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June 05, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Movable Type has delusions of CMS grandeur

Ubiquitous blogging platform Movable Type launches the beta of version 4 today, with a new architecture, a slew of Web 2.0-ish features, and the stated intention of standing in as a full-blown (if lightweight) content management system.

(Full disclosure: InfoWorld is a customer of Six Apart, Movable Type's parent company. I am writing this posting in Movable Type, an oddly reflexive exercise.)

Concurrent with the beta, the company announced the Movable Type Open Source Project, an open source version of MT due in Q3. Six Apart is already an open source proponent, having contributed OpenID and other OSS in the past, so this piece of news is welcome but not surprising.

But back to Movable Type 4: It's wildly ambitious. Not content with being the social software of choice for everything from one-man megaphones to major corporate sites, it now wants to function as a content management system (CMS) for whole Web sites. Two years ago, this would have been laughable. Today, it may not be. Blogs are at the center of many major sites, and a basic template approach to everyday Web pages (not just ones we think of as blogs) is viable. That assumes, of course, that MT 4 is still a competent blogging platform -- a reasonable assumption, given the quality of both the current MT3 and MT Enterprise edition 1.5. InfoWorld will put the beta through its paces over the next several weeks, though we'll be doing so gingerly. "This is a real beta, not a Google-style beta," according to Six Apart EVP Chris Alden; in other words, beta testers should not think about running MT 4 in a production environment.

The dev team's most far-reaching decision is the introduction of a "plug-in" architecture. The new base platform rolls up the code base of MT 3, MT Enterprise 1.5, community-contributed enhancements, plus some core technologies from hosted blogging platform TypePad and consumer lines Vox and LiveJournal (all part of the Six Apart family). Feature packs will sit on top of MT for specialized functions and community-based add-ons, ideally avoiding code bloat of the base platform. The architectural change is intended to make MT more flexible and scalable, a primary development goal of the new release.

The laundry list of new features is long and needed: installation Wizard, new UI, system dashboards, better image insert feature (yes!), redesigned template management tools and WYSIWYG editor, and so on. Even more significant, assuming they work, will be community-management tools for managing readers' comments. Readers who wish to respond to a blog will be able to join the Web site's community (through MT tools) and post their own photos, videos, audio, as well as text.

Exciting stuff. Still, I don't foresee many large, complex sites dumping their industrial-strength CMSes anytime soon, no matter how solid the new MT may turn out to be. The fact that it's even a consideration, though, proves how far blogging software has come.

Posted by Steve Fox on June 5, 2007 12:01 AM

April 10, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Judge: Even MySpace speech protected

Political speech is just that -- even if in MySpace, an Indiana court ruled today.

Odd. Why would there be any First Amendment test just because it is speech on MySpace?

From the Associated Press report:

The three-judge panel on Monday ordered the Putnam Circuit Court to set aside its penalty against the girl, referred to only as A.B. in court records.
"While we have little regard for A.B.'s use of vulgar epithets, we conclude that her overall message constitutes political speech," Judge Patricia Riley wrote in the 10-page opinion.

This makes me wonder, if newspaper publishers do not understand online, do judges? In other words, how could the earlier judge have made such an obviously wrong (unconstitutional) decision? And given so, what would happen if the same thing occurred with text messages (SMS) or viral video, sent to all the schoolkids' cell phones?

Is this just an example of technology ahead of the courts, or a judge who does not understand free speech rules? Talk back to me, below.

Posted by Mike Barton on April 10, 2007 03:37 PM

January 15, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Apple miffed over faux iPhone icons

The iSaga surrounding Apple's iPhone took another turn over the weekend as the company's lawyers sent out cease and desist letters not only to Web sites hosting iPhone-like theme and icons for Treos, Pocket PCs, and other mobile devices -- but also to bloggers who had merely linked to said sites, according to reports.

Over on XDA-Developer, for example, a user called hanmin posted a Pocket PC screen emulating the iPhone. Soon after, hanmin received a request from Apple's iLawyers that he remove all the "copyrighted materials" from the forum (which he did).

But Apple also sent a cease and desist letter to blogger Paul O'Brien, asking him to remove a link in his blog to the aforementioned forum, as well as a screen image comparing the iPhone screen to the Pocket PC emulation.

O'Brien complied, but posted in his blog: "A bit excessive IMHO... and although I can accept that they can get upset over the screenshot, can they really demand I remove the link too? :-S"

iPhone-esque icons developed for Palm -- called iPhony -- suffered a similar fate over on Brighthand.com. As I write this, though (at around Tuesday, midnight PT), The Unofficial Apple Blog (tuaw.com) still has a link to the forum as well as a screen image posted.

