Boom and Bust

in the Blogosphere

Case studies of the blogging industry

By Dan Morrill

Copyright © 2008 Dan Morrill

All rights reserved.

ISBN: 1-4392-1673-8

ISBN-13: 9781439216736

Visit www.booksurge.com to order additional copies.

Boom and Bust in the Blogosphere

Contents

About............................................................................................................................................................................... 4
Introduction ..................................................................................................................................................................... 5
What is a Blog? ............................................................................................................................................................ 9
Why do People Blog? ..................................................................................................................................................11
Is Blogging All About Ambition? ..................................................................................................................................13
Is Blogging all about relationships?..............................................................................................................................16
Is Blogging all about Longevity?...................................................................................................................................18
Is blogging all about making money? ...........................................................................................................................20
Is blogging all about paying attention to things that are going on in the world? ...........................................................23
Commonalities between bloggers who make it and those who do not ............................................................................24
Blogging as Creative Destruction .....................................................................................................................................27
Blogs that are leading the way ........................................................................................................................................31
BoingBoing .....................................................................................................................................................................32
Gigazine ..........................................................................................................................................................................35
Toolbox...........................................................................................................................................................................38
TechNet and MSDN .........................................................................................................................................................41
Google Blogs ...................................................................................................................................................................43
Robert Scoble .................................................................................................................................................................46
ProBlogger ......................................................................................................................................................................48
Beth Kanter.....................................................................................................................................................................51
ICanHasCheezeburger .....................................................................................................................................................53
Techcrunch .....................................................................................................................................................................56
Gawker Media ................................................................................................................................................................58
Huffington Post ...............................................................................................................................................................62
John Chow ......................................................................................................................................................................65
Chris Pirillo......................................................................................................................................................................67
Blogs that went out of Business ......................................................................................................................................69
Blognation ......................................................................................................................................................................70
Think Secret ....................................................................................................................................................................73
Know More Media ..........................................................................................................................................................77
MyKinda .........................................................................................................................................................................79
Creating Passionate Users ...............................................................................................................................................80
PVR Wire and Other Weblogs Inc properties ...................................................................................................................83
Fired for Blogging ............................................................................................................................................................86
What makes a successful Blog? .......................................................................................................................................89
Be Unique or have a Unique Voice ..............................................................................................................................91
Be open to the community ..........................................................................................................................................92
Have an issue ..............................................................................................................................................................94
Do not sweat your "statistics" when getting started ....................................................................................................95
Are you an expert? ......................................................................................................................................................96
Is your subject matter Safe for Work? .........................................................................................................................97
Can you write well?.....................................................................................................................................................98
Do you have passion about something? ......................................................................................................................99
Who are your favorite Writers ..................................................................................................................................100
Treat your Blog like a Business ......................................................................................................................................101
Risks and Rewards to Blogging ......................................................................................................................................103
Rewards to Blogging..................................................................................................................................................104
Risks of RSS Scrapers and people republishing your content ......................................................................................106
Risks of being fired or not hired because of your blog ...............................................................................................108
Risks of Trolls, Griefers, Critics and Others Miscreants...............................................................................................110
DMCA Take downs, copyright, fair use ..........................................................................................................................114
Summary ......................................................................................................................................................................116
Why some blogs were not picked..................................................................................................................................118
Resources .....................................................................................................................................................................118
Resources on Line .....................................................................................................................................................118
Book resources .........................................................................................................................................................119
 About

Dan Morrill has been blogging since 2003, starting with Live Journal and Blogger.com writing about technology like
Nutch, Hadoop, management, and the ways that people, politics, and technology intersect. Dan was recruited by
ITToolbox (now Toolbox) in 2006 and is now a globally syndicated blogger across twenty-seven major Internet news sites
around the world. He also writes on his own blog outside of the bigger blog networks about technology, people, and the
chaotic world that technical blogging has become. He is also an active member of Social Campus and other groups that
seek to extend Web 2.0 into the University systems, corporate systems, and other systems that need to understand how
technology, people, and the social fabrics we create can lead to an effective and communicative enterprise.

This book is dedicated to everyone who has helped me find my own blogging voice, to Toolbox, Robert Scoble, Louis
Gray, Mike Fruchter, Corvida, Beth Kanter, Read Write Web, ProBlogger, Chris Pirillo, Layer8, Locutus, and many others
whom I have met in person or read on line and developed a good supportive relationship with, finally this book is also
dedicated to my family, as it should be.
 Introduction

The distinction between a top blogger and a regular blogger is hard to define, yet that does not mean that there is not a
lot of attention that is focused on those blogging personalities that can bring in tens of thousands of web site visits per
day. The mythical1 A list, B list, and C list bloggers that you might hear about is just that, mythical. The "A List" is a list of
bloggers who get hundreds of thousands of "hits a day" on their web sites (blogs, social networks, and affiliated web
support sites like Twitter, Facebook, Social Median, and FriendFeed) and have learned to build and maintain their own
niche in the blogging world. The good things about the Top Bloggers are that they give us an example that we can follow.
They provide experience, news, guidance, and in many cases, as with Louis Gray and Robert Scoble, support and a kind
word to their followers and their emulators.

New bloggers use the top bloggers as examples, not just how to blog, but also how to behave on line. New bloggers use
the top blogs as an example of how to make their reputations online, using top drawing blogs as their example of
success. It is hard not to notice Louis Gray, or Robert Scoble, or Gawker or Techcrunch without noticing how they have
built their brands and reputations. It is also hard not to notice the public drama of a blog network or blog web site that
shuts down. While many blogs simply fail due to failure to update or continue on after a year or more, some blogs, the
failure is public, messy, and often leads to strong words and strong opinions being voiced on the Internet. What blogging
has done is highlight the opinions we have to a global audience. For some this is good, they have been able to build good
strong blogging networks or brands based on their ability to evangelize, convert readership to followership, and make
“internet friends”. For others, blogging has turned into a tragedy of lawsuits, being fired, public embarrassment and
ridicule, exposure (when the anonymous nature of blogging is revealed under court order), or their blogs used against
them in court.

Blog styles vary based on what the writer wanted to say and their skills in saying what they wanted to say. Some blogs in
a particular subject talk about subjects from a personal viewpoint, like “mommy bloggers”, while others take on a more
newspaper or magazine look and feel like Techcrunch and Read Write Web. These blogging sites and the bloggers that
write for them all have one thing in common; they all draw very large groups of readers and make money to support
their staff and operations by selling advertising space on their blogs. Some in the industry can consider even the aspect
of using advertising on blogs controversial2 and will at times make public statements on how advertising takes away
from the bloggers message3. Some bloggers like Louis Gray do not sell advertising on their web sites and see their
blogging effort as a more personal experience4. While some bloggers like Robert Scoble are new to the idea of selling
advertising5, they are not adverse to selling or using sponsorships6 to increase their own income or offset expenses from
operating their blog. The other distinction is that they all have a distinct blogger's voice, and their voice aids their

1
http://brian.carnell.com/articles/2005/the-a-list-blogger-myth there are many articles about what an A list blogger is, what makes
one, and what their impact is on a company or on readership. While some blogs get a lot of traffic and have an immediate impact on
companies, their products, and their consumers, many blogs are holding on well to their niche and might be an "A list" blogger in their
niche while the majority of the world has not heard of them.

2
http://www.louisgray.com/live/2008/04/most-bloggers-dont-deserve-any-ad.html
3
http://techwag.com/index.php/2008/04/19/louis-gray-sets-off-a-firestorm-of-controversy/
4
http://louisgray.com/live/2008/04/most-bloggers-dont-deserve-any-ad.html

5
www.techcrunch.com/2008/04/30/robert-scoble-sell-out-complete/

6
http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/03/06/robert-scoble-to-leave-fastcompany/
reputation, which they have built on the Internet. It is the distinct voice and being connected with other reputable
people that helps make “A-List” bloggers very popular. They bring news and information that cannot be found anywhere
else; they use their connections to find new ideas that are worth championing, great new established or startup
companies that are doing something new, and in some cases they support and champion regular people and other
bloggers. They help form communities and stay with them until the community can stand on its own. Then they move on
to the next big thing, keeping an eye on the communities they have helped develop. It is his or her ability to build
almost a cult like leadership status that sets apart the “A-List” from everyone else in the blogging industry. It is the
championship of people, ideas, politics, technology, babies, sports cars, and other issues that help drive traffic to their
blogs, and helps build upon the Internet fame that they have established.

One of the most common things I have heard “A-List” bloggers state is that a blog is not just the idea, but the platform
that we use when we all have something to share with everyone who wants to listen. It is the individual voices that
bloggers bring to the Internet creates a more concise picture than the popular media that we are used to can ever
create. Even this aspect of the Internet is debatable7, Keenís book the Cult of the Amateur8 rips into the standards and
practices that amateurs bring to culture. However, one only needs to watch TV or follow other popular media trends 9 to
realize that we are already at the lowest common denominator10 when it comes to culture. The Internet cannot do any
more damage to society and culture than the many ways that we already get our "entertainment." This is a hot topic
nationally and internationally11 when it comes to the influences that are being sold via Hollywood, Music, Video Games,
and a whole host of other things we use for entertainment.

The old media—TV, newspapers, magazines—all have seen a drop off in physical readership12 while newspaper web
sites and specialist blogs have helped fill that vacuum and have taken off in popularity as the internet matures. However,
blogs, far from supplanting traditional media, have augmented traditional media with various fresh viewpoints,
thoughts, and articles that anyone with a browser can get to on the internet. While top bloggers come and go based on
readership numbers changing up or down, there is also the bloggers ability to find the time to continually make new
blog entries or “content”. While the reality is that there are times where one day a blogger is popular and the next day
the blogger is not, blog readers have a tendency to move onto the next big thing or the next big blogger. Blogger
fortunes and popularity are measured in page views and visitors, if the blogger can consistently write well, write about
things that people are interested in, and get many links on the internet, and then the blogger is doing well.

There are many blogs on the internet today, so many that it is difficult to separate the general noise from the
independent signal. This signal to noise ratio13—made up of sites that scrape others' content without adding their own,
sites that are spam blogs (splogs), or have no real value to add—against those web sites that are busy churning out good

7
http://www.lessig.org/blog/2007/05/keens_the_cult_of_the_amateur.html

8
http://www.amazon.com/Cult-Amateur-Internet-Killing-Culture/dp/0385520808

9
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_7081/is_2_26/ai_n28435711/
10
http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1G1-160081438.html

11
http://www.cem.itesm.mx/dacs/publicaciones/logos/anteriores/n43/krampal.html

12
www.phoenixrealestateguy.com/newspaper-readership-continues-to-decline/555

13
Signal to Noise ratio is the valuable information that is buried in a large mass of one or two line blog entries. When someone speaks
of the signal to noise ratio, they are saying that the reader has found the blog helpful or filled with good information that is worth
reading.
content on a regular basis is part of information overload14. People will narrow cast or limit their reading to a small
group or circle of friends that they trust and they enjoy reading on a regular basis. When a reader chooses to narrow
cast their information, they are only reading based on the perceived value of the information and they are unlikely to
seek out new sources of information. It is those points of data that the readers feel they can trust, which is viewed in
some respects with everyone else and their blogs or social networks as data that they cannot or will not trust 15.

There are also those blogs that will never take off because they simply do not have the people or crowd or readers
behind them to rise above the general noise level on the Internet. They have small circles of friends, or small circles of
people who read their blogs and do not blog at all in any meaningful way makes it difficult to keep a blog to blog
conversation going on the Internet. In a link economy, how we judge the popularity of blogs by the most links back to
them, this is a death knell for the new blogger. One very clever new blogger over at “Mike’s Life16” contacted one of the
biggest bloggers on the planet, ProBlogger and asked them if he could write a guest entry on what it is like to start a new
blog. By the exposure that Mike’s Life gained from that, and the cross links, the new blog got a boost, a new group of
readers, and most important of all, people that remember the story of how he got started. Most of the time, what
people are saying is worthwhile just like on Mike’s Life, but within the millions of individual blogs that people run
independently, it can be difficult to work out who is saying the most important points and counter points 17. This is where
we trust, or do not trust the source; if the blogger is my friend, I will trust them, if I do not know the blogger, they will be
lucky to get me to visit at all.

Blogging has become more than just the personal diary of people tracking and commenting on the mundane lives that
they live. Rather, blogs have become a serious contender for the readership of newspapers. Blogging is slowly changing
how the world gets, uses, consumes, and digests information. Bloggers have opened up a completely new world on how
we learn about, comment, and expound on issues of the day. The signal, the blogs that talk about topics of interest to
many—against the noise—can be difficult to get away from while searching for blogs that are truly creating original
content or commenting on others' original content. In this case, search engines might not be your best friend, as they
are subject to manipulation.18 Sites like Friend Feed, where you can track only those people you want to track can help
cut down on signal to noise. They can also help you focus better on your niche or your community centered on your
blog. They also follow along the lines of trust. People I subscribe to on Friend Feed are those I trust, and I can limit my
exposure to any other source. Social networking in that respect is also not your friend, because you can over limit your
friends in social networking sites missing exciting new voices to share with your circle of social networking friends.

When we talk about top bloggers, we talk about people who are not just interested in their topic of discussion; they are
in many cases very passionate about that topic. We are also talking about bloggers who get a lot of traffic on their sites
and are considered industry leaders—or right on the razor's edge of early adoption of a technology or process. The

14
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_overload

15
http://dmiracle.com/marketing-strategy/stop-calling-yourself-a-blogger/

16
http://www.mikeslife.org/
17
http://www.briansolis.com/2008/09/socialization-of-your-personal-brand.html Brian is running a series about how you control
your personal brand as a blogger and how it is important to determine what to do and what not to do when dealing with the social
networks that we live in.

18
http://www.google-watch.org/gaming.html is about how to game Google and get it to cough up unusual and interesting results based
on "Google bombing" this can also be known as "rick rolling," depending on what you are doing with what you are doing to Google or
other search engines. This is one of those practices that you should not do if you want to remain accessible in the search engines.
passion in their blogger's voice is what comes through most when you are reading your favorite blogs. The writer is
engaged with their readers; they believe in what they are doing and it is important to them. The bloggers answer back
on comments and talk to their audiences. They are also are deeply embedded in the social fabrics of Facebook,
MySpace, and other social web sites. You can approach them, just not on their blog, and learn about the people that
they think are important and discover them as well. Eventually, you end up with a prebuilt social fabric around a topic, a
conversation, or an issue.

There are many places you can get advice on how to be a top blogger, and there are many examples of very good blogs
and many examples of very good writers. There are also excellent examples of failed blogs, bloggers who lost interest
and moved on, abandoned blogs, splog systems, and other ways of getting lost in the noise on the internet. Then some
bloggers who just want to write about what they want to write about without aiming to be the top of the blogger
hierarchy. For bloggers that just want to write about what they want to write about, fame is not the issue; it is the act of
writing that drives them. It is the act of self-expression that is another aspect of blogging. We get rewarded with traffic,
page views, and hits when we hit on something that people want to read about, or we join in and talk about the
controversy of the day.

