AMY GAHRAN: The Right Conversation

links for 2007-02-25

• Digg Friending 101 & The Top Diggers List
  "Digg removed the "Top Diggers" list to help stop the manipulation and gaming of Digg. Today, I want to explain how the move may impact Digg's "Friending" system and possibly allow more non-top Diggers to place stories with the service."
  (tags: social+media)

links for 2007-02-23

• The Doc Searls Weblog : Tuesday, February 20, 2007
  "I avoid using the term "social media". I don't like it, and I don't even want to know what it means. I may talk about blogging and podcasting and syndication and tagging and stuff like that. But I never think about any of those things as "media"
  (tags: social+media blogs podcasting language hype web2.0 community)

links for 2007-02-16

• Intelligent Agent Blog: Check out Serph and TagFetch
  "I'm sorting through all sorts and varieties of "social media" search engines for businesses that want to identify trends from blog conversations and other consumer media sites. These two seem to warrant further investigation: Serph and TagFetch."
  (tags: search tagging conversational+media monitoring+conversations business trends tools social+media)

links for 2007-02-15

• Teaching Online Journalism: Who has time for video?
  "Passing the time vs. managing your time: There are big differences between these two uses of time. Some content is going to be very well suited to video -- but other content will be better when it's delivered in other, more appropriate formats."
  (tags: mycoverage video content+strategy)

links for 2007-02-14

• Susan Mernit's Blog: (Provocative) Quote of the Day
  "Susan says: I don't personally believe that participatory journalism is, by definition, non-commercial--I just think the business rules will continue to shift, in ways we can't yet see."
  (tags: tidbits+fodder media+evolution citizen+journalism participation content+quality business economics)
• About Associated Content
  "As Associated Content evolves, we will continue to make up-front payments for quality content. In addition we will be providing new payment programs to Content Producers whose content generates substantial page views and unique visitors."
  (tags: content+biz economics tidbits+fodder business)
• Beth's Blog: Shoulder-to-Shoulder Instructional Media: My Tagging Screencast at NTEN!
  "I want to move away from the metaphor of making movies of the computer screen to more shoulder-to-shoulder instructional media and perhaps something that is more participatory or for lack of a better word, social. Maybe it is more like moment capture."
  (tags: screencast education learning tutorial video editing mycomments)
• Susan Mernit's Blog: Quote of the Day 2
  "People keep asking me to join the LinkedIn network, but I’m already part of a network, it’s called the Internet."
  (tags: social+media social+networks overload tools)

links for 2007-02-13

• Dec. 12: FTC Moves to Unmask Word-of-Mouth Marketing - washingtonpost.com
  "The Federal Trade Commission yesterday said that companies engaging in word-of-mouth marketing, in which people are compensated to promote products to their peers, must disclose those relationships."
  (tags: advertising blogs transparency government law PR+marketing)
• "EU makes fake blogs and comments illegal: are all bloggers liable?" from The Intuitive Life Business Blog
  "Slashdot is reporting that the European Union is sponsoring a new "directive" (their fancy name for a law, as far as I can tell) that will make it illegal for companies to knowingly try to deceive customers about the origin of a weblog or other ad."
  (tags: business blogs advertising PR+marketing law transparency world mycomments)
• Fake bloggers soon to be ‘named and shamed’ (TimesOnline)
  "Businesses which write fake blog entries or create whole wesbites purporting to be from customers will fall foul of a European directive banning them from “falsely representing oneself as a consumer”. December 31, the change becomes UK law."
  (tags: blogs ethics law media advertising PR+marketing world business transparency)

links for 2007-02-07

• Zoli's Blog :: 2000 Bloggers Gaming Technorati and Google
  "No-one can claim we're "discovering" 2000 bloggers this way. The whole game is not about checking out new blogs, it's an efficient copy/paste link-generation machine. If you think *that* will make you an A-lister, think again...and again. "
  (tags: blogs problems social+media networking)
• Technorati Weblog: Breaking the Chains
  "We all have a friend who sends obnoxious chain e-mail. Perhaps you find these to be a nuisance but harmless. However, they're ultimately detrimental to the social fabric. Similarly, we share concerns expressed in recent blog posts about 2000 Bloggers."
  (tags: blogs problems social+media social+networks)
• Web Strategy by Jeremiah » I don’t deserve this Technorati rank (and the other 1,999 of you don’t either)
  "My Technorati rank has plummeted. I don’t deserve it though, as there’s this silly ‘2000 pictures and links collage‘ of bloggers that’s being spread all over the network."
  (tags: blogs problems statistics spam social+networks)