Indeed, Apple may have its work cut out for it if it aims to clamp down on both developers of free iPhone-like icons and themes (such as one currently available for the Sony Ericsson on Atacama.com), as well as blogs that talk about them.

The iPhone emulations, of course, are indicative of just how popular Apple's technology is -- both in look and functionality. Perhaps the company could take that emulation as a high form of flattery, rather than a cause for saber rattling. After all, we're not talking about other companies cranking out arguably cheap knock-offs of Apple wares here. I really don't see this costing Apple anything.

Now, as to Apple's attack on blogs that are doing nothing more than reporting the news, well, we all know what happened the last time the company attempted to stifle the blogosphere.

Posted by Ted Samson on January 15, 2007 11:35 PM

December 05, 2006 | Comments: (0)

Video blogger dodging bullets, teargas in Oaxaca, Mexico

What's more ballsy than picking up your video camera and jetting off to Baghdad, Iraq to report on conditions for ordinary civilians caught in the midst of a civil war? How about picking up your video camera and jetting off to Oaxaca, Mexico, to report on the conditions of ordinary civilians caught in the midst of civil unrest and a government crackdown?

That's what Brian Conley, creator of the powerful Alive in Baghdad video blog has done with his latest project, Alive in Mexico. Conley, whose work picked up two awards at the recent Vloggies Video Blogs award ceremony in San Francisco, has opened up a new bureau in Oaxaca, Mexico, the scene of a long simmering popular uprising that has boiled over in recent months.

Conley and his collaborative projects (Alive in Baghdad has been run mostly by native Iraqis, armed with video cameras in recent months) is a sterling example of the potential and power of the Internet and portable, easy to use video and audio equipment to revolutionize the way news is gathered and consumed.

You can forget about hearing anything from Matt Lauer about the conditions on the ground in Oaxaca, where villagers are calling for the removal of Governor Ulises Ruiz Ortiz and battling with the Federal Preventive Police(PFP). But you can zoom on over to AliveinMexico and see what's its like to stand in the middle of a pitched street battle between the PFP and the protesters. Amazing stuff.

In IM conversations with InfoWorld, Conley said that he's already been arrested by the Mexican police and taken in for questioning. He also says that the situation has, in some ways, been more difficult in Oaxaca than Baghdad, where citizens were happy to come forward and give interviews about conditions on the ground.

In Oaxaca, unlike Baghdad, fear of government reprisal has made one on one interviews hard to come by. However, life on the street is safer and footage from the street protests is easier to come by than in Iraq. (An Alive in Baghdad reporter was kidnapped and held for days after being spotted taking "B Roll" footage of a gas station. His account of his captivity and the disintegration of civil society in Iraq along ethnic lines is one of the more moving pieces of reporting I've seen anywhere, and speaks volumes about the conflict. More recent entries there bring you up close interviews with car bomb survivors. This while the MSM in the U.S. dithers about whether to call Iraq a "civil war," and folks like Lauer are celebrated just for standing up in downtown Manhattan in thousand dollar suits and stating the obvious.

Conley has some powerful people in his corner, including VON founder Jeff Pulver. Donations and sales of raw footage have allowed him to pay meager salaries to his staff in Baghdad and get the ball rolling in Oaxaca. For now, he says he's got enough video in the bag for six or so more posts to Alive in Mexico, providing he can keep one step ahead of the PFP. As he did in Iraq, he's also trying to build a self-sustaining vlogging/news organization that can keep reporting after he boards a jet back home to the U.S. As we hear more and more about countries like China and Iran cutting off access to parts of the Internet that challenge the government's authority or view of reality, you've got to pull for folks like Conley who, despite formal training as a journalist, are living up the truest ideals of the profession and speaking truth to power.

Posted by Paul Roberts on December 5, 2006 07:22 AM

November 17, 2006 | Comments: (0)

Weblogs entrepreneur quits AOL

Jason Calacanis, whose startup Weblogs was acquired last year by AOL, has resigned in the wake of CEO Jonathan Miller's replacement by NBC exec Randy Falco. Calacanis remained as chief executive officer of Weblogs after it became an AOL subsidiary, and was this year put in charge of running AOL's Netscape.com division and transforming the Web portal.

The news of Calacanis' departure was first broken by the blog TechCrunch and later confirmed by the New York Times, which quotes Calacanis as saying "I'm not inclined to start over with a new guy," referring to Falco.