This book looks at some of the more popular blogs, across a number of content areas that have been successful, and
some that have failed. What all of these successes and failures have in common is that they all share an interesting
story. The story of rags to riches, of public fights and arguments, with an almost voyeuristic satisfaction is what plays out
on blogs and social networks every day. This is better than reality TV because researchers and book writers can go
through the public records and learn what they did right, and what they did wrong. This book focuses on information
that can be learned from information found on the Internet. Originally the intent was to conduct a series of interviews,
but what was interesting were the results of the interviews, they were useless for trying to write a well rounded story.
The people who were initially interviewed (and do not appear in this book) did not like talking about the whole rounded
story. Rather the interview was seen as a way to control the message, massage and down play the controversy (if not
ignore it completely), and hype their latest book, blog, product, company or startup. While this is generally accepted
when interviewing for a blog entry, what we need to learn is the rags to riches story, along with the riches to rags stories
that permeate the Internet as a platform for making money. This is not just about blogging but the level of effort that
people have put into their personal or professional blogging sites to make them successful and popular with their
audiences. What needed to be explored is "what are the commonalities between blogs that have been successful, and
those blogs that have failed".

The failure of a blog can be an intensely personal business. That intensely personal process can become a public
embarrassment when that failure is shouted across the Internet. More often though, many blogs simply stop and quietly
shut down without anyone noticing. These quiet blog deaths in their millions still find homes in digital archives like
Archive.org, or major library systems, but what caused them to be created, and what caused them to be abandoned will
not be known by digital archeologists. Much as we must do with documents from the medieval times, we will be stuck
with conjecture and hypothesis one hundred to two hundred years from now when they are combed through to find out
what life was like in the early 21rst Century. When the failure of a blog is public, vocal, and open, it can be difficult to
find the truth from the fiction. But there is a vast wealth of information to choose from, the problem becomes one of
too much information, much of it is opinion or conjecture without many facts. Bloggers are good at writing and telling
their side of the story, even if their side of the story is manufactured19 making digital archeology a difficult process at
best, a task of winnowing out the facts at worst. Few people have objectively looked into blog failure and blog success as
a business model or a failed business model. The blog failures can be as interesting as the blog successes because of the
assumptions that they made going into the business, which for one reason or another, failed to meet the objectives of

19
http://www.owstarr.com/2007/12/08/sam-speaks/
the business plan. By looking at both the success and failure of blogs, blog platforms, and bloggers themselves, we can
learn from both the success and failures about how to build a better blog. We can also learn to build a better blogging
business, as well as how to run a blogging business from those that have proven the blogging for money model.

What is a Blog?

Some people may blog and not even know that they are blogging. The definition of a blog is keeping a journal of events
in sequential order20. Blogs though have grown well beyond that simple answer that was given almost ten year ago.
Today there are many different definitions of what a blog is and how a blog might be used to convey information to a
readership. A blog platform, like Typepad, Blogger, Wordpress, and other software systems are considered Content
Management Systems (CMS) allowing people to post information on the Internet without worrying about HTML or code
to render the pages. The software will take any input, and with some simple formatting, post information to the Internet
when the blogger presses the “publish” button. In terms of look and feel, some blogs are built to have the look and feel
of a newspaper21, some blogs are sparer and are based on simple one or two line entries, some blogs feature nothing
but pictures, and some blogs feature nothing but podcasts or videos. Some blogs like Techdirt convey an entire story in
four hundred words or less, while other blogs like the Huffington Post or Louis Gray require more than a paragraph to
tell their story. The key to a blog is that someone is entering an observation, a commentary on something, and doing so
in a reverse chronological sequential order based on date22.

A blog is also very multipurpose in its intent and look and feel. While the software that runs a blog might be the same for
many different kinds of content delivery, the backend or software remains the same. The flexibility of blogging software
allows people to use the blogging CMS system to deliver information for any form of readership style to deliver news,
events, professional bloggers, game sites, and even funny cat pictures. 23 Rebecca Blood wrote one of the most
interesting definitions of what a blog is—including the history of blogs—24 on her web site. From Rebecca’s view point
understanding the history of blogs is important. The more you understand why something was made, the easier it is to
envision what the original intent was around the design of the software. This makes it easier to use, understand, and
then format to the bloggers needs and purposes. Blogs as a historical journal platform is less than ten years old 25.
Following the early adopters in blogging, to today’s mainstream adoption of blogging is important to understand. The
ideas around blogging were very egalitarian from the first prototype blogging systems and software to the mega blogs of
today. This growth curve shows that there is a deep desire on the part of people to discuss things, communicate, share

20
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blog

21
The Huffington Post is the best example of this kind of blog, with a distinct newspaper feel rather than a blog feel like
ReadWriteWeb.

22
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blog

23
http://icanhascheezburger.com/ is based on a modification of blogging software and is hosted at wp.com, as it is a very large web
site with tens of millions of page views per month.

24
http://www.rebeccablood.net/essays/weblog_history.html while old, this article is probably the best chronological information on
blogging and how it was started as an industry. Many people are unaware of just how fragile blogging was in the beginning and how
the people who started the idea were working through on what its eventual usage would be in the general public.

25
http://codex.wordpress.org/Introduction_to_Blogging The Word Press Codex on blogs and what a blog is, is also a fascinating read
on what the concepts are around what does and does not constitute a blog.
funny pictures, talk about controversy in ways that empower people to find their own voices, and build their self
esteem. The only thing that a person needs to worry about is what they are writing. The process of blogging becomes a
simple order of events that are write, copy and post.

There is debate over what a blog is and what a blog is not, how a blog differs from a Wiki, or other user generated data
systems26. While they all follow the same idea of letting people enter information in some form of order 27, some blogs
use static pages for content that does not change like a wiki. These bloggers use a blog to keep people up to date on
what is happening with the company. Many startups use the static web site and blog sub site to keep people informed
as to what is happening at the company. Some companies use blogs and the associated software for building out entire
web sites from product catalogs, to static pages and other content that changes on a regular basis.

Top technology companies like Google, Microsoft, Cisco, and others use a combination of systems, blogs, wikis, and
static web pages to help users find information about products. Many companies convey information about the
company and create a relationship between writer and reader using blogs. The relationships that are formed from blogs
and comments have been seen to be very helpful in assisting people with products or services from those companies.
The readership can also in some cases form the base of beta testers for new products or services. The readership takes
on an importance that is worth the time blogging, especially if they will test or report on new products and services.
From Google blogs to Microsoft blogs, these blogs are all based on different blogging software but all have the same
appeal when it comes to finding information. That appeal, in general, is that real people are writing their own thoughts
about a subject, without the polish or spin of a more formal format of information.

The best thing about blogs is that when they are generally not in the hands of a marketing department or controlled by a
public relations department, you can get meaningful and vital feedback and interaction with your company, the people
in the company and the people who use the company’s products and services. You can use the natural voice (including
grammar, spelling, and improper use of English) of real people who are writing about the product or service they are
working on. For the company this is a true win-win situation as your employees are making authentic relationships with
people that advertising or traditional marketing could never hope to make. There is not enough advertising budget in
any company to form this kind of authentic relationship with customers, and that is why blogging, along with social
networking has become an indispensible tool for companies seeking to connect with consumers. Understanding the
relationship between employee and consumer is also important when developing a corporate blogging policy or social
networking policy for their employees. The idea of a policy helps define what can and not be done on a corporate blog,
and is critical to the success of any company based social networking marketing program. People will immediately see
through a blog that is covered in political or PR (public relations) spin. When a company blogs, the company has to
remember that the blog has to be written by real people who have an opinion or something to share about something
they believe in, or hold true. While the definition of blogs and bloggers have changed over the last ten years, with
people and companies seeing the powerful message that can be presented via blogs, a new definition is becoming
apparent. The blog is the way to communicate with customers directly using authentic resources from within the
company to help build community. There have been learning pitfalls by people, companies, marketing departments, PR
departments, and others who have tried to control the message if not the medium of blogging and bloggers. Ten years
into the experiment of blogging it has morphed into many different avenues of interest with the most critical venue

26
http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/whatmakesaweblogaweblog.html Dave Winer wrote an interesting piece on what is and what is not a
blog at the Harvard law site in 2003. Most of what he states here holds true today in terms of the confusion over what is and what is not
a blog, and how it compares to other systems that rely on user driven content.

27
http://www.killersites.com/blog/2008/blog-cms-wiki-compared/
being community building and authentic messages. How blogging morphs over the next ten years promises to be just as
disruptive as the first ten as more people come online and start blogging.

Why do People Blog?

Blogging can give everyone a voice, from the die-hard conservatives to die-hard liberals. The blog as a communications
platform provides a place for people to voice the good and bad that they see in society. It can provide a pundit platform
for the far violent right, the religious right, liberals, the far violent left, and everyone else in the middle. The blog has
empowered the individual voice, which has had ramifications for society as a whole ranging from discussing the good
things people do to providing a platform for terrorists, criminals, and mobbing of individuals28 on the Internet. The blog
has also empowered an entire new industry in citizen journalism with a very low cost of entry; you can set up a citizen
journalism blog for free on any number of blogging platforms. What people do with that voice, from dissent to consent,
to writing simple book reviews, or trying to change society bloggers are talking about the things that influence their lives
on a daily basis. They are talking about issues they believe in strongly enough to go online to discuss them. For some the
discussion is about personal tragedy like cancer or some terminal diseases. For some bloggers it is discussing their
businesses, or some shiny new technology. For some bloggers they discuss openly and publicly their relationships,
movies, kids, and families. Sometimes these blog entries cause much embarrassment or shame for those family
members or friends involved, which does causes problems later on in life. The most interesting part of blogging though
is that it is the authenticity of the writing and beliefs within the blog entry that empowers all of this conversation,
observation and voyeurism that modern blogging has become. Most blogs are not written from a professional
viewpoint, they are truly personal journals, what blogging started out being. These amateur blogs are a loosely
connected grouping of subjects that the writer writes about, and this is both the charm and distraction of an amateur
blog. They are generally personal, and sometimes intense, with human drama.

People blog because they want to have a voice that is heard in public or they want to work out an approach to solve a
problem29 and believe that others might have a better answer than the blogger can find. Some people blog because they
believe in something passionately or they want to share something about what they are doing, where they are going, or
working on a collective shared experience30. Some blogs become involved stories like a novel31 showing creative writing
skills, or demonstrating that the authors have the ability to work on large team projects. Some bloggers like to blog
about management principles, organizations and how they work (or don’t' work), or other things that interest us as
people, or situations that we encounter. Bloggers will talk about friends, family, work, stars, sports, or the work they are
doing like the many corporate blogs that are out there 32. Some people blog for other reasons, like money or fame and
are often disappointed when the promised riches do not appear overnight33. Some readers want to experience the life
of a personal blogger, sharing in the bloggers ambition, the bloggers angst, and then watching the blogger find their true

28 http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/06/28/friendfeeed-syphilis-and-the-perfection-of-online-mobs/
29
http://www.ics.uci.edu/~jpd/classes/ics234cw04/nardi.pdf
30
http://www.latenightwithjimmyfallon.com/blogs/2009/04/have-a-shared-experience-with-tonights-show/
31
http://newwritinginternational.com/blog-novels-the-definitive-list/
32
http://www.intuitive.com/blog/why_do_people_blog_how_many_bloggers_are_there.html covers some of the reasons that people
blog about their collective experiences, the highs, and lows in life, corporate experience, news, and the views that we have on many
subjects or issues that surround us.
33
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/07/how-to-steer-clear-of-money-scams.html
voice34. Readers are highly likely to become followers when they think or believe that they helped your career, or that
they helped “make you who you are”. The down side of people like that is sometimes they can act irrationally, and more
than one blogger has had death threats made to them. When you blog over time you realize that you do have a voice
and that in some ways that voice matters amongst a group of people, many you do not know personally.

A blogger also learns that there are others out there who are just like you: they love the same sports team, they love the
same music, movies, are working on their degree, or whatever it is that the blogger is writing about. We have yet to truly
ask the blogosphere why they blog as a true academically sound research project. Yet Technorati has an annual “State of
the Blogosphere35” report that does explore many of the reasons why people blog. The findings from the Technorati
report indicates that we blog for very diverse reasons, some for personal reasons, some for corporate reasons, and
some to simply speak their minds and share the interesting things in their lives. What bloggers share with others and
amongst themselves becomes the collective voice of the blogosphere36. Bloggers blog about what is important to them
now, this day, or this hour, which provides a time line of human interest that, will be and is currently invaluable to digital
archeologists. This minute by minute running commentary on what is important now, at a particular moment in time is
the blogosphere's power and the blogosphere's downfall when it comes to the concept of the signal to noise ratio. It is
impossible to separate the good valuable information from the bad information without human interpretation as to the
value of the information that is within the blogosphere.

Many of the automated systems that we use to digest and collate blog based information cannot at this time tell the
good information from the bad information. Some blogs deliberately try to inject what might be false information, or
very biased information into the system37 and end up having to apologize for it later. There are many good examples of
blogs doing bad things; like being repositories for malware, adware, or data that we might find objection to. There are
some blogs through that deliberately try to be a "bad boy" blog. A "Bad Boy" blog is a blogger who deliberately discusses
the negative aspects of what people are doing and some blogs are proud of their bad boy status and excel at being
known bad boy style blogs. Valleywag (part of the Gawker Media Network) is just one of the many "bad boy" blogs out
there on the Internet. Another excellent writer, Paul Carr38 is also one of the more interesting Internet bad boys out
there39, because he knows it, he acknowledges it, and it is his style. Paul Carr’s readers expect it, for him to suddenly
change to some other style would tell his readers that something was seriously wrong. These types of blogs and writers
have caused their own share of controversy on the Internet. Valleywag over its existence has shown that there is a deep
interest in the rumor mill aspects of Silicon Valley. If anything, Valleywag is still a controversial blog because it treats
everyone it writes about in the same snarky over the top manner filled with innuendos and facts. This has been a
successful business model for Valleywag for the most of its existence online40. Valleywag, Paul Carr and others live in a
world of controversy of their own making, or their own interactions with the people around them, which makes great

34
http://sandhill.typepad.com/sandhill_trek/2004/11/why_do_we_blog.html covers some of the reasons why people blog, guilt,
voyeurism, as well as a host of other reasons for a person to blog who is looking for their own voice.

35 http://technorati.com/blogging/state-of-the-blogosphere/
36
http://labnol.blogspot.com/2007/01/why-do-people-blog-pleasure-money-and.html
37
http://bench.nationalreview.com/post/?q=MjljOTg3NDY4ZWUzZWFkODliMzU4M2M3NGM5YTQ2N2Q=
38
http://www.paulcarr.com/
39
http://www.guardian.co.uk/profile/paul-carr
40
http://valleywag.com/ is the home of a it tech gossip rag that sometimes gets things right, and sometimes gets things wrong, and
sometimes it does cross the hypothetical line of blogging behavior at times, and has gotten into trouble with the rest of the blogosphere
at times.
entertainment much like reality TV makes great entertainment. Their own unique way of spinning information that
appeals to some readers. Some readers do not like what Valleywag does41, and that is ok. The controversy that they
create is the way they draw in readers, and readers will go there, click on pages, maybe click on ads, and the company
makes money.