2000 Bloggers Is Gone, Probably for the Best

On Feb. 2, I wrote about my concerns regarding Tino Buntic's now-popular 2000 Bloggers meme. Basically, it seemed to have become a link farm. Buntic left a comment refuting those concerns, but I remained skeptical.

Then yesterday, the Technorati blog published a post explaining why they'd just implemented an algorithm to filter out the effects of 2000 bloggers and similar efforts on bloggers' Technorati ranking. After reading that, I left a comment on Tino's blog, basically saying thanks but no thanks -- I wanted off the 2000 Bloggers list.

Just a few minutes ago, Buntic took down the 2000 bloggers collage of linked photos. I think this was probably wise, and I hope that everyone who posted that collage to their own site follows suit. Right now, Technorati merely nullified the effect of this inadvertent link farm -- later, other aggregators and search engines might opt to actually penalize participants, regardless of intentions.

Is that fair? The hard answer to that, I think, is: Yes...

links for 2007-02-04

• Google Reader Redux [persistent.info]
  cool little script to incorporate Google Reader feeds into gmail
  (tags: tools feeds blogs conversational+media monitoring+conversations)
• Google Labs - Reader | Google Groups
  "a discussion forum where you can exchange ideas and information with other Google Reader users"
  (tags: tools technology feeds monitoring+conversations forum)

links for 2007-02-03

• Violet Blue: Web Celebs and My Rainbow-Flag Bikini
  "Only four women made the list, and TWiT's lineup this week of LaPorte, John Dvorak, Patrick Norton and Robert Heron had little nice to say about the list or about the women on it. The whole podcast has an old-techie Moose Lodge feel to it"
  (tags: gender human+nature bad+example podcasting problems women)
• Sponsored Links | Cosmic Variance
  "One of the fun aspects of using Gmail is the little ads for sponsored links that appear next to every message. I can’t imagine ever clicking on one of them, but it’s amusing to see what the Google mind thinks is related to the message content."
  (tags: relevance advertising search)

2000 Bloggers: Helpful, Harmless, or a Problem?

(UPDATE FEB. 6: Technorati took action to nullify the ranking effect of 2000 bloggers, and Tino Buntic decided -- wisely, I think -- to take the project down. Read more...)

Some of you may have already seen Tino Buntic's 2000 Bloggers meme currently making the rounds online. It's an interesting project, featuring a large photomontage of all the bloggers connected so far. (More on this project.) I was included on this list, which I take as a compliment.

Basically, this project is about making a diverse collection of bloggers (from the A-list to the unknown) more visible -- a laudable goal. And, undoubtedly, it's certainly raised the profile of Tino's blog -- and that's fine. I've got nothing against self-promotion.

However, I have to wonder whether there might be an unintended downside to this project...

links for 2007-02-02

• The Blog | Thomas Glocer: Recursive Loops -- Davos 2007 | The Huffington Post
  "Inviting bloggers to Davos is a good thing, but by the time I arrived on Wednesday, there were already one million blog hits for "Davos 2007." At this rate, we'll all be able to stay home, prevent climate change and just send our avatars to Switzerland."
  (tags: conference+blogging events conversation)
• Lucy in the sky
  "I seriously think the Bloggies have missed a trick! They really need a new category. Most Blogged Conference, including Best Blogged Conference, and Best Conference Blogger. Seriously - don’t you think the whole confeence scene has been changed?"
  (tags: conference+blogging event media+evolution)
• Beth's Blog: Should we put our social media tools away and have a conversation?
  "The question isn't should we put down our social media tools and have a conversation? I think it is how do we use our social media tools to extend the conversation and bring in other voices both online and offline. "
  (tags: conference+blogging conversational+media conversation human+nature)