Calcanis has also posted a note about his departure on his own blog site.

The Times reports that morale at AOL has been shaken by Miller's surprise departure, and many "saw the shakeup as an affront, given the amount of work they had put into creating a new strategy for AOL."

Posted by Caroline Craig on November 17, 2006 07:01 AM

October 06, 2006 | Comments: (0)

RIP Audioblogger. Long live a-blogging

Audioblogger sent a form e-mail to say it was going away as of Nov. 1, but the happy from the sad note was that it brought audioblogging back on my radar.

More good news: Free audioblogging via telephone is going strong still -- just from other companies.

Audioblogger's suggestions:

Gabcast.com is a free service for recording by phone

Hipcast.com has a seven day free trial and lots of features

Gcast.com is another free service for phone recording

Why the interest in a blast from the recent past-tech? The last time I came across audioblogging, I was look at it for a daily newspaper's Web site -- as any easy way for local and far-flung field reporters to file audio news reports over any phone.

Here's my note from today to my boss about audioblogging at InfoWorld.com: "The thing is that it is not great audio, but the rawness might be accepted as part of the rapid-fire journalism style that is evolving -- it just cuts out all the production overhead and gets it live fast."

The time has come, I reckon.

I think video online is only worth the time if telling a story with moving pictures that cannot be told with just words. It also works well for showcasing a new cell phone, a la CNET. But the talking head thing is just a bandwidth and time waster.

Audioblogging and podcasts can be built more easily -- InfoWorld Editor at Large Ephraim Schwartz told me today he was going to start using his digital recorder for inteviews and I said we'd slice and dice it for InfoWorld.com. Too easy. Audioblogging is just one step easier, really.

And you can listen to them and simultaneously browse the Web.

Now for the e-mail (Attn: Audioblogger users):

Hello,
As of November 1, 2006, Audioblogger will no longer accept phone
calls. MP3s made with the service will continue to be hosted and
served but you will no longer be able to use Audioblogger to post
new audio.

Audioblogger is an independent product, run by Odeo, Inc., a small
startup company in San Francisco, CA. We are not affiliated with
Google or Blogger except that we operate and provide the
Audioblogger service.

Given our limited resources, we have to make tough decisions
about what projects to focus on. And we've come to the difficult
decision that Audioblogger demands too many resources, time, and
money for us to continue its operation.

However, there are several other services that offer similar
functionality. Odeo is not affiliated with any of these services,
we only suggest them only in hopes that one or the other will be
a good alternative for you.

All of the phone posting services listed above are compatible
with Odeo in that they produce podcast feeds, which can be
imported to Odeo. Any audio file at Odeo can be posted on a blog
by copying and pasting some embed code.

Odeo would like to extend a huge thank you to everyone who has
tried Audioblogger. If you are interested in keeping up with our
other blog-friendly projects, please have a look at Twitter.com
and our customizable audio players.

Thanks,
The Odeo Team

Posted by Mike Barton on October 6, 2006 11:19 AM

October 05, 2006 | Comments: (0)

Sun's Schwartz pushes Net disclosure

Sun CEO Jonathan Schwartz is advocating cutting out the middle man -- in this case, the media -- in disclosing corporate news to the public, preferring to bring that information straight to the people via the Internet.

In his public blog, Schwartz shared a letter to the SEC this week, in which he asks that the blogosphere and RSS be made acceptable means of disclosing to investors and the public "issues that'd be deemed material to Sun's financial performance."

Currently, he says, Sun and other public companies need to "hold anachronistic telephonic conference call, or issue an equivalently anachronistic press release, so that the (not so anachronistic) Wall Street Journal can disseminate the news" so as to be compliant with Regulation Fair Disclosure (Reg FD).

Reg FD, Schwartz notes, "attempts to ensure no one audience gets preferential access to material non-public information. It's a great concept, designed to prevent selective disclosure, or actions that might advantage one investor over another."

However, he contends that those press releases and conference calls aren't as readily accessible to the world as is a posting on a freely accessible Web site. He says in his letter to the SEC that

"My blog is syndicated across the Internet by use of RSS technology; thus, its content is 'pushed' to subscribers. This website is a tremendous vehicle for the broad delivery of timely and robust information about our company. It is our view that proprietary news outlets are insufficiently accessible to the broad majority of Internet users and individual shareholders. It is certainly the case that the Internet represents a broader user base than those able to afford subscriptions to traditional forms of media ... ."