Over the last ten years though, blogging has been more about the interconnection between people 42 rather than the
exhibition of the darker nature of our society. This is something to note in a world where we live with bad news on every
communications channel we have, the blogosphere in general has tended to be positive. This is a sharp contrast to the
popular media we have on radio and on television. We are creating communities of people who through shared belief
systems are creating a positive place to visit. Blogging can tie us together in a community, and it is those community
values that we discuss on our blogs that are part of the core reasons that we blog. This does not imply that there are not
negative blogs, or that we are one big content community, what this does imply though that in general blogging allows
us to build communities based on what we think is right and wrong. We do not unnecessarily have to deal with
information that we do not want to deal with, for some this is good, for others this is a very bad thing to be happening.
These communities of interest often close the doors to new or controversial voices, new ways of thinking, or confine us
with old outdated or misguided thinking as long as we participate in those communities.

Is Blogging All About Ambition?

While the definition of a blog is something that someone does to have a voice, the side effect of having a popular blog is
Internet fame and money via advertising or sponsorships. Another benefit of blogging is that you can become an expert
in a subject, start speaking in public, and be invited to social events. Companies will want to talk to you, give you new
products to test out and blog about, or offer you special deals or discounts on their products. One thing that is
noticeable in a professionally-run blog like ITToolbox, Techcrunch, or Read Write Web is that they have all adopted some
form of a business model that is reliant upon sponsorships or advertising. The advertising and sponsorship business
model that they have adopted helps fuel their growth and some independence for the writers at those blogs. Although
sponsorships are not always a good thing in that there have been questions of biased reviews43 because bloggers got
free product44, overall this system has worked well for the last seven years. Bloggers work very hard to become popular,
and many bloggers start off with the ambition to be the best in a category that they can be: top in their category, top in
breaking news, or the top social network for a type of data or information. Blog networks often hire good writers or
have good writers initially "guest blog" on their site. New bloggers who do not have a name often find themselves
blogging on a free platform and learning how to generate an audience. Many new bloggers never graduate past free
platforms and into their own branded web sites. Blog networks differ greatly from single author blogs. Blog networks
have many writers and does everything they can to either break the news first, or develop a community of professionals
around a subject topic. Single author blogs on the other hand often comment on breaking news, or are tightly focused
on an issue that they have firsthand knowledge of. For some of the most read bloggers, they come from a traditional
journalism or media past; giving them an advantage in the blogging business as they already know how to write for a
mass audience. They already know what they have to do to be the best; they have quality control on the articles, and
have learned to develop a community around the blog itself. Professional blogs or professional team blogs all rely on

41
http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/04/11/hacker-news-considers-banning-valleywag/
42
http://technorati.com/blogging/state-of-the-blogosphere/the-what-and-why-of-blogging/
43
http://community.nytimes.com/comments/www.nytimes.com/2009/07/13/technology/internet/13blog.html
44
http://business.theatlantic.com/2009/07/blogging_honestly.php
quality of the written product, an understanding of what people are looking for within a particular information niche.
The blog networks have also pioneered funding-revenue models that support the growth of professional blogs so that
they can pay for the best writing talent that they can afford.

Professional bloggers and blog networks have developed a "brand" around their name or direct brand name. When you
talk about Robert Scoble, you are not just reading his blog; you also get to participate in his community and spare
opinion with his readers. The reader of a blog has an opportunity to virtually meet the person behind the blog. The
blogger writes from a personal viewpoint that is stylistically rooted in journalism and often contains a lot of personal
opinion. New companies or new technology products often seek that kind of blogger because the blogger as a Brand and
as a Person has the ability to drive sales amongst the readers of that blog. Bloggers also helps drive opinions about what
is adopted in the community for that blog or what is "hot now" within the realm of technical bloggers. Some of the more
popular bloggers are also deeply involved in the blogging community and takes on issues that concern all bloggers, like
the blogging code of conduct45 and when bloggers are behaving badly46. When you read Robert Scobles blog, you think
you see the person behind the blog; you get an opinion and one that is often balanced and heavily cross-linked to other
bloggers.

When you look at the technical blog network Techcrunch, you see the brand from a blog network that is all about being
the first to break news on a subject. Techcrunch does not run a story second 47; they focus on bringing original new
information for its readers, regardless of the source of that information48. The site, and the owner Mike Arrington, are
considered power-brokers49 in the world of technical blogging. Other blog networks like the "Huffington Post" is the
equivalent power broker in political blogging, with a future that has great ambition and plans for what will happen
next50. Blog networks must have the ambition to continue existing within the niches that they have made for
themselves, if they do not have the ambition to be the best or the most controversial, they will fail.

New bloggers find that it is important to focus on the ambition and ideals that they started off with. It does not matter if
the ambition was to be the best they could be in a category and then work very hard to get to the top. Many bloggers
fall by the wayside because they realize that blogging is real work. It is not easy to come up with three to ten brand new
fresh articles a day. Bloggers get discouraged when expected advertising revenues do not show up, when the
community does not respond to the things that the blogger is writing about, bloggers have a difficult time justifying the
time to write and continue blogging. This is one of the reasons that there are so many failed blogging projects that litter

45
http://scobleizer.com/2007/04/08/code-of-conduct-or-not/ where Robert Scoble presented his views on the issues surrounding Kathy
Sierra, Bill O‟Reilly, and the eventual process that took on the ideas of protected speech, anonymous comments, and how those can
add or detract from conversations. This event was also a catalyst in what kind of behaviors would be and would not be tolerated from
professional bloggers, and the web sites they associate themselves with and how they conduct themselves. The political fallout for
professional bloggers that found themselves on the wrong side of the debate suffered from public scrutiny into their actions
surrounding the event.
46
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kathy_Sierra. Kathy Sierra was at the center of a blog storm over death threats from various sites on
the internet. While Kathy Sierra has not started publicly writing on her blog to date, this was a catalyst for a blogger code of ethics that
was floated and heavily debated within the blogosphere. While no finalized product for a Blogger Code of Ethics, and joining was
voluntary, the code helped set a baseline set of behaviors that many subscribe to in general, if not by the letter of the document. The
event helped set important cultural boundaries on blogger behavior for those that paid attention to the issue.
47
http://kevinmerritt.socrata.com/2009/02/10-steps-to-land-a-guest-post-on-techcrunch/
48
http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/07/14/in-our-inbox-hundreds-of-confidential-twitter-documents/
49
http://online.wsj.com/public/article/SB116244521605611149-xEEW_Dh1mMLLs0dtYRdw492SQYE_20061109.html
50
http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/03/31/technology/huffington.php covers the beginning and eventual transformation of the
Huffington post web site as it moves forward into a post election and what happens next on the internet.
the Internet, where ambition and ability to execute did not happen 51. One of the many ideas that make top bloggers—
those that rise to the top of the blogging groups— are that they keep on thinking of what they are going to do next. They
rise to the desire of their ambition and simply do not stop until they get there. They will do what they need to do to
make it to the top of a highly competitive industry, and at times this means doing things that are going to be condemned
by other bloggers or the community as well52.

A personal blog is something that people do which is also quite ambitious as the person who is blogging has only
themselves for supporting the web site. Many of these personal blogs will fail, or carry on with limited updates and little
care as to the quality of the writing of the entries. Reviewing personal blogs they are mainly used to work out difficulties
in personal situations or to keep track of things that are going on in someone's life. Some of these personal blogs are
also used to keep track of things that interest the writer and used as an Internet book marking system. Usually, these
blogs are on free blog hosting sites such as Live Journal, Blogger, Facebook, MySpace, WordPress, and a host of other
blogging platforms that people can use to start up a blog. The common trend for these kinds of blogs though is that the
writer will, write furiously for a week, a month or more, only to abandon the blog much later on. Some sites like Live
Journal cater to a broad range of writers and have a large group of authors on their site which is known for its personal
home town feel. What is worthy of note though is that few professional writers will blog, and that author blogs are
updated on an infrequent basis. Some writers like John Scalizi are prolific bloggers and Scalzi's "Whatever" blog is a
perfect example of using a blog to help drive community and interest in his writing. The "Whatever Blog" is a personal
blog where he talks about the things that are important to him, without advertising and without an obvious money
motive. You can catch nuances into his life, which are addressed with a large amount of humor53. The "Whatever" blog
has no ambition to be the next popular personal blog or blog network, and this is evidenced by its similar conversational
manner and texture over the existence of the blog. This is John Scalzi's way to connect with fans, and the blog reflects
that viewpoint. Fans love John Scalzi's blog as much as Robert Scoble’s fans love Robert's blog. Different audiences, but
same idea: connecting with friends, family, and fans from two different blogging approaches.

For the digital archeologist, personal blogs provide a current viewpoint into more personal thoughts of people as they go
through their lives. The use of personal blogs is ambitious because people are exposing their personal thoughts and
feelings in a public forum. There is no difference between posting an entry in a blog and standing on a street corner
wearing a sign around your neck. While the professional blogs based on industry, are important and ambitious for using
this medium for making money. What is helpful to the digital archeologist though that is that these types of blogs are
helpful to keep track of what identifiable subsets of society thought were important at the time they were posted.
Personal blogs are ambitious through exposure to the public much like reading personal diaries personal blogs are rarely
linked unless there are discussions about a common cause, like cancer. A professional blog starts with the idea of
collecting cross-links and back-links to their stories which is ambitious because professional writers are seeking approval
of their peers or people who are more internet famous than they are. Depending on the blog, the reason why it was
started—the goals, dream, and execution—why someone starts a blog is all about ambition.

51
http://www.problogger.net/archives/2006/06/07/how-to-kill-your-blog-successfully/ is a very interesting viewpoint into the birth life
and death of a blog. Many people do not realize the amount of work that it will take to become a top pro blogger, thinking that with
Adsense this is near a get rich quick scheme to blog and make money.
52
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/pda/2009/jul/15/twitter-hacked-techcrunch-defends
53
http://scalzi.com/whatever/?p=1355 potty humor that we all at some point deal with, something like this would never show up on a
purely professional web site like the Huffington Post, or Techcrunch as is, if it did, there would be much more narrative about it, why
it was important, and how it either affirmed or disproved the view point that people should/should not narrate while on the toilet.
Is Blogging all about relationships?

Relationships matter in the blogging world, and those relationships are based on who links to the blog and how the blog
links back to them. While a small blog linking to a large blog does little to help the large blog in the longer run (as most
blogs have their comments/track back section with "no follow" on the links for search engines), there are benefits for
linking to systems that allow those linking relationships to be built. A personal blogger might not have a relationship
with Techcrunch or know Michael Arrington personally, but that does not mean that the personal cannot write their
own blog article about something that appears on Techcrunch; it also does not mean you cannot join in the
conversations on Techcrunch either. This link sharing is known as "link love" or bas a "track back" 54 to any responses to a
blog entry that is hosted on a blogging system that supports track backs. . Readers on Techcrunch who noticed that you
made a blog entry on the topic might be interested in what you are writing about and come visit your blog via the "track
back". The track back link from Techcrunch to your blog forms the basis of the blogging community. Few blogs come up
with original content or breaking news. Many bloggers will simply comment on a story and link back to the original story
so that people can find the source of the idea. There are many benefits to this system for creating community around a
subject, so much so that it has its own name called "meme blogging". Sites like "Techmeme" rely on "meme blogging" to
draw traffic and source what popular blogs are saying on a subject. This type of blogging relies on the entire community
working together to flesh out an idea (meme) to bring a form of community consensus over an idea. The dependency of
external sites like Techmeme55 on this linking economy allows them to follow memes on technology, sports, politics, and
all the interlinking blogs that point to the original source that Techmeme noticed.

As a new blogger, or even an old pro, without the right connections into a community, it is highly unlikely that the
unconnected blogger will ever get a breaking story first. There is a deep relationship between the community of readers
and the writers that they visit. Blogging has many connections into community as a support system and as an ecosystem
of belief in what is being written about. Few bloggers survive long without the support of the community that they
interact with. While some blogs have links that say, "Report dirt here," this is not the type of community that truly
supports a blog. The "report here" button or form is just one way of getting information, but it is the community of
readers that truly propels a blog further into popularity. Many bloggers will be working on a meme established by a
larger blogging system, adding to the community focus on that subject. Some bloggers are fortunate to have original
information via the connections that the blogger has to help start the conversation and develop a relationship with their
readers. This goes for all types of blogs like sports, politics, technology, celebrity gossip, or other kinds of blogs.
Breaking information is generally only given to people with many connections and many relationships in the industry
they cover. The exception to this is if your best friend owns a company; then it is possible that you will get first run
information about some new product. The bad part of this is that it would not do your friend any good; what your friend
wants to do is break the news first to a leading blog like Techcrunch—which they should do if they want to get the
"boost" that Techcrunch can provide. Where your connections come into play here is that just because your friend broke
the news to Techcrunch, it does not mean that you cannot sit down with your friend later and do an in-depth interview
over the technology.

54
A track-back or link-back is an automated system that allows a blog author to know who is linking to them. Moveable Type and
Word Press will log these track backs automatically when they are "pinged" by a system that does notifications. Most blogs will
automatically notify all linking blogs, as this is considered polite. For more about your own blog platform, contact the developers of
that blog platform, or talk to a developer to find out more. A quick and simple way to find out who has linked to you is the Google
search "Link: name of blog.com" where name of blog is your URL.
55
http://techmeme.com
It is those connections, and understanding how a blogger can relay information into a community that companies will
notice. A top blogger and a company can benefit each other when there is a good relationship between the blogger, the
company and the community. This is one of the most important connections that a blogger can make. A blogger may
never be the first to break a story, but Public Relations (PR) people are interested in what the blogger is doing once you
have hit a certain level of readership56. There are even rules on how PR people can pitch to a blogger57 that they want to
get attention from. There is a lot of controversy around the relationships between bloggers and companies, that has
been misused as companies have tried to get deep access to a community based on the relationship with a blogger.
Some bloggers have actively banned PR firms58 from making additional pitches for products or services to them based on
some of this controversial behavior. There is also the continual fear that if a blogger writes a negative blog entry that the
blogger will lose the ability to be the first to break a story. With all these concerns, the relationship between the
community, the blogger, and companies who are pitching products or services is a basis for the relationships that
bloggers build as their Internet fame increases. This kind of relationship is important depending on what the bloggers
ambition looks like.

It is those key relationships a blogger will develop that will start helping the blogger get good information for a story. As
the blogger gains more readers and more links from other blogs, the bloggers ability to form relationships with
communities of interest will grow. Even a small blogger, sometimes the most obscure relationships can come up with
something good that they can break first. There are groups and information sources that small bloggers can follow, but
small bloggers have to be careful about how they use that information. More than one blogger has been involved in
controversy for blogging about something on a mailing list or group forum when someone thought that the discussion
was in private. Moreover, if the blogger is going to quote someone, the blogger should always make sure that they link
back to the source, or make sure that it is ok to use if it seems like the information could be considered private. This is a
general rule that supports relationship building; however some blogs do not do this and will publish nearly anything like
Valleywag and Techcrunch as long as it makes business sense for them to do so. Then there are copyright issues that
also need to be addressed when using someone else's work in a blog entry. Some traditional news sources like the
Associated Press insist that people pay for the use of words from their articles, even if it is just five words 59. This book
covers some of the copyright issues that you will see from takedowns to cease and desist; however, when in doubt, it is
always best to contact a lawyer to advise you on whether something is valid or not. By no means is this an exhaustive
discussion of the subject, as the entire issue of working with copyrighted material in the digital word is breaking old
business models. Those that hold onto those old business models are having a very hard time competing in today's
digital marketplace60.

