it’s mainstream.

AP “CopyFight”: Swing and Miss Strike 1; AP Swings The Big Stick at Bloggers June 16, 2008

Posted by John Furrier in Technology.
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Associated Press is trying to set guidelines on how bloggers can leverage their content (that they post freely to the world). Translation: AP is trying to use it’s decaying muscle to kill the bloggers.

The Associated Press, one of the nation’s largest news organizations, said that it will, for the first time, attempt to define clear standards as to how much of its articles and broadcasts bloggers and Web sites can excerpt without infringing on The A.P.’s copyright.

Mike Arrington has declared a boycott on his blog. AP doesn’t get it. Bloggers are now part of the news ecosystem and they (AP) need to deal with it. I would rather see the AP integrate the blogging paradigm into their business. They won’t. Why they don’t have any vision.

NyTimes for example has embraced the blogosphere. Hell even John Markoff blogs now. I’ve seen considerable traffic from the NYTimes site on my opinion stories. That’s a good thing. Two years ago I never would have had the exposure to the valuable NY Times audience. Benefit to NYTimes: I will share my audience with them and other bloggers are doing that as well.

The Associated Press? As my Dad would say “What a bunch of knuckleheads”. Wake up and smell the coffee. The bloggers are distribution for them not enemies. Also since when is the AP in the business of setting standards and adjudicating content.

Read the quote from the Kennedy who is in charge of strategy for the AP…“Cutting and pasting a lot of content into a blog is not what we want to see,” he said. “It is more consistent with the spirit of the Internet to link to content so people can read the whole thing in context.”

Note to Mr Kennedy: The blogosphere doesn’t just share they steal content; sharing=stealing; Why? Users expect it. Get used to it and embrace it.

Update: Dan Farber calls it the Web Refactory or course the Buzzmachine’s buzzsaw Jeff has an opinion with a capital O. Jeff has been a watchdog on this from the beginning. Thanks Jeff.

Update 2: Simon Owens of Bloggasm has more information on the head butting Roger Cadenhead has had with the AP. Simon writes: The DMCA takedown requests Rogers Cadenhead found waiting for him in his inbox on June 10 were not the first he had received. They weren’t even the first sent to him by the Associated Press. This didn’t make Cadenhead, publisher of the Drudge Retort, any less shocked when he found out their targets.

Blogging is Real Business – Why? Competition and Money is There March 19, 2008

Posted by John Furrier in social media.
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Mike Arrington writes a nice inside baseball piece on trends in the blogosphere. I wrote one on the difference between influence and attention.

I enjoyed Mike’s post. I’ve been at the ground floor of blogging from the beginning but from a podcasters standpoint -which is technically blogging. In fact was there when Techcrunch was formed and hung out with Mike for almost the first year. He’s right that back then blogging was a community. Now its a cage match.

When I founded PodTech I promoted the idea of a relationship ‘rolloup’ with with bloggers with producing video and not blogging. Even though we had one of the best bloggers on staff. My biggest mistake was that bloggers view everyone as competition  and don’t like to partner including PodTech who explicitly stayed out of the text blogging. I even brought scoops to Mike very early on in the Techcrunch days, but a relationship never happened. We did a lot for others by developing social media models with video with blue chip advertisers willing to work with bloggers – case in point BlogHaus. Bloggers want an incentive with relationships that fund their business – links don’t do it anymore – links are not the scarce resource anymore.

On Mike’s massive rollup idea. I don’t think that a massive rollup will work. Instead blogger and blog networks better get used to the competition because the barriers to entry are low and there is money out there. I see that the market will shake things out and platforms like Techcrunch, b5, paidcontent will build their own affiliate networks. As a result you will vertical markets with economic benefits to those affiliate content networks that do a good job of targeting and serving their users.

Why do I say this? Because traditional agencies are dying. My new venture will hopefull be an asset to bloggers and blog networks because blogs have more value then is being realized by the current crop of ad networks.

The best blog networks that will be successful are the ones who develop create content, serve a distinct audience, develop profession business practices, build relationships rather than burn them, and act with integrity.

The market will weed out blog networks that have no credibility, no integrity, and poor business practices.

Watch Out Techmeme – First Impression of NewsPond February 20, 2008

Posted by John Furrier in Technology.
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NewsPond is the latest in another Techmeme like aggregator. My first impression – very good. Mashable has a glowing review and so does Mike Arrington. (Update from Mike in comments below – Mike actually calls Newspond out) Gabe Rivera who has been recently celebrated as the best boostrapped startup, might want to rethink funding to expand his capability.

I have always been a fanboy of Gabe and Techmeme because of how valuable their service has become to my infoconsumption. The only issue that I have with Newspond is blogger inclusion. I get the impression from Newspond that it’s only branded publishers. I don’t see Dave Winer or Robert Scoble on Newspond. Maybe this is by design or maybe not. Techmeme is superior on including individual bloggers and mainstream news outlets.

I like how Techmeme mixes up professional bloggers or branded publisher bloggers with individual bloggers.

For now I like Newspond. I will use it everyday for the next month and see how they do.

I pinged Ian at Newspond to chat on a podcast with me on his new service. I hope to chat with him. I like how they talk about their approach to machine based ranking or AI brain.

Update: Mike Arrington points out in the comments below that I might have taken his post as positive. After re-reading Mike’s post it’s apparent that Mike call Newspond out for their ‘over the top’ positioning. I think that Mike is justified to point out the bravado. In the old days hyped up statements were needed to get attention from mainstream media but with today’s era of journalist bloggers hyping can kill you.