It's an interesting proposal, certainly. As a journalist, I've come to prefer reading about news announcements in blogs instead of in press releases. The tone of the latter tend to be so laden with cliche market-speak (how could every single company out there be a "leading provider"?), they sometimes border on incomprehensible.

Blog posts written by real people, on the other hands, tend to be more engaging and not quite as sickeningly sugar-coated.

But that's more a style issue than a dissemination issue, isn't it? The question at hand is, would investors and the public be better served if they could get company information immediately, from the source?

Well, in some ways, I'd say yes. It would make perfect sense for people interested in getting news of "issues that'd be deemed material to Sun's financial performance" -- or whatever company interests them -- to have that information show up in their e-mail boxes or RSS readers at the same time it reaches journalists. There's really no reason that shouldn't be an option right now.

But I don't know that Schwartz would be successful in cutting out the media middle man entirely, if that's his aim. For one thing, if I want to keep abreast of Sun news and suddenly can't expect a formal press release, for some reason, I'd just subscribe to whatever RSS feed was appropriate.

The risk there is, if a company is running a bunch of different blogs and 10 percent of the news in those various blogs is worth reporting, there's a good chance I -- as well as the members of the public at large -- will miss it amid the hundreds of messages showing in your mailbox or RSS reader. Especially if you're an investor or a journalist or a technophile trying to track the goings-on at many, many different companies.

Also, I imagine that at least some readers out there might not be fully content with a company's spin on whatever news it has to share and will still seek some analysis from their news source of choice.

Moreover, his argument that all the press releases Sun sends out are somehow rendered inaccessible by media outlets is, frankly, bogus. Yes, some news sites do require a paid subscription. Some are free but require only a login. And some are freely accessible (such as InfoWorld.com).

Corporate press releases are also freely available via the BizWire, PR Newswire, and various other means.

One of the interesting points raised in comments responding to Schwartz's entry is that blogs, RSS, and e-mail may not be the most secure means to sharing important information, either. What happens when someone convincingly spoofs an announcement from Sun (e.g. "Sun finds Solaris causes impotence in lab rats"), and it ends up in thousands of e-mail-boxes simultaneously without going through that dreaded media filter? It may suddenly be up to the media to help undo the damage.

Another commenter writes, "The one question that I have relates to archiving the blog info. It is one thing to publish information. It is another to be able to find it at a later date. "

Bottom line, though: I truly applaud Schwartz's desire to keep investors, customers, and the public apprised of important news. By all means, post them in your blog and make them available by RSS and e-mail as soon as you can.

But there's really no harm in CCing the press in the process. In fact, you could benefit from it. Sometimes, we might write something good about you.

Posted by Ted Samson on October 5, 2006 01:30 PM

September 19, 2006 | Comments: (0)

Blogging the Thai Coup

Some of you may have read about the coup d'etat that's going on in Thailand right now, in which a faction of the Thai military led by army chief Gen. Sonthi Boonyaratkalin and Thailand's opposition Party of Democratic Reform seized control of the country while Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra was in New York preparing to address the U.N.

Details are still sketchy about the goings-on inside the country, but this blog has a really good blow by blow account of how the coup is being experienced by ordinary Thai citizens, including a re-post (via YouTube) of an eerie TV broadcast from a spokesman for the PDR translated into English.

From the broadcast: "From Committee of Political Reformation Under Democracy: As it is clearly seen that the current government has caused the society to be fragmented, many people are skeptical of how the government is being run. Corruption has occurred. This is the worst in our history. This has caused many parties to come close to challenging the King's power. There have been attempts to solve this problem but they have been unsuccessful.This situation has made it necessary for the Committee - consisting of the heads of the military branches and the National Police, to take over the power from this point."

Hmm...society is fragmented? people are skeptical of how the government is being run? Corruption has occurred? Attempts to solve the problem that have failed? Sound familiar??

As we all know, democracy is fragile.

Posted by Paul Roberts on September 19, 2006 12:41 PM

August 15, 2006 | Comments: (0)

Slashdot talkback: OpenOffice security

We reported last Friday that researchers at the French Ministry of Defense said vulnerabilities with open source office suite OpenOffice.org may rival those of Microsoft's version.

The Ministry said users of the OpenOffice.org software may be at even greater risk from computer viruses. "The general security of OpenOffice is insufficient," the researchers wrote in a paper entitled In-depth analysis of the viral threats with OpenOffice.org documents. "This suite is up to now still vulnerable to many potential malware attacks," they wrote.