56
http://bloombergmarketing.blogs.com/bloomberg_marketing/2008/08/pulse-of-the-in.html covers some of the social aspects of
blogging, and how a blogger can help define what is "hot or not" depending on the popularity of the blogger. Even small bloggers can
get information from PR firms, and sometimes get beta accounts to some of the new latest and greatest technology. It is only the "A
list" bloggers that get the cool gadgets and toys, or do not have to ask for a beta account, that does not mean you cannot get there; it
means that it will take work to get there.
57
http://www.searchengineguide.com/mack-collier/so-how-do-you-pitch-a-blogger.php these rules are far from an industry standard,
and some PR folks ignore them entirely.
58
http://www.blogworldexpo.com/blog/2008/05/11/should-bloggers-blacklist-pr-firms/ is part of the ongoing discussion around
banning PR firms that simply throw press releases into the mail and refuse or will not engage with the blogger trying to get a deeper
story.
59
http://boingboing.net/2008/06/17/associated-press-exp.html
60
http://www.bubblegeneration.com/?a=a&resource=proprights3
If a blogger is linking to something on the internet that someone thinks is private or quoting someone on a board, then
the blogger should seek permission or skip the quote and link to the source. While this advice works in general, this is
something that the blogger will need to check with competent legal advice. You will notice throughout this book that
there are no direct quotes. It is all linked as footnotes, mostly because there is a difference in how books, copyright, fair
use, and other copyright issues are being decided in the courts. This book was intended to use information from the
public record only, and not from personal interaction with the people being written about because of concerns during
some of the early initial interviews. Books are looked at differently than blogs, and blogs do have a "faster and looser"
view point because there is a direct benefit blog to blog if the blogger links to someone else on the internet. Even still,
people have gotten into trouble for linking to a web site61. One of the popular ways of reaching community is to collate a
series of blog entries and turn them into a book 62. This is an effort to reach a new audience and increase readership
community using traditional media, and building real world fame independent of internet fame.

What does matter is how a blogger handles the relationship they have with people, readers, followers, and supporters.
There are privacy expectations, and cross-linking to other blogs to think about that strengthens community. The more a
blogger builds out their community, develops an environment of trust (or in the case of some blogs working hard to
increase their "bad boy" image) and supports the community members the more likely the blog will become popular.
That is going to help set anyone apart as a blogger when they (like John Scalizi) actively supports their community and
help foster better relationships in the writers community because the blogger is believed to be trusted. When we
reviewed some of the bigger blogging systems that have failed, trust was one of the key issues with a blog network
failing on a massive scale. The more trusted the blogger is the better chance that the blogger will eventually get a big
story and be able to run with it. There is a lot to know about how bloggers should approach reputation management63
and how a bloggers reputation influences relationships within the blogosphere. These relationships can be with other
bloggers, companies, and people to get a story. Without relationships, it is very hard to get the story or find an audience.
The good part is that when a blogger is just starting out it is easy to approach people and ask them for an interview.
Most startups and other smaller companies will be willing to work with small bloggers, once the major sites have
covered the initial launch of their product.

Is Blogging all about Longevity?

Longevity with a blog is an important consideration if the blogger is using this as a way to gain an income. While there
are some breaking news blogs that are new and have support from major other media sources like CNN, then longevity
is not necessarily the issue. Blogging can be very competitive and many people simply do not have the connections, or
the time to consistently update a blog three or four times a day every day for the lifetime of the blog. There are things a
blogger can do to improve the blogs longevity, but in many ways, longevity is tied directly to ambition, and the goals of
the blogs creation. There are ways of addressing longevity without having to have connections deep into a particular
community, or being a breaking news blog. Many bloggers want to be the "first to break news," fewer bloggers go for
the in-depth interview or research into the object. For a breaking news blog they will write a quick 1,000- to 1,500-word
essay on how cool something is, and forget about it. Many of the big professional blogs carry a lot of weight in the
community. The longevity of these big blog networks and the breaking news they do provides a base to keep money

61
http://www.jsonline.com/story/index.aspx?id=786584
62
http://lifehacker.com/157922/turn-your-blog-into-a-book
63
http://internetducttape.com/2007/04/10/an-introduction-to-reputation-management/ while reputation management is not new, the
idea of "you being the brand" when it comes to blogging is very important. In this case, you are only as good as your word, if you
abuse that, and then fewer people will want to have anything to do with you.
flowing in to continue operations. More than one blogging group has been surprised and their web sites crushed 64 under
the many comments about a product on the blogosphere. Many companies (as well as bloggers) have failed to capitalize
on this, and turned that notice into a sustained improvement in readership or use. It is the role of longevity in blogging
that supports the continued interest in a topic or product 65. Bloggers are dependent upon longevity, but longevity is also
something that happens over time, the more the blogger continually writes, the more they develop community, the
more people notice the blog, the comments and track backs that the blogger will get. There are many examples of this
not just for bloggers, but for companies as well.

For example, when Sprout Widget Maker came out, many blog sites covered the news66, and there was a general rush to
the door to get information out onto the internet about the tool. One web site then took it a step further and made a
video67 of how simple it was for a project manager to make a widget using Sprout. Both paid off heavily for Sprout, and
for all the bloggers out there, who covered the news.

Longevity means that the blogger has to come up with ideas that dig deeper into the story that is being told on the
Internet. Or they have to find a steady source of information that can be used to generate ideas for a new blog entry.
Some bloggers simply quote someone else's work and may or may not link back to the original article. Being able to
continue on with the story or finding new information and tying it back to previously written works can help the blogger
follow the ebb and flow of a story line. Earlier the example of the in-depth interview was used to show how to follow or
develop a story line that has multiple entries that can be interlinked. The problem with longevity though is that many
times the typical blog entry is a quick two hundred word blurb about something that is happening, and then forgetting
about that particular issue. There are many blog entries are just a few hundred words, and for some that works because
they those bloggers able to write four to ten times a day. Techdirt68 has made it a habit and a style to cram as much
meaning into as few words as possible. Slashdot69 is another example of the quick blurb of about two hundred words or
less that explain the story, followed by a link to the original source of the entry. In relationship to longevity there are
benefits to being linked by Slashdot called the "Slashdot effect 70." While Slashdot does a quick blurb style, they have
done this for over a decade, and have also made this their style. Longevity does not mean that the blogger cannot do

64
http://blog.seattlepi.nwsource.com/microsoft/archives/146782.asp is the report that a new product from Microsoft called photosynth
was so heavily blogged about that many people wanted to try it. To the point where the users were able to crush the system, and bring
it to a screeching halt, causing an outage.
65
http://www.cuil.com/ CUIL a search engine had a large number of bloggers covering their search engine, however, as interest
waned, CUIL has been unable to keep up the momentum that they had garnered from multiple blogs large and small. From the initial
boost of interest they got from bloggers, and the subsequent boost in traffic in its first initial weeks, CUIL has not been able to recreate
that initial momentum nor were they able to effectively capitalize on it.
66
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&safe=off&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla%3Aen-
US%3Aofficial&hs=ev8&q=sprout+widget+maker&btnG=Search this simple Google search shows just how many people covered the
release of the new product.
67
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YHgR7AwfNNA this is a video from YouTube showing how easy it was to make a widget using
Sprout.
68
http://www.techdirt.com/ is another blog site that covers issues that are populist and technical in general.
69
http://slashdot.org is a web 1.0 made the successful transition to Web 2.0 in a blogging format, with very short entries on popular
technical space geek kind of subjects, while not the first blog ever; they have been very successful with as few words as
possible.
70
http://www.hanselman.com/blog/SlashdotTrafficSiteStatisticsAndDasBlogPerformance.aspx provides an interesting graph and view
into what can happen with a web site when dealing with the "Slashdot effect." Many sites will simply crumble under the load, as many
shared hosting systems are just not geared towards having to deliver that kind of traffic to users.
quick two hundred to four hundred word entries for their blog, or that there has to be a single focus on rich deep 1000
word blog entries. What it does mean is that however the blogger approaches longevity, the only real way to address
this is by consistently blogging as much as possible. It does not matter how much the blogger writes as much as it
matters who supports the bloggers story on the internet. It does not matter if the blogger is first as long as the blogger
has a well-written story about the issue. That is one of the keys to longevity, and something that is common amongst
many of the longer lasting blogs; the bloggers keep on writing in their own particular style, and make a habit of blogging
regularly and frequently.

There are a number of excellent blogging tactics that you can use to help a blogger continue to blog and gain audience
share. One of the ideas is to get to a story early on, or do an In-depth story on something that has already broken.
Another idea is to use a live data stream like Twitter71 and follow the public time line to either live blog something going
on or get new ideas that can be used in a blog entry. Another idea is to use Google Trends to discover what is popular
right now to help drive traffic. The problem with using Google Trends though is that many spam blogs have caught onto
this trick, and often do not provide the information that someone is looking for. This tactic on the part of spam blogs will
not increase their longevity, and if a blogger uses this, they should be writing something substantial on the issue to keep
readers coming back. However, stepping too far outside a blog's niche can be problematic for the blogger looking to
develop a standard audience and a reliable audience. If one day the blogger is talking about technology, the next about a
natural disaster, and the next about education, it can be difficult to keep the same audience. Using these tools can help
you scoop a story, but always make sure that the data fits into the blogs niche. This is the only way to use these kinds of
techniques to help add value to a blog and increase the blogs longevity.

The keys to longevity are to write often, write as well as possible, and to keep the blog updated. While a small blogger
might not get credit for scooping a story, there are ways of developing a deeper relationship with a story or being part of
the story on a deeper level to build audience share72. Although sometimes if you are loud enough with the scoop, or the
scoop is important enough, other bloggers will give you credit for being the first on the story 73. There are a number of
approaches, but generally, when starting off, continually writing great content even if it is in-depth interviews or adding
to the signal on the Internet with stories are the best ways to increase longevity with a blog.

Is blogging all about making money?

71
http://scobleizer.com/2007/04/12/mexico-city-earthquake-reported-on-twitter-first/ twitter is fast becoming a system for spreading
data internationally very quickly, and is much quicker than just about any other form of media out there to get a story. Again, though
you have to make sure that the scoop fits the niche you are working within, otherwise, your audience will never know what your blog
is about nor will they care. A fractured purpose blog is generally hard to read, hard to follow, and hard to make sure that you can
develop a steady audience.
72
http://nikonrumors.com/2008/06/11/we-were-one-of-the-first-to-
report-on-the-nikon-d10-rumor.aspx even through Nikon rumors was first, they were not credited with being first on the scoop
because they are not a widely known blog (at the time) in their niche. Being first sometimes does not pay off with a bigger audience,
people still have to discover your blog, and find a reason to read it or be there. They also have to learn to trust what you are saying on
your blog as being credible and trustworthy.
73
http://paulconley.blogspot.com/2008/08/b2b-blogger-scoops-world-on-biden-pick.html covers the blogger who scooped the
nomination of Joe Biden as Obama‟s vice presidential pick. While bloggers can often get a great scoop, it takes other bloggers to
notice you were first, and then talk about you being first on their blog. The social aspects of blogging cannot be underscored; you need
friends in blogging as much if not more than you need the best story on the block.
Making money on a blog is one of the most contentious issues on the Internet, and it is unlikely that most bloggers will
make a living from blogging. Making money blogging is very hard work,74 and while there are people who will attempt
to show you the way to making money blogging, this still boils down to hard work. Making money blogging also requires
that you start building on your social network, build on your longevity and community, as well as writing things that
people will want to read about. Bloggers must be using systems like Friend Feed, Facebook, Twitter, Stumbled Upon,
Digg, Mixx, and a host of other supporting systems to help build buzz about what you are writing about. This adds to the
amount of work that you will have to do to be noticed above the general din or noise of the blogosphere. Anyone who
promises that you will make millions blogging, or have the life style that you deserve by blogging are not telling you the
truth75.

When people realize just how much hard work blogging can be they often get disillusioned76 with the process. They
might abandon the blog and go do something else, but some bloggers will stick with it because blogging is not about
money. There are some "need to know" issues with affiliate or networking advertising that all bloggers need to know
about before they start throwing ads all over their web site. The problems with network advertising like Google Ads,
Adsense, or Adbrite are the minimal payouts, in comparison to having site sponsorships that have a direct relationship
to the income that can be generated 77. The unspoken truth of advertising is that the blog or blog network needs to have
hundreds of thousands of page views per day just to make money that is useful to funding operations of the blog or blog
network. Sponsorships are the most direct and useful ways of making money, but many people will tell a blogger about
affiliate networks, advertising, and a host of other ways of making money. Depending on what the blogger wants their
blog to look like, or the image they want to convey, the more professional blogs or blog networks will seek out
sponsorships. Smaller blogs and blogs that look like one huge ad will use advertising networks and affiliate marketing.
Advertising networks literally pay pennies per click on average, and click through rates are traditionally around .003%, or
less than one-third of one percent. This is something to know about and understand smaller blogs are fortunate if they
get a few hundred visitors a day. With a small click through rate, the money for a smaller blog is barely enough to pay
hosting costs for a year.

An advertising network like FM (Federated Media) is not interested in smaller blogs or other blogs until they get to
thousands of page views a day. FM and other larger advertising networks do handle many of the details for bigger blogs,
with the typical one-month ad going for about five thousand dollars on the front page of a very popular blog. These are
premium rates that a small blogger using free hosting on blogger.com will not get. For the smaller person, or smaller
blog, the realistic way to make money right from the start is to use the underperforming advertising networks that are
available. One thing to know about ad networks is that the blogger can be dropped 78 from an advertising network for

74
http://www.problogger.net/archives/2005/08/05/blog-case-study-is-it-time-to-quit/ is an excellent case study of one bloggers public
quitting because they could make money doing something other than blogging
75
http://www.winextra.com/2008/10/04/so-you-want-to-be-a-rich-and-famous-blogger-eh/
76
http://jackkonblog.blogspot.com/2005/08/six-month-blogging-anniversary.html is an excellent follow up on the 27 reasons that
someone quit blogging, risk/reward was definitely part of the decision making process in quitting blogging.
77
http://techblog.mikebabcock.ca/2008/03/monetizing-your-blog.html even though the Adsense network is one way of making
money, it has its drawbacks and limitations, as well many people have started tuning out advertising on web sites, they simply ignore
it now like it never existed at all.
78
https://www.google.com/adsense/support/bin/answer.py?answer=48182&sourceid=aso&subid=ww-ww-et-
asui&medium=link&gsessionid=HLtoVkyfOQc Google‟s Adsense terms of service specifically states that you will not click on your
own ads on your own site. While systems like click monkeys exist to generate advertising revenue, they usually cost more than can be
reasonably obtained. There is a lot of information on "click fraud" and how the industry is combating it. It is worth investigating if you
are using the advertising networks, and want to know more about what is click fraud and how it works.
clicking on those ads yourself. Google is famous for dumping sites from their network for doing something that Google
did not like, clicking on the blogs own ads, pornography, or any number of other reasons why an advertising network will
drop a web site. Every time a person sees a "Public Service Ad" via the Google advertising network it was because the
Google Ad Network could not work out what the blog entry was about or the article crossed a line and Google did not
serve a viable ad to the web site. The annoying thing about the advertising networks is when the ads are out of context
with what the blogger is talking about on their site. Google Adsense and other networks do offer help 79 on this issue, yet
sometimes for an ad network it is just not going to be possible to have relevant ads sent to the bloggers site80.

Another way of making money off your blog is to trade or sell links, or write what are called "pay per post" style articles.
Link trading is heavily penalized by Google and might mean that your blog is dropped from the Google index. If your blog
is not in the Google index, when people search for content they will not see your content on that search engine. Pay per
Post is another style of blogging, and companies like PayPerPost, Izea, and Social Spark (which are all owned by one
company) often pay about five dollars per blog entry. There is controversy here in how these systems have been used,
and some bloggers claim that there is also a Google penalty for using these systems. Pay per Post systems though do not
seem to carry the same kind of penalties as link trading or link selling. The blogger will have to work out what system
they want to use to monetize their blog, as well as understanding how these complex systems make a blog look. Many
bloggers have moved away from direct advertising networks and into sponsorships as soon as they are able to. For most
bloggers though, the advertising networks, affiliate networks, and link trading are going to be the key ways of
monetizing a blog. Starting off as a small blogger few of these will pay off while the blogger is building their audience
and page views.

While blogs that generate thousands or millions of page views per day are often profitable, they had to start
somewhere, and usually that was as a very small blogger. Some blogs are currently big enough for a company to notice
them and buy them out81, but they still started small. The realistic truth in blogging is that you must blog often, you must
write compelling content or add to the debate. If you talk about the cute things that your pet fluffy does, it is not
interesting to a large group of visitors. If you talk about raising and working with ferrets, then you might get ferret
owners to read your blog. If you talk about politics during a presidential election, you will get an audience, but the
audience will be filled with people who think like you or are angry about what you are saying. You are still going to be
starting with a small core group of people who will read your blog. That is part of the disillusionment with blogging and
why making money can be difficult. Blogging is a job, not a get rich quick scheme. If you build your blog based on selling
advertising space alone, readers will more likely ignore you than come along and read what you are writing. Even being
picked up by some of the bigger meme systems like Techmeme or Technorati does not mean you will hit a major
popularity streak and that there will be a sudden rush of people to come read the blog.

The social media systems like Techmeme and Technorati also have their own unique issues that go along with them as
well. There is a lot of effort that a blogger will have to invest in the social networking systems that they choose to use.
While you will get traffic from social systems, new bloggers have a tendency to overuse them and some get banned from
those systems. Overuse of Digg, Stumbled Upon and Buzz for a single web site will get that web site banned if it is just
one person who is continually bumping or socializing the web site. While other systems like FriendFeed and Social
Median rely on the steady influx of information, and do not penalize the blogger for using them. There is a complex
hand off between the different types of social systems that bloggers need to be aware of to help the blogger get traffic
from those systems. These systems can help drive the traffic that a blogger needs to make money from their web site.

79
https://www.google.com/adsense/support/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=43998
80
http://techwag.com/index.php/2008/08/31/google-ads-way-off-in-key-word-relevance/
81
http://gigaom.com/2008/07/22/gigaom-acquires-jkontherun/
One of the better benefits to blogging and trying to monetize a blog is that if the blogging is good enough and consistent
enough, the blogger might be recruited into one of the group blogging systems. Moving from blogger.com or live journal
to a professional blog can be a difficult transition, but the same rules apply. If you are blogging on a professional team
blog and you blog only once per week, you will never develop a big audience and it will be difficult to monetize the
traffic. If the blogger blogs once or twice a day, there is more opportunity to get a message out into the public and build
an audience. The nice thing about group team blogs is that the blogger will often be paid by post or by page views82,
which is an incentive for you to blog more. The more entries, the more content, the more page views, the more money
the blogger has the potential to make, as long as the blogger is talking on a subject that people will be interested in
reading about.

Is blogging all about paying attention to things that are going on in the world?

Some bloggers are better at getting the "meme83 of the day;" while other bloggers need more time to digest the
information that they are reading. Either way, with the blogosphere, if a blogger shows up eventually on a topic or
subject, they will start building readers. The key to blogging is to show up, be consistent about when and how the
blogger writes, and do this as often as possible. What the blogger writes does not need to be perfect journalism-quality
writing, but the blogger does need to be consistent when the blogger does write. If the blogger always blogs in the
morning, then the blogger needs to always blog in the morning and remain consistent about it. This is also a big tip for
readers as to when the blogger is looking for new information or when they will act on the stories they have read for the
day. Paying attention to the news, the social networks, and to the community is the best way to staying on top of what is
happening in the world, and the niche that the blogger is writing in. At times doing this can be difficult because life does
happen and blogs can become abandoned. Keeping up on the news and social circles also depends on ambition and
relationships that the blogger has been able to establish. When writing for a professional blog, the writer must develop
tools and techniques that allow them to stay on top of the thousands of blog entries each day that are written by other
A and B list bloggers84. Bloggers have to know who to contact to get more information on the story of the day, or the
meme of the day. A smaller personal blog does not need this level of detail, but writing in-depth about the things that
are important to the smaller blogger is important even if it is not important now to anyone else. A personal blogger
would blog about participating in a three-day cancer walk if they had cancer or a member of their family had cancer. A
professional blog would cover the story around the three-day walk, talk to people participating, do their best to get as
many stories as possible about the walk, and promote it on their blog. Both types of bloggers were paying attention to
the three-day cancer walk, but both took different approaches to talking about the subject. That is part of paying
attention to what is going on around the blogger, understanding the different approaches between the personal and the
professional blog brings a different viewpoint and different writing styles that are influenced by the bloggers approach.

If a blogger does not pay attention to the memes and issues that are that are being discussed, whether it is Unionized
Blogging85 or Bad behavior on the internet86, then the blogger will find that it is very hard to write about things that are

82
Most team blogs do this, as it has become the standard payment model for bloggers, and it takes time to build an audience.
83
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meme
84
If you are curious where your bloglebrity score ranks in relationship to A through D list bloggers, you can use this handy widget at
Kineda.com. http://www.kineda.com/are-you-an-a-list-bloglebrity/
85
http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/08/05/is-blogging-ready-for-a-unionized-workforce/ covers some of the issues that would be
created if a bloggers union was developed, and people forced to or need to join the bloggers union in order to keep on publishing or
get better pay rates from various community blogs.
86
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2007/03/29/MNGT3OTVAO1.DTL looks at how bad behavior on the internet
"du jour" kind of entries. There is always room for original research, but unless the blogger hits on something that
people are interested in, it will be harder to get an audience. With the various styles of blogging out there 87, what niche
the blogger carves for themselves is just as important as their consistency and how plugged in they are to the things the
blogger writes about. Without knowing what is happening in the industry or hobby that a blogger is covering, it is very
hard to stay up to date and follow along with what others are writing about in the field. If the blogger does not go to
events, it is harder to live blog from the event and have instant news to your readership. By paying attention to the
memes and thoughts that drive the industry the blogger is following, it is easier to keep fresh important content up on
any form of blog. One thing to help a new blogger learn how to use the information available to them is that the blogger
might try to or think about doing is working with a group blog or team blog.

Some group blogs like Toolbox88 have multiple writers talking about technology, from information security,
management, databases, to help and service desks. They also have writers that cover many subjects of technology from
Knowledge Management to Project Management. Alone each of these blogs might not amount to much traffic, but
collectively, they can amount to a great deal of traffic over time. The success here is not so much that they have grabbed
a meme, but that they have hundreds of bloggers all writing about issues that people search for daily. Individual
bloggers might not get much traffic, but the overall site does, and this means that under a profit sharing model, even
minimally performing bloggers will get some form of payment for their time. When a blogger is a member of a team
blog, the important part for a blogger to remember is to keep on blogging for the greater good of the web site so that
this might result in higher revenue or payment to all participating bloggers. Other sites like Gawker Media89 also work on
the same principle: one site, many writers, and a bigger audience. The individual bloggers are paid by the "page view90"
or the total of page views that they get at the site for the month. Usually, the individual page view generates a small
about of money, but the collective page views of the whole site and how popular the blogger is helps determines what
they will be paid for the month. Team blogging requires that all of the writers on the team blog need to pay attention to
what is going on in the world to ensure that their audience keeps on coming back to read them. Like any other site,
building your readership is a slow process, and in some cases can take years to establish a readership. Knowing what is
happening in a bloggers particular niche is also something very important to do when blogging in any industry.

Commonalities between bloggers who make it and those who do not

especially when it comes to comments, and threatening behavior has influenced and changed some of the ways that we blog, or
otherwise try to connect to the greater social fabric of the blogosphere.
87
http://cd-2006.blogspot.com/2007/08/teaching-blogging-why-do-people-blog.html identifies 25 different kinds of blogs and
blogging by Rohit Bhargava and Jessie Thomas.
88
http://toolbox.com is one of the best free technology group blog sites in the world. While some sites charge for information, the
community aspects of toolbox allow the writers to give out their thoughts free to all readers, while the site primarily relies on
advertising revenue to pay their bloggers.
89
http://gawker.com/ is a good example of many writers across many sites. They also pay their bloggers like Toolbox, and are
primarily advertising revenue based.
90
http://www.micropersuasion.com/2007/01/cnet_tests_payf.html many sites are experimenting with this payment structure, as this
provides more of an impetus to write better, but also provides impetus to write more articles that are highly sensational. This can lead
to problems down the road as blogging and journalism move in this direction, as sensationalism will become more important than
generally well-written articles that are not sensational.
When you look at group blogging web sites like BoingBoing91, Gawker, Techcrunch, Toolbox, and other web sites, they all
have different niches that they write about, but they all have things in common. These things in common are
community, interest and uniqueness, and the number of times each day they blog, each of them also has other unique
aspects that separate them from other blogs, the core commonalities are of interest to anyone who wants to emulate
their success. Depending on why a blogger blogs, if a person follows the examples of top bloggers in the world they can
work out a process that will allows them to emulate the standards and practices of those top bloggers.

The top bloggers and blogs all foster a strong sense of community. Readers will visit those blogs because readers end up
caring about the people writing or the issues that the blog is covering. The community is important, replying to
comments is important, track backs and links are important to fostering the community of readers. Bloggers need to
learn what is important to your readers, fostering the community of readers and creating community is vital to the
success of a blog. Most blogs have the ability to comment, use back track links, create blog rolls, or other ways of sharing
"link love92" with someone who is commenting on the articles on their own blogs. As the blog fosters community, the
community continues to build upon itself and can be a major part of the success of a blog.

The top bloggers and blogs all foster a strong sense of identity. For those that visit the blog sites often, they already
know what they are going to get in terms of subject. Readers and the reader’s friends, other commenter’s, and the blog
owners can talk about the whole experience that these web sites offer via the comments section on each blog entry.
Value is added by the blogger paying attention to the comments, back-links, and rebuttal that revolves around each post
to deepen the identity of blog and the approach the blog has when talking about the subjects on the web site. The
identity of the blog is built around two types of "brands," the writer and the web site. In some cases, the blog and the
brand are the same. In the case of Gawker Media, Toolbox, and other group blogs, the blog brand often surpasses the
individual contributors, but the contributors also add to the blog's brand. The identity of the blog, the readers
expectation of what they will find there, contribute significantly to a solid identity for the web site and the bloggers that
write there.

The top bloggers and blogs also seem to have a strong leader, or a vocal character that stands out from the crowd. This
leader can be part of the management of the blog or one of the more outspoken writers for the blog. These strong
personalities or leaders help guide the direction of the collective group of writers and readers. They also provide deep
support for the group effort in maintaining identity and community. Individual bloggers as well as team blogs that are
successful all have this attribute of strong outspoken leaders. The leader also supports the effective collaborative
environment that team blogs exhibit. The strong leader is not just important for the writers, they are important for the
readers as well. Readers respond when the leader of the blog or blogging group is outspoken and direct. While this
might have its positive and negative influences on the blog and the writers, strong leadership and direction is one of the
core attributes of being successful. Writers talk to each other often and share their own experiences with each other
that build on the cult of personality that some blog leaders have with the general public. When the motive for being a

91
http://boingboing.net has its roots in the zine culture, and successfully transitioned to the internet as a group blog. They cover a
number of eclectic issues and serious issues in American culture, and often find themselves banned by internet filters as porn, even
though they are not.
92
Link Love is sharing links between sites because you can, not because you expect a profit or are selling it as advertising. A blog roll
is a series of blogs that you think are interesting and can be found on most word press style blogs. Either way these links all add to
their Google Page Rank, which when searching for information in Google, Page Rank is an important aspect to how popular a blog
can become. The higher the page rank, the more opportunity for writers to gather a bigger audience, and these tend to build on each
other until someone is "internet famous."
strong leader is only about readership93 and money94, sometimes issues become clouded quickly95, yet strong leadership
and outspoken leadership have been the building block of strong blog brands and identity.

Top bloggers and top blog networks are also unique in what they talk about and their approach to the subjects that they
talk about. Many of the top bloggers and blog networks have successfully dominated a niche in the blogging world. Or
the top bloggers have contributed to the discussion in a topic niche in ways that are unexpected and unique. Individual
bloggers like Louis Gray, Robert Scoble, Chris Pirillo, and others have all talked about the same topics or subjects yet
they find interesting ways to add to the conversation. What these bloggers add to the conversation as individuals helps
influence the opinions for many people as to what they will buy, what web sites they will use and interact with, what
they will purchase for new technology. The influence of Louis, Robert and Chris is different with different readership, but
they directly influence how technology, culture, and people intersect on the internet in often unusual and interesting
ways.

Top bloggers have these approaches regardless of their blog being a solo effort on their own blogs or as part of a team
blogging system. An example of this is Robert Scoble’s blog, and the way that his blog is also an extension of the
employer that Robert has at the time. When Robert worked for Fast Company, his blogs look and feel changed to be
more in line with what Fast Company wanted. When Robert worked for Microsoft, his blog and the writing that he did
on his blog was an extension of his work there. The ability to mutate the look and feel of the blogs as well as the subject
topics of that blog is one of the hallmarks of Roberts’s style in blogging. Where he works and what he does is reflected
on his blog as he changes jobs. Another example of the changing approach style is Chris Pirillo who runs the very
popular "Gnomedex" series of conventions that discusses new media. Chris uses a different approach in that he will start
a new site depending on what the subject matter is going to be. The use of multiple sites rather than one site to reflect
all the things that Chris is doing is an approach that works for his audience. These sites are interconnected to each other
from the main Chris Pirillo web site to form a personal blogging network covering the different topic areas that Chris
has. Larger organizations also use the same approach that Chris uses, O'Reilly media uses their own blog as a corporate
blog but there are multiple topic areas for the books that they publish. There is also a section for the head of O'Reilly
media to state what he thinks is important, and this section has become one of the interesting parts of the blogging
world to follow because readers are able to follow the thoughts and aspirations of the head of a major technology
publishing house. As individuals, these bloggers and company leaders have been able to successfully build readership
relationships and discuss what they do and who they are. The blog is an extension of the social landscape that they exist
in at the time. If Steve Jobs or Steve Ballmer blogged, they would also immediately become some of the most read blogs
in the world. Readers would be able to read the thoughts of Steve Jobs and Steve Ballmer as an individual and as a
corporate leader—or thought leader—in terms of what is happening next in technology. The social landscape that would
support the CEO of Apple and the CEO of Microsoft would also add to the discussion about how those companies can
reach more people with their respective audiences.