An ensuing Slashdot discussion on the topic is worth a look, and here are some highlights of the 181 comments (and counting).

Start with the English translation:

[Red Alastor writes,] I speak French, let me translate.
1. "Official" MS Office competitor.
2. Share of the market rising.
3. Cheap but...
4. What about the real security of OpenOffice ?
5. Viral analysis by proof of concept
6. Numerous integrated programming languages : script shell, VBScript, Python, Perl, Asp, Java.
7. Rich macro developing.
8. Numerous existing hijackable execution points
9. No protection mecanism for macros
10. zip format is makes virus penetration easy.
11. Macro security is easy to bypass. "Trusted" folders are defined. Any macro placed in those folders is by definition, trusted.
12. Document signature do not really consider macros. Bypassing possibilities
13. Macros can be linked to events or services.
14. Other mechanisms : macro chaining, hypertext links, inter-application execution, OLE
15. Many mechanisms are usable for an infection
16. All known viral techniques known for Microsoft Office can be translated under OpenOffice.org
17. Every kind of infection is doable. (Infection and auto-reproduction)
18. Globaly, OpenOffice's suite is a bigger infection risk than Microsoft's suite.
19. No real security concepts.
20. Many functional viral roots were made as proof-of-concept
21. Infection successful no matter the security setting of the user.
22. Some senarii can act without alerting the user in any way (scenarii is a stupid plural in French too but they used it in the original)

Foreverdisillusioned writes:

I'm assuming that the vast majority of these alleged vulnerabilities came about as a result of them examining the source code. Since Microsoft Office is closed source, it may have just as many potential exploits or more. The difference is OO.o's vulnerabilities are known and thus can be guarded against or even patched by a third party. MS Office's potential exploits are unknown and thus may be released as zero-day exploits, and even when they are known we're at the mercy of MS to release a timely and effective patch.

I fail to see how this is a black mark against OpenOffice.org.

Alveraan writes:

in talking about what os/office suite/browser/... has the most bugs. Just report them to the programmers so they can fix them. I mean, this is an open source project. I'm sure they care about critical security bugs...

If a company/project takes 2 years average to fix a bug, that's a problem, but hey - stop spreading blame and start spreading bug reports. That's far more productive.

You get the point, worth a read with the Slashdot community weighing in.

Posted by Mike Barton on August 15, 2006 09:26 AM

May 02, 2006 | Comments: (0)

Blogs get some blast

Pluck formally introduced its syndication network promo service BlogBurst today.

"Several major newspapers, including The San Francisco Chronicle, The Houston Chronicle, The San Antonio Express-News and the Austin American-Statesman, are now syndicating and displaying blog content from Pluck Corpration's BlogBurst network," Editor & Publisher reports.

The service is said to be ithe industry's first blog syndication network, using a blog-powered newswire service.

In a second blast, Techcrunch reports the world of blogs just got smaller with Sphere, a new blog search.

Sphere follows in the footsteps of Feedster, Technorati and IceRocket, and Google and Yahoo, but is said to be "doing things quite a bit differently than its predecessors".

Techcrunch writes Sphere's "relevance" is based on: links in/out of blog; meta data around the blog (average length of posts, post frequency, etc; and a semantic analysis of the posts themselves).

See the Techcrunch post for the full skinny, and a podcast interview with Sphere CEO Tony Conrad and advisor Toni Schneider.

Posted by Mike Barton on May 2, 2006 01:15 PM

February 10, 2006 | Comments: (0)

Blogs reshaping content management tools

Blogs and editable Web pages called wikis are gaining popularity with enterprise users, introducing to these organizations a new level of content contribution and participation.

ECM (enterprise content management) apps, which over the past few years have been gathering a variety of collaboration tools under their wing, are still figuring out what to with these easy to use and highly accessible newcomers.

Unlike collaboration tools that came before, the deep and broad participation that blogs and wikis enable are forcing ECM vendors to address new security and access control challenges.

Because blogs allow corporate content to come from a wide spectrum of users, both inside and outside the organization, the personal publishing tools have created a new level of participant. It's no longer just the company's Content Editor or Senior Marketing Writer who is funneling content to the Web site, applications, and systems. Your customers, for instance, could become blog contributors, adding corporate-branded content right alongside the blog posts from the CEO.

ECM systems weren't designed to handle this democratization of information creation and sharing.

"While the majority of ECM products enable various levels of workflow and third-party integration, they are not yet good at managing the participatory nature of blogs and, particularly, wikis," said Maurene Caplan Grey, founder and principal analyst at Grey Consulting.