93
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/25/magazine/25internet-t.html?_
r=1&adxnnl=1&oref=slogin&adxnnlx=1219536066-bKN0IkwijOM0ouexc846Uw covers some of the interesting things about
readership, writers, and sidekicks on a blog.
94
http://techwag.com/index.php/2008/01/16/nick-denton-slave-driver-or-idealistic-entrepreneur/ links to a video on Beet TV covering
Nick Denton as a manager.
95
http://adage.com/mediaworks/article?article_id=127435 covers aspects of blogger as media darling, and when sometimes the hype
can extend well beyond the individual, the blog, and what they are doing to support each other in their ambitions. Managing fame is
generally not taught, and the blogosphere can make someone internet famous very quickly, it is often difficult to manage this fame, as
much as it would be for a rock star to manage.
Top bloggers have another stand out feel about what they write about on their web sites. It is obvious to even the most
casual reader that top bloggers are very passionate or "true believers" in what they are writing about on their blogs. Top
bloggers are continually involved with people who are building things, products, ideas, and social fabrics that we live in,
and they blog about. The passion is not faked and cannot be faked. Top bloggers honestly believe in what they are
writing about as a solution to a problem that someone might be having, or some new product that solves a problem for
a majority of people. Their blogs, and in many cases their lives, reflect that infectious enthusiasm for how to use new
media, blogging, video blogging, pod casting, and a host of other technologies to unite and bind people together. All
blogs do this to a point; they talk about things they believe in, but the truly successful blogs all have a thread of
undeniable passion that runs through them.

Top blogs and blog networks have fresh content on their sites every day, and in many cases, many times during the day.
All the successful blogs have more than one entry per day. The output on some of the individual blogs is amazing in its
context, content, and frequency. Team blogs are easier to manage with the continual flow of information, but some
individual bloggers have been able to meet the quality and output of team blogs. Nevertheless, even in a team blog, it is
important to blog every day at the very minimum to maintain an audience. Bloggers who blog once a week or once a
month often fail to gather a large audience. Bloggers who are posting every day often have a much better chance of
building an audience because there is there is something new to read every day. There are some that state that blogging
every day is a misnomer96, that it is more about the participation every day. However, at some point, the blogger needs
to intersect with their audience every day, in one form or another. Usually writing a new blog entry and answering
comments will help drive readership and build audience share.

The threads that bind the successful blogs from the non-successful blogs—passion, community, identity, leadership,
social involvement, and uniqueness—are the compelling reasons to read the top bloggers blogs. Top bloggers might say
things that may be out of line with the readers’ thoughts, which also helps drive the community and response rates for a
blog. The blog forms the basis of the many social threads that are prevalent on the Internet. Other bloggers will respond
and reformat the data, ideas, thoughts, and technology talked about first on a top blog to help form a sense of
consensus about a product or service. The consensus that is build then helps identify the products and services that
offer a unique solution to a problem that many readers might be having, and those products or service that fail or
succeed over time.

Blogging as Creative Destruction

Blogging has fundamentally changed the landscape of written media and how written media is consumed by the regular
public in many countries. There is a lot of creative destruction 97 to industries when people, regular people, take to public
forums, blogs, and other systems to start talking about things that interest them. The internet as a communications
medium many industries are finding ways (or not finding ways) of dealing with the advent of blogging and people
sharing what matters to them. Some of the older print medium businesses models are slowly failing as people move to
online content reading as their news and entertainment source 98. Newspapers, magazines, and static web sites in
general do not foster community, but blogs do, ITunes does, Amazon does through people being able to provide

96
http://www.mpdailyfix.com/2006/06/w_why_blog_post_frequency_does.html talks about the fallacy of blogging every day stating
that it is more important to be socially involved every day rather than blogging. The success of Friend Feed, twitter, and other systems
might prove that theory.
97
http://www.investopedia.com/terms/c/creativedestruction.asp
98
http://www.seobook.com/bloggers
feedback on products. This fundamentally disrupts many industries because ordinary people can now do what was once
the exclusive domain of book reviewers, record companies, newspapers and magazines. This has also had negative side
effects for people who comment on blogs, and for people who have personal blogs that their employers have found.
Some bloggers have lost jobs, or families have found themselves involved when personal information is talked about on
a blog, often to the shame or horror of the families involved. With the barrier of entry on starting a new blog effectively
zero, the new medium of blogs has and will continue to have a disruptive effect on people and companies, sometimes
that disruptive effect will cause companies to go out of business or families to fail.

Some of the earlier bloggers who discussed where they worked were fired for blogging99 about their companies or what
they did on the job. These early reactions from companies still happens today, people are fired for blogging, but
companies are also slowly becoming smarter about how a blog can increase the community around the company. Some
companies still want to prohibit their employees from blogging100, but as blogging becomes more pervasive, forbidding
employees from blogging is becoming rarer. For blog writers, the entries in blogs will directly influence that person’s
employability or ability to be a member of a community. Writers of professional blogs are not immune from this
capricious process with how blogs and blog entries are perceived by readers and employers. A person who is blogging
about cancer can suddenly find themselves fired101. Blogging and employability is not all negative though, blogging can
show a potential employer that you are passionate about something enough to learn and write about this on your own.
This has opened up a whole new process for employers to vet and find the right people to fill a position. Employers do
use blogs, Facebook102 and MySpace information when looking at potential employees103. Blogs have had an enormous
influence on many industries, and the way that people communicate to each other, employers are smart to this,
bloggers need to be equally smart along the way. This is the important part to remember when you start your blogging
career is that the world will come visit your site that includes family, friends and employers. This has at times shocked
people, but this has also been part of the creative destruction that is happening in employee and employer relations.

The internationalization of readership for a blog is also part of the creative destruction in how information is shared on a
global basis. In one of my blogs, only 23 percent of all readers are from the USA; the rest come from around the world.
Writers will quickly learn to write for an international audience, but this has also put deep constraints on governments,
bloggers, and what can and cannot be said online. Governments have gone to extraordinary lengths to filter, contain,
arrest, or silence bloggers and their readers. In 2009, 41 bloggers and journalists were put in prison for talking about the
"Green Revolution" that happened soon after the Iranian elections104. Worldwide it is estimated that over 300 bloggers
and journalists are in prison105. Governments have responded to bloggers much like they respond to journalists who
cross over a government mandated line. Companies also filter information and forbid employees to blog106 while they
are working at the company. While prison or arrest will not happen for blogging as an employee, far too many
employees have been fired for blogging over the last ten years. Even with the lengths that employers and governments

99
http://news.cnet.com/I-was-fired-for-blogging/2010-1030_3-5490836.html
100
http://slog.thestranger.com/slog/archives/2009/07/27/borders-against-blogging
101
http://saveamanda.blogspot.com/
102
http://www2.dothaneagle.com/dea/news/local/article/facebook_myspace_posts_could_hurt_you_in_professional_world/84882/
103
http://www.ilostmyjob.com/site/index.php/component/content/article/54-family-matters/109-facebook-myspace
104
http://www.ijnet.org/ijnet/training_opportunities/rsf_forty_one_iranian_journalists_and_bloggers_in_prison
105
http://www.wiareport.org/index.php/56/blogger-arrests
106
http://peterrost.blogspot.com/2008/03/astrazeneca-forbids-employees-to-post.html
will go to, to disrupt the creativity of people, many bloggers have worked on getting information onto the internet
successfully for years, bypassing all the restrictions that are put in a bloggers way.

There is no debate that blogs have had an influence on newspapers and television, music, movies, and information
sharing on a global basis. There is also no debate that the internet has altered how business interacts with customers
and how customer relations work. Blogging has also fundamentally altered how people communicate, and how
communities form. The internet provides a platform for people to do just about anything they want to do, get anything
they want to get (illegal or legal), and explore or discover anything they want to know. The internet as a delivery vehicle
for data and information is superior to the paper, the radio, or the television. Even with filtering, many of the larger
companies like Google, Microsoft, Cisco, Oracle, and others all run company sponsored blogs where ordinary employees
can write about the cool things they are doing. Larger press style blogs, Techcrunch, Huffington Post, and Gawker media
also have had an influence on how we get information and what information we subscribe to on line. Irrespective of
filtering, boundaries, and prison, the creative destruction across many industries and governments for suppressing
information has failed. Media is no longer in the control of governments or businesses, rather media is in the control of
anyone who wants to create a free blog and start writing about the things that interest them.

While you might not know what a blog is or you might not have worked out a business model for your blog when you
participate in blogging, you are joining the very few who blog. If there are 120 million blogs, as reported by Technorati,
and the earth's population is six billion, that is not many blogs in relationship to people. This is an important number to
note, because an extraordinary effort is being put in place globally to filter information that is being blogged about.
Some people are familiar with the "Green Dam107" internet filter in China, and the extraordinary lengths that China has
used to filter the internet, this is not a Chinese issue alone. England108 and Australia109 have also looked at or trialed
internet filters to keep information, thoughts and ideas from filtering into those countries. The expenditure of time,
money and effort to tame or control the internet is focused on a significantly small group of participants on the internet.

Wikipedia's participation statistics point out that only .003 percent of people make the most edits on the site 110. This
small vocal minority has been tearing down old systems and recreating them over the last ten years as a community
participation project. Interesting to note though is that this very small group of participants will also have a direct
influence on the popularity of a blog. While the majority of the readership of a blog will lurk and not respond back, this
does not mean that a blogger does not have influence. People have been taught to be passive participants by traditional
media. Traditional media relies on lurkers buying the paper or watching the TV show over the air or on cable and
passively interacting with the media they are consuming. Before the advent of Web 2.0, we were trained as a passive
audience111. Yet this small group of bloggers and media enthusiasts has effectively altered how we consume media, as
well as taking media to a whole new participatory level that was not possible with newspapers, television, movies and
music. It will take decades before people realize the full effect of participatory media rather than passive media. As the
model changes, or is creatively destroyed from the old model to the new model, we need to learn to talk with our

107
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jul/02/china-green-dam
108
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_in_the_United_Kingdom
109
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7689964.stm
110
http://www.useit.com/alertbox/participation_inequality.html
111
http://iml.jou.ufl.edu/projects/Fall99/Hur/activity.html
audience rather than "at them112. Currently few if any societies are prepared to manage this kind of participatory
discourse on any and all subjects.

Blogs, wikis, and other interactive forms of communication break down barriers and help enforce the idea of creative
destruction113 of information models114. Rather than information distribution being carefully controlled and limited to
select groups of people, blogs and other Web 2.0 media sources open up whole new avenues for people to get
information115. Using blogs as a communications platform and medium, bloggers are blending traditional media and new
media resources116 to come up with a more comprehensive picture of the things that are important to them. What
might be important to a person might center on pizza, beer, celebrity screw-up news, or saving the planet, the blog as a
communications platform opens the door to all interests. The wonderful part about blogging in general is that the
individual gets to choose should be a niche in they want to participate in. Those things that do not interest a person are
easily ignored and filtered in favor of those ideas and people that the blogger feels strongly about. Some might call this
digital anarchy117, for many it is their one way of showing that there are bigger issues or bigger ideas that must be
presented to the world, and the individual then chooses to become one of many spokespeople for that idea or issue. It
does not matter what the idea is but that there is the desire to share the concept with as many people as possible.

It is hard to think that .003 percent of a population can have the influence and the effect on newspapers, television, and
other traditional media. Imagine what the influence would be if one percent of the population would participate. This is
where creative destruction of current models118 of business and governmental systems comes into play. As globalization
takes deeper roots in our culture, as computing becomes ubiquitous, as networks spread globally, more people will start
blogging. The revolution in data sharing and idea sharing via blogs as a communications media is equivalent in scope and
reach as the invention of the printing press. Over the last three years, as networks penetrate deeper into countries,
governments, and business the rapid pace of destroying one industry in favor of another industry (creative destruction)
is forcing older industries to change and adapt to the new model, or begin a long slow decline and eventual liquidation
of the business.

The changes in the journalism industry are the most documented and the most contentious when being compared to
blogging and formal journalism. Much of the contention and discussion is not caused directly by bloggers, but in how
information can be obtained. Prior to the internet, there were magazines, newspapers, television, and radio, which we
used in very orderly hierarchies of the type of data that we would get. The information in magazines had to be durable
enough to be interesting for a month or longer. Information in the paper had to be durable for twenty-four hours or
until the next edition of the paper came out. Television and radio came closest to being entertaining in five- to sixty-
minute increments. With the internet, you have fifteen seconds to engage a reader119 and provide value or

112
http://www.presentationzen.com/presentationzen/2005/12/talking_at_them.html
113
http://www.investopedia.com/terms/c/creativedestruction.asp
114
http://mises.org/story/2770
115
http://www.charleswarner.us/articles/GrimesDeclineOfMedia.htm
116
http://people-press.org/report/444/news-media
117
http://www.iitk.ac.in/infocell/announce/convention/papers/Context%20and%20Human%20Resource-08-
Ranjit%20Goswami,Chinmoy%20Kumar.pdf
118
http://www.pbs.org/idealab/2008/03/is-that-my-corpse-theyre-talki.html
119
http://www.entrepreneurs-journey.com/892/engagement-the-magic-ingredient-you-need-for-success-online-today/
entertainment for that reader. The more you engage the readers on a regular basis, the better off you are as a blogger,
and the more successful as a blogger you will be. Based on the older model of magazines and newspapers, people took
their time to engage with the paper. Magazines and newspapers were never intended or developed to engage a reader
in 15 seconds or less. Magazines were intended to be durable and engaging between publishing runs, while newspapers
were designed to provide information in daily increments and stand alone stories. Magazines and newspapers were not
designed to work at internet speeds, and people's shortened attention spans, they have suffered reductions in
readership and subscriptions. The blog has catered to the shortened attention span, short articles, and understand the
15 second rule, and have been successful taking away readership and mindshare from magazines and newspapers. The
creative destruction of the print media continues as print media tries to reinvent their industries model to support the
shortened attention span120. This is classic example of creative destruction in action as older print media tries to work
out a new business model121 so that they can survive. This is the reason why blogging is so important, only .003 percent
of the global population has helped create the observed disruptive effect across hundreds of industries and have helped
drive decisions that have ended up with governments trying to actively censor the internet. The creative destruction of
blogs has changed how employers view employees, helped define the difference between the public and private
persona behind a blog, law and enforcement of copyright, as well as adding to the color and views of society. However,
there is one flaw in blogging that is worth mentioning, top popular bloggers have as much control as the new families
that own and operate traditional media122. Bloggers though have a check and balance that is not available to regular
media and that is the active participation of the community. The process of creative destruction, the tearing down of old
systems and replacing them with new systems continues through to today. What will be of interest to governments,
business and people is when the blogging population reaches 1% or 10% of a given population. If .003% of the global
population has such a major impact on the fabric of society, imagine what that impact on society will be when bloggers
are 1% or 10% of the global population.

Blogs that are leading the way

Top blogs are blogs or blog networks that have been effective in drawing large audiences or readers on the internet. Top
blogs have also worked with their audience to drive further value for readers, either through sponsoring events, being
keynote speakers, or otherwise using the blog as a launching point for supporting a company or creating a personal
brand. These are also people or companies that do what they can to remain fresh, and on top of their blogging niche.
The blogs that have been successful have commonalities, and unique attributes as to why they have been successful.
This section looks at popular blogs based solely on what is available in the public record. The public record is the most
important part of taking a look at any endeavor that people start as it shows both sides of the story. The problem with
interviews is that people often try to downplay the negative and accentuate the positive. All blogs have both positive
and negative aspects and commentary about them in the public record. Both the positive and the negative aspects need
to be explored to generate a conclusion as to why they are successful, and understand the good things and the bad
things that have happened over the lifetime of that blog. If you look at the public histories of people who are the
characters behind the top blogs, you catch a sense of the simple things they have done to become successful. For other

120
http://www.amazon.com/Slackonomics-Generation-Age-Creative-Destruction/dp/0786718846 this is an excellent book on the idea
of crossing from analog to digital, and how GenX/Y are changing things because of the way that technology enables everyone equally.
Free is free no matter where you are.
121
http://www.journalismprofessor.com/labels/media.html
122
http://www.mediaowners.com/
blogs the success comes from leadership and writers who are driven to be the best, and in some cases leaders and
writers who are absolutely obsessed about being on top of their blogging niche.

This is by no means an all-inclusive list, but it is easy to find blogs that are doing well or better than most by using tools
like the Technorati's Top 100 or blogs that rank the highest in other social ranking systems. People watch and attempt to
emulate the top blogs on a regular basis, trying to capture the magic and the readership of the top blogs. Being at the
top of any field the competition can be extreme to be the first at anything and being a blogger is no exception to this.
The competition at the top of the blogging world is highly competitive. The top bloggers all aggressively pursue their
stories or their uniqueness. Some use their uniqueness when they are embroiled in controversy, like the controversy
that surrounded BoingBoing when there were issues with Violet Blue (who is another blogger), or the concerns that
Robert had when Microsoft censored a Chinese blogger on live spaces. These controversies draw a lot of readership for
those blogs, while in some ways they can also cause headaches for these bloggers. Controversies have raged over the
blogs that have failed as well when the failure is public and vocal. For a failing blog, controversies over leaderships can
be the final push over the edge and into the dead pool 123 for a blog network.

There is no one particular blog, or blog style that allows a blog to stay on top in the blogging world. Rather staying on
top is a combination of people, resources, writing ability, and continual refresh of the blogging site. Top blogs do not
follow any common format between the top 100, each of them easily falls into various categories, and often more than
one category in the twenty-five types of blogging124 that are understood. You will find that the blogs represented by the
Technorati list are also not comprehensive. Technorati like many tracking systems for blog popularity has its own set of
issues when being authoritative. Using Technorati though as the baseline for determining popularity of a blog puts
everyone on an equal handicap, and it is the best system currently available for determining a global ranking for a blog.
There are other B and C list bloggers though who are busy starting up and building their own style and their own
readership that are on the verge of hitting the Top 100 and over time they may or may not supplant the current list of
top 100 blogs. Many of the new up-and-coming blogs might hit the Top 100 or they might suddenly fade away into
oblivion125 depending on how the person is able to sustain and grow their readership base. There are a number of blogs
that came out of nowhere and then went back to nowhere after their fifteen minutes of fame126. The top blogs,
however, have worked out a formula for staying on top once they have gotten there. Each of these case studies all take
an in-depth look at the blog based on the public record, and what they have done to remain successful in what they are
doing.

BoingBoing

BoingBoing is the eclectic team blog made of popular science fiction writer Cory Doctorow, Xeni Jardin, Mark
Frauenfelder, David Pescovitz, and John Battelle as the business manager. The core of the team is Cory, Xeni, and

123
Dead Pool is a phrase that is commonly used for startups and blog networks that have failed. This was coined early on in the 1990‟s
as startups failed, the phrase “dead pool” caught on with the public when startups started to implode in 1999/2000.
124
http://blog.ogilvypr.com/2007/04/157/
125
http://stephenfry.com/blog/?p=19 Stephen Fry mentions this as "flash fame" much like a one hit wonder, or someone for who fame
suddenly comes and suddenly goes. This can often leave the blogger bewildered as they try to figure out exactly what happened.
126
http://www.cbc.ca/technology/story/2006/09/14/tech-lonely.html while video blogger LonelyGirl 15 has seen her fame come and
go, she makes an interesting case study in how fame can be circular, with controversy, as she was also a viral marketing campaign and
not a "real person."
Mark127, with the occasional entry by David and John. There is also the occasional guest blogger who will show up now
and then on the web site. BoingBoing was the most popular blog in the world until May 10 2006 128, and since then has
floated near the top of the top 100 blogs list at Technorati129. It is still very popular, but competition, the addition of
other BoingBoing branded systems like BoingBoing TV, as well as their own individual careers has influenced the success
BoingBoing over the last few years. BoingBoing has a unique niche in the market place and has not been successfully
copied by other bloggers. It receives about 1.5 million visitors each month130, and it is the core team that makes
BoingBoing the blog that it is and as popular as it is. BoingBoing is a hard blog to describe as it covers popular culture,
DRM, and censorship. Cory Doctorow has deep ties to the EFF 131 (Electronic Freedom Fund) as well as many other
activist or populist people in the world. That is what makes the blog so interesting; you are always guaranteed to find
something interesting along the way. The blog either inspires132 or infuriates.133 That is its charm and part of the reason
that BoingBoing has remained a top blog for many years.

Determining the winning formula for the blog is not very hard. There is a direct addressable concept here, and the group
does not stray from it. BoingBoing covers what they cover: popular culture, DRM, censorship, and they do it in a fun,
poking the finger at the "man" style. This approach is unique and in many cases the basis for the idea that "BoingBoing is
a directory of Wonderful Things". The approach helps the reader connect to the blog, and understand that they are
reading the words of real people. Their unique approach toward the subjects is more of a "Good, Bad, or Ugly" process.
When something is good (as in the case of steam punk), bad (as in the case of DRM), or ugly (as in the case of
censorware), you have no doubts as to where the writers stand and what they actually feel. You are reading real things
that they think are interesting. You get a first person viewpoint into those things that they believe are important. They
are also activist in their viewpoints towards censorship and DRM while being populist in relationship towards art,
science, and writing in the stories that they bring to their site.

The roots of BoingBoing are well established in print media, extending through to today's electronic media. Originally,
they started as a magazine134 during the heyday of the "zine culture" in the late 1980s and were able to reinvent
themselves as a web site and then eventually a blog. It is in the blog format that most of their readers know them, as the
zine is gone and the original web site is only accessible through the Wayback Machine 135. The association that they have

127
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boing_Boing provides a small concise history of BoingBoing.
128
http://www.impactlab.com/2006/05/10/boing-boing-loses-1-most-popular-blog-on-technorati-to-chinese-blog/
129
http://technorati.com/pop/blogs/ is the list of the top 100 blogs as tracked by Technorati
130
http://siteanalytics.compete.com/boingboing.net/?metric=uv compete stats for boingbong.net
131
http://www.boingboing.net/2006/01/01/cory-quit-his-dayjob.html
132
http://cowperthwait.livejournal.com/85239.html fan art inspired by
BoingBoing, this is an anagram subway map that was created because of a similar map that the author saw on BoingBoing.
133
http://nielsenhayden.com/electrolite/archives/005986.html is infuriated at Xeni Jardin for comments about intellectual property
reformers.
134
http://www.flickr.com/photos/frauenfelder/sets/72157601349461346/ an amazing collection of BoingBoing covers from 1989 to
1995 on Flickr.
135
http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://boingboing.net wayback machine cache of BoingBoing going back to 1998, if you want to see
what it looked like then, it is at least interesting in its own right as they tried to be a zine on the internet.
with federated media puts their popularity as one of the top five most visited websites in the world 136. With webby
awards and other honorable mentions, there are a number of advantages and a number of reasons why BoingBoing is as
popular as it is.

1. All of the writers come from professional writing backgrounds. Xeni Jardin was a wired contributing
writer, Cory Doctorow is a professional novelist, Mark Frauenfelder137 is an illustrator and writer, David
Pescovitz138 is a writer-educator and works on other projects like Make Magazine. John Battelle is also a
novelist139, so the tradition of writing is well embedded in the site, and it shows all the way through what they
do and what they write about at BoingBoing.

2. BoingBoing has chosen to write about complex subjects with an emphasis on public culture, DRM,
intellectual property, and web censorship. These are all dynamic fast moving fields with companies,
governments and people all have a stake in. The chosen subjects are continually refreshed so that they do not
go stale or out of date rapidly.

3. BoingBoing writers (including guest bloggers) write about issues that have connections and viewpoints
into the larger world outside the blog. The writers have opinions about the issues and can intelligently discuss
the issues that they are dealing with in their blog entries. You can easily tell opinion from fact, which is
important for readers so that they can make their own decisions about a subject or issue.

4. BoingBoing writers are respected in their fields, yet all come from different backgrounds, with different
future goals. All have had some form of personal involvement in the things that they write about, so they often
use that deep knowledge to enhance or add depth to the subject of discussion.

From the above points, it is easy to understand the success and popularity of BoingBoing. BoingBoing, however, has not
been without its own share of controversy. One of the most recent controversies was a June 2008 controversy where
BoingBoing decided that they were going to remove all links to famed sex blogger Violet Blue. With the stand that
BoingBoing has against censorship, to remove Violet Blue's blog entries ignited controversy that exploded 140 on to the
blogosphere. The problem was that BoingBoing did not wish to discuss 141. While there are many rumors as to why
BoingBoing did a self-censorship142, the end of this is that many people do not know outside of BoingBoing. Xeni Jardin
has stated that they wanted the matter to be finished. When BoingBoing is not self censoring, BoingBoing has been
regularly and routinely censored by companies and governments alike. One notable case of being filtered by Smart Filter

136
http://www.federatedmedia.net/authors/boingboing is the federated media statistics for the web site.
137
http://boingboing.net/markf.html is his bio on BoingBoing‟s web site.
138
http://pesco.net/bio.html is David Pescovitz‟s bio on line
139
http://www.boingboing.net/2005/09/10/john-battelles-the-s.html
covers John Battelle‟s book, the Search on what Google‟s influence has been on business and culture.
140
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/webscout/2008/06/violet-blue-scr.html LA Times coverage thinking that upwards of 100 entries
were deleted by BoingBoing
141
http://www.boingboing.net/2008/07/01/that-violet-blue-thi.html describing the follow on controversy as a "shit storm" and debates
the actual number of posts as reported by the LA Times.
142
http://community.zdnet.co.uk/blog/0,1000000567,10008606o-2000331777b,00.htm covers some of the story, and how hard it
quickly began to spin out of control, or how hard it became to discover truth from fiction. With the desire of BoingBoing to keep the
issue quiet, rumors persisted and grew as other bloggers tried to get more and more "scoops" on the news that was becoming entirely
fabricated towards the end of the controversy.
in 2006 ended up in a unique solution to filtering developed by an avid reader of BoingBoing. To combat the filtering of
BoingBoing from groups like Smart Filter and other systems, a regular BoingBoing reader named Mark Christian 143
developed the "distributed BoingBoing" project144, which essentially is a PHP powered script that would pull the front
page only from BoingBoing, from any server in the world. A user would host the script on a server. A user who would
otherwise be censored from going to BoingBoing would be able to go to any server on the distributed list145 and pull up a
copy of the front page of BoingBoing but not go any further into the BoingBoing site. BoingBoing heavily supported the
project146, along with around one hundred server sites around the world, to ensure free access to BoingBoing regardless
of the state of censorship that a person had at work or at home. The controversy ended up with an op-ed in the New
York Times147 written by Xeni Jardin and the ACLU,148 taking on the case to Smart Filter’s use in public libraries. A little
over a year later, the use of Distributed BoingBoing was still going strong globally149.

Along with BoingBoing's guide to defeating censor ware150, it is unlikely that BoingBoing will ever back away from
difficult issues that take on the things that they most care about, like censorship, intellectual property, and showing the
eclectic side of the world. The blog is successful because of the quality of the writing, the diversity of the subjects
discussed, as well as the ability to effectively manage controversy around them. It is the ability to write well, manage
controversy, and be consistent with the messages they deliver that has defined BoingBoing. BoingBoing as a blog will be
around for a long time, as the roots in the zine world have carried the web site through into the modern day with fresh
interesting content, good writers, and the building of a strong community of readers.

Gigazine
Gigazine is a top Japanese blog that covers Japanese society, with over 96 percent of its traffic coming from Japan
only151. Thirteen percent of the blogs in the world are Asian in origin,152 and Gigazine is one of the few non-English
language blogs in the Technorati Top 100. Gigazine was created by Satoshi Yamasaki and Mazaki Keito and is Japan's
most popular blog, according to Time Magazine153. The Guardian UK rated Gigazine the twenty-third largest blog in the

143
http://markchristian.org is the main site for the CS graduate student that developed the PHP code for the Distributed BoingBoing
project.
144
http://markchristian.org/projects/dbb/
145
http://markchristian.org/projects/dbb/list.php list of servers in the Distributed BoingBoing project
146
http://www.boingboing.net/2006/03/14/distributed-boingboi.html
BoingBoing
147
http://www.boingboing.net/2006/03/09/xenis-nyt-oped-expor.html
148
http://www.boingboing.net/2006/11/17/aclu-sues-over-smart.html
149
http://it.toolbox.com/blogs/managing-infosec/1-year-of-distributed-boing-boing-support-15838 is a report from a distributed
BoingBoing node that reported their stats on ITToolbox. I ran the DBB node, and this was my report from a year later to see how
much traffic, or how much use the project had over a year‟s time. The numbers bore out an estimate of 42,000 people per month that
relied on the DBB project a year later per month.
150
http://www.boingboing.net/censorroute.html is a project note on how to bypass filters and filtering systems if you think or know
that there are in stream providers that block access to information on the internet for whatever reason.
151
http://www.alexa.com/data/details/traffic_details/gigazine.net
152
http://technorati.com/blogging/state-of-the-blogosphere/who-are-the-bloggers/
153
http://www.time.com/time/specials/2007/article/0,28804,1725323_1725329_1725352,00.html
world154. For people outside of Japan to access the web site, you will need to use a translation service like Google or
Babel Fish155 to comprehend fully the glory that is Japanese culture156. The blog focuses on a niche of all that is weird and
wonderful happening in Japan. It has an edgy, younger audience that loves the reviews of technology, society, and the
never-ending obsession with video games and avatars157. The audience is well defined, and while many people read it,
the core audience is eighteen- to twenty-four-year-olds.