ECM vendors should look to partner with companies that understand how to exploit participatory media, she added.

Some of content management products and services are starting to change with the times.

Robin Hopper, CEO of SaaS content management company iUpload, sees blogs as another level of corporate content that needs to be managed with the same platform used to manage more traditional content. Although many companies are testing the blog waters with a blogging platform that is detached from the ECM system, in the long run that approach doesn't make the most sense, he said.

"We've seen a trend [of] companies needing to manage more discrete bits of information. [You] can't do that with traditional content management. Companies need a different way to mange those bits of information from another level of author. We think an integrated approach in important," he said.

iUpload recently launched its Customer Conversation System, which brings blogs and wikis into the content management fold with workflow, compliance, security, and integration functions. .

The idea is to have one platform that can harvest content from a level of participation that wasn't possible before, according to Hopper.

Furthermore, increased flexibility is needed so valuable blog content, for instance, isn't stuck in that one format.

"Blogs are an authoring metaphor. The content can be presented in different ways: a group blog, an individual blog, it could be wikified, can be edited. It doesn't even have to look like a blog. Our suite can bubble up pieces of blogs," to be used elsewhere in the organization, he said.

Posted by Cathleen Moore on February 10, 2006 01:41 PM

December 19, 2005 | Comments: (0)

Two new podcasts at InfoWorld.com

We added two podcasts to the content InfoWorld.com provides.

I'll be bringing you the top stories each morning, as well as opinions and commentary on relevant tech topics with The InfoWorld Daily podcast. It's the audio companion to my InfoWorld Daily blog. Here is today's cast: http://akamai.infoworld.com/podcasts/IFW_Daily_12-19-05.mp3

Security guru and Zero Day author Victor Garza, too, joins the ranks of podcasters, with his Zero Day Podcast: 30 Seconds to Zero. For a sample of Garza's cast, here is his take on holiday parties and prioritizing: http://akamai.infoworld.com/weblog/zeroday/archives/podcast/IFW_ZeroDay_Garza_005.mp3

I'd be interested in hearing what you think about these new podcasts. Write in and tell me what you like, or what you don't, at tom_sullivan@infoworld.com. Or, post comments below.

Posted by Tom Sullivan on December 19, 2005 11:54 AM

November 17, 2005 | Comments: (0)

Microsoft CTO Ray Ozzie starts new blog

He referred to it as Ray's Weblog v3. The reason: Before taking the CTO spot at Microsoft, Ray Ozzie had more than one blog of his own.

Now he's back in the blogosphere, this time as a Microsoft executive. Ozzie wrote in this inaugural post that he intends to converse with readers rather than simply plugging Microsoft products.

"We've got plenty of mechanisms -- old school and new -- that work well for that sort of thing. But to the extent that I'm excited about something, or I think there might be a different angle that you might be interested in, I'll chime in," he explained.

For instance, Ozzie and others are currently working on "a fun little project" that the involved parties have not yet begun to discuss publicly for lack of the right mechanism to spread the word. So, Ozzie might introduce that via his blog. "Next week, perhaps," he wrote.

(Thanks to Betanews for the link.)

Posted by Tom Sullivan on November 17, 2005 06:37 AM

October 12, 2005 | Comments: (0)

Why bloggers blog: Firm offers some answers

The number one reason people begin blogging is to establish themselves as a visible authority in their field, according to a study by public relations firm Edelman.

Blogger Survey 2005 lists the above reason as the mindset of 33.8 percent of respondents. A close second, 'to create a record of my thoughts,' is why 31.5 percent of bloggers blog.

Less than five percent, meanwhile, blog to generate revenue.

The survey also presents findings about other blogging-related issues, such as how often people blog (the number one answer was every few days), how bloggers correct factual errors in previous posts (striking through the error and inserting a correction is the most common practice), and several questions relating to trust, e.g. who bloggers trust for product information (other bloggers, overwhelmingly), and how trustworthy corporate blogs are in comparison to those written by individual employees.

Edelman has the results in graphical form at https://extranet.edelman.com/bloggerstudy/.

Unlike most surveys, this one has a lot of valuable information for current bloggers, be they of the corporate or individual ilk, as well as companies considering instituting blogs.

Within the survey there was, by the by, one interesting finding I commend Edelman for revealing: Bloggers trust messages coming directly from a company one percentage point more than if that same message comes from a PR firm.

Posted by Tom Sullivan on October 12, 2005 07:34 AM

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