Gigazine started in 2000 and only started going into the blog format in 2006, so it is a relative newcomer to the blogging
world. What started as a static page site158 quickly found that the blogging style and platform was robust enough to
manage the millions of page hits159 that the site was getting each day. The readership grew when they swapped over to
the blogging style, meaning they were able to make the change without losing their core audience. That is always an
issue when a company changes the look, feel, and operation of their web site. In an effort to branch out into other
languages, in March of 2008, Gigazine launched an English language site160 for their blog, which is also proving to be
popular for people who follow and track trends that are happening in Japan, when it comes to games, technology, and
entertainment.

Gigazine might be the best source of finding out what is hot in Japan. Americans usually get technology that has been
proven in Japan first, from cell phones, to smaller gaming platforms and televisions. This is one of the important
elements about international electronics. While Korea is also a place to test electronics, usually new systems will show
up in Akihabara first. Gigazine covers what is happening in the Japanese electronics district, Akihabara 161. US bloggers
can get a quick view on technology and gadgets that people in the USA might never see, or if they do see them, it will be
three to five years later. The addition of the English language site will extend the reach of Gigazine into the USA market,
with the expectation that Americans already fascinated by Japanese culture will find the barriers of language lowered or
removed and spend time on the web site. What is interesting is that the Japanese to English translation is automated,
meaning that the reader using the service can be often confused by headlines like, "The cause of 'the smell' of the wash
dried as to the inside which is unpleasant to live dryness and162."

154
http://guardian.uk.co
155
http://babelfish.yahoo.com/translate_url?doit=done&tt=url&intl=1&fr=bf-
home&trurl=http%3A%2F%2Fgigazine.net%2F&lp=ja_en&
btnTrUrl=Translate is the URL for babelfish at yahoo to translate the site from Japanese to English.
156
http://www.quantcast.com/gigazine.jp
157
http://technorati.com/posts/0Q7DUNMkd%2BXiJP3yC8sooy4byCHkZrLfLw_1wMLr3Yc%3D
158

http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=ja&u=http://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/GIGAZINE&sa=X&oi=translate&resnum=8&ct=re
sult&prev=/search%3Fq%3Dgigazine%26start%3D20%26hl%3Den%26client%3Dfirefox-a%26rls%3Dorg.mozilla:en-
US:official%26hs%3DBKU%26sa%3DN
159

http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=ja&u=http://gigazine.net/&sa=X&oi=translate&resnum=1&ct=result&prev=/search%3
Fq%3Dgigazine%26hl%3Den%26client%3Dfirefox-a%26rls%3Dorg.mozilla:en-US:official%26hs%3D6xo
160
http://en.gigazine.net/
161
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akihabara
162
http://en.gigazine.net/index.php?/news/comments/20080911_kao/
The translation service also strips out many of the ads that run on the parent site, so viewers get a relatively uncluttered
view of the web site, but Gigazine is missing an opportunity to monetize the site as well. Gigazine caters to a niche
market of technology, toys, and general weirdness, including limited edition coffee cups at chain stores and other fun
things that are happening in Japan. Much like the BoingBoing model of tracking all that is weird and interesting in society
in general, Gigazine is part technology blog, part running commentary on life in Japan, and part generalized cultural
psychosis that appeals to eighteen- to twenty-four-year-olds. The items that have made Gigazine successful are:

1. Ability to tap their readership across multiple viewpoints and channels, from technology, society, and
random weirdness.

2. They are experts in their field. They have been writing about technology, toys, and society since 2000. By
having a clear focus on Japan and Japanese culture, they have been able to tap the zeitgeist of the culture and
turn it into words and images.

3. They understand their niche and have expanded that niche slowly while not compromising the
experience of the core audience that they have developed.

4. They have a well-developed social fabric around their web site and the items that they discuss.

Gigazine is relatively unknown outside of Japan and is mostly linked by other Japanese bloggers, with the occasional out
of country link. The addition of the English language site, once it becomes better known, will provide the opportunity for
them to expand into an international audience and most likely become a major source of information for American
gadget blogs. The attention-grabbing part of how Gigazine operates is that Gigazine starts the conversation that other
bloggers pick up and run with the rest of the story. Gigazine articles are usually very short, about two hundred words in
length, leaving much of the discussion about what the issue or toy might mean to a legion of other Japanese bloggers.
The ability to start the conversation by presenting something to a population, saying if it is cool or not, is fundamental to
blogging across all cultures. The Japanese though has a small quirk of culture that fosters community much stronger
than the American or European culture that is not seen in comparable blogging styles in America. The closest that
another blog comes to this same style is Techdirt163, with an entire story in two hundred words, leaving other bloggers to
fill in more information. The cooperative nature of Japanese culture works best when the full story becomes a
collaborative effort amongst a number of bloggers.

Gigazine is a success story by being one of the very few non-English language blogs to be a member of the Technorati
Top 100. This is partly due to the highly internet connected culture of Japan, as well as the abiding interest worldwide in
what happens in Japanese technology. Amongst technologists it is well known that electronics will debut in Japan much
earlier than they will anywhere else in the world. For technologists this is an important resource for finding out what is
hot and new in technology that will eventually be exported and show up in American and European markets. Being a
relative newcomer to the blogging world164 and how the blogging format can be used to support a diverse group of
readers. Gigazine is truly a reflection of the Japanese culture, by providing seed stories for other bloggers to run with
and then getting the link back to the original Gigazine article. The web site has a unique mixture of American blogging
styles that have been incorporated into its own unique Japanese style (much as anime and cartoons have morphed into
each other), reflecting their culture and ideals. Gigazine is one of those rare gem web sites that takes the best of many
American blogging models and turns those models into something truly unique and original.

163
http://techdirt.com
164
Gigazine only recently converted their static web site into the blog format, and since then has seen a rapid uptake in visitors and
community building.
 Toolbox

Toolbox or ITToolbox165 started in 1998166 as a simple web site forum for IT folks to share information. Ten years later,
ITToolbox is the number one free resource for free technical information, across a wide range of technologies. From its
very simple original web site design167 to a more complex social networking based design today; ITToolbox competes in
the technology blogging sphere. Bloggers from Toolbox have also been able to grow past Toolbox and start their own
blogs, or get hired by other much larger blogs like JK on the Run. The collection of articles is somewhat over the
technical landscape, with some folks specializing in certain technologies like databases, while others specialize in
management, project management, information security, Linux, or a host of other technologies that corporate IT folks
use on a daily basis. With such a complex collection of content spread across blogs, wikis, forums, and e-mail systems,
Toolbox is much like a TechNet or MSDN in that they present technical articles or commentary on issues and concerns to
a technical audience. Rather than the typical network of bloggers from the same company, Toolbox relies on many
bloggers from different companies dealing with different things, and all free to find for people who are looking for high
quality technical information or insight into technology.

Toolbox covers so much territory that they cannot help but be successful. Toolbox primarily relies on advertising as their
primary revenue model. Toolbox also pays their bloggers on a sliding scale much like others in the industry, with
payment based on the number of page views per month that the writer gets. With some eight hundred 168 advertising
partners, ITToolbox has been very successful in getting not just content but the advertising revenue from brand name
companies. The content producers' payment on sliding scale provides smaller bloggers in the system an immediate
reward (although small) and pays the more popular or more widely read bloggers more in line with the revenue that the
advertising carries169. This standard view payment model is practiced at sites like Gawker170 and other more commercial
group blogging sites. There are some obvious differences between Toolbox and the other blogs out there.

1. The content is all over the technology map, from programming, to security, DRM, management, project
management, and just about everything else that will be encountered in the day-to-day life of anyone in IT.

165
In the interests of full disclosure, I have written for ITToolbox since 2006 and have enjoyed a highly rewarding experience with
them. Their success over the last two years is one of the primary drivers for writing this book, and the primary reason why this book
exists at all.
166
http://www.ittoolbox.com/Help/timeline.asp the ITToolbox company time line on their web site
167
http://web.archive.org/web/19991008115001/http://www.ittoolbox.com/ from the Way Back machine, this is the snapshot of the
ITToolbox web site in 1999.
168
http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/ittoolbox-celebrates-10-years-b2b/story.aspx?guid=%7B53A20890-EA88-4830-9DDD-
247ACE0A0DC7%7D&dist=hppr covers the number of advertisers that the company currently works with as well as some of the
contextual advertising that matches content/context with advertising offerings.
169
http://seekingalpha.com/article/86861-corporate-executive-board-company-q2-2008-earnings-call-transcript is the 2008 Earnings
Call transcript that covers not just the buyout of ITToolbox, but how the payment scales are adding value to the overall
content/context of the communities that Corporate Executive Board runs, owns, and operates.
170
http://www.alleyinsider.com/2008/4/denton_s_reward_to_valleywag_drones_33_pay_cut covers gawker‟s payment method for its
writers, and how difficult this can be using gawker as the example of issues surrounding the pay per visit method.
 2. ITToolbox is very involved in the technology community, participating in a number of events around the
USA as well as sponsoring online events at the site 172.
171

3. The bloggers are all different but very respectful of each other, as far as what they have written as well
as providing support to each other.

4. Bloggers communicate with each other to discuss issues as well. ITToolbox has a number of community
functions, like the "hub" and others, to foster better relations between the bloggers, the owner of the platform
(toolbox), and the readers.

5. Toolbox has a full time moderator for comments at the company. The moderation of comments helps
keep the tone civil, for the most part, and the blogging environment safe and fun.

6. There is a deep sense of respect, and the bloggers are all experts in their fields. This makes it much
easier to do a working technology blog without running into the standard IT ego.

ITToolbox itself is highly respected and often used as a success story in media to show that social networking, blogging,
traditional web systems like forums are used to drive growth and advertising revenue. By making the writers partners
(through the page view payment system), the site's success is also the bloggers' success. What is also interesting is that
the people who work at ITToolbox are also experts in their field173, which adds to the ability of bloggers and the
ITToolbox staff to work well with each other in fostering the community. The ability to bring in and foster deeper
relations between the various bloggers and the overall community managers is one of the primary reasons for the
success of ITToolbox.

To maintain the high level of bloggers in its system, there is an ongoing active recruitment of new bloggers into the
system. Toolbox also actively works on developing its professional profile and membership within the technology
community as well174. It on average takes longer than a year to build up an appreciable sized audience, and many
bloggers do not have the patience to wait a year. By keeping a continual influx of bloggers across the technology
landscape, the content and context remains fresh on ITToolbox. As a sustainable business Toolbox has been recruiting
new bloggers on a routine basis. This helps support and extends the Toolbox system for bloggers by continually bringing
in fresh voices as other bloggers slowly decrease their participation in the network. The continual refresh of voices and
ideas enhances the entire eco system that has developed around Toolbox. This also supports the advertising revenue
driven model by offering opportunity for companies to be tied to a particular blogger for one off special projects like a
podcast or white paper. There is no focus on one or two brand name bloggers; there is simply an agreement as to terms,
payment, blogging frequency, and the ability to quit anytime you want. There is also an agreement that you blog in your
own self-chosen niche, and that you blog responsibly.

171
http://www.webcontent2008.com/chicago/news/ is just one of the events that ITToolbox is involved with, by being part of the
bigger community outreach and participating in the technology convention process, ITToolbox ensures that it is always visible as a
resource for technology managers and employees.
172
http://events.ittoolbox.com/default.asp?pt=e&mo=9&yr=2008&a=all is the September 2008 list of events being sponsored by the
site; they schedule events as far as a year in the future.
173
http://www.ittoolbox.com/Help/presscenter.asp?i=217 Andrew Johnson is a UNIX developer at ITToolbox who is presenting a
system Helios at the YAPC conference in Copenhagen.
174
http://www.prweb.com/releases/2007/11/prweb572666.htm what is interesting is how ITToolbox/toolbox has worked out
membership as milestones in their business process. By being able to put metrics around membership and content production,
ITToolbox is able to determine how well they are doing against a standard score card, or other metrics measurement system(s) that
they use internally.
The other advantage to Toolbox is that they do not rest on a good idea; they are in a continual process of development
to take advantage of trends in how the market works. For example, the new Vendor Directory 175 combines both vendor
information and hands-on responses back from people who use the technology. Therefore, even if the vendor spins a
great story, the hands-on reviews from people who write for ITToolbox will also be available for people who make
business-purchasing decisions. Not all vendors will be happy with the reviews they get, but the reviews come from
technologists that work in the field helping to enhance the prestige of Toolbox as an honest well rounded community.
The key to making this successful will be to ensure that bad news is not suppressed176, as that will usually end up
negatively influencing the people who are trying to cover news up.

The keys to success at ITToolbox are:

1. Engaged internal management, at all levels, with a high level of trust

2. An understanding of technology at all levels within the ITToolbox hierarchy

3. Willing to try new things and new ideas to drive more market value

4. Continual recruitment of new bloggers to keep information fresh

5. Multiple formats for data delivery, from blogs, wikis, e-mail, forums, white papers, and social
networking to address the user needs of those that use the web site

6. A working advertising-based revenue model and growth patterns that support that revenue model in
the long-term

Bloggers are encouraged to write about issues and concerns that influence the entire technology industry. Bloggers are
encouraged to present their own personal viewpoint on technology planet makes Toolbox a very strong competitor in
the blogging sphere. While there is not a lot of interaction with other blogging systems like you would find with a
WordPress installation (their code is custom blogging code), bloggers from Toolbox are often picked up and quoted by
Wired, Computer World, Information Week, and other more traditional media outlets on the internet. The ability of
bloggers to extend beyond the platform and help shape the bigger global conversation about what is happening in
technology, from an in-the-trenches view, is of extraordinary value to its readers.

Toolbox has hit the right model with the six things they do to keep successful. The key factor in the success, however, is
the understanding that bloggers come and go, and even when a blogger takes an extended break from the system they
are always welcome back to blogging community. Toolbox management is engaged with what is happening on the web
site, adding to the ability to remain on message. With the recent Toolbox buyout by Corporate Executive Board 177 for
$58.9 million, Toolbox should continue to grow well into the next decade while keeping all the best qualities about
sharing technology information. However, the results of the buyout have yet to be apparent for bloggers or employees
of Toolbox. Toolbox operates much as it has before the buyout, keeping the same unique culture and relevance in the
blogging world that they have enjoyed before the buyout.

175
http://www.ittoolbox.com/Help/presscenter.asp?i=209 is the press release for the new vendor directory system at toolbox, which
aims to combine marketing material along with honest user responses, blog entries, and user feedback into the system that the vendor
is selling.
176
http://news.cnet.com/8301-10784_3-9730579-7.html dell tried to get a blog entry removed that panned one of their products, it
backfired and caused a very large amount of controversy
177
http://www.ittoolbox.com/Help/presscenter.asp?i=179 press release on Corporate Executive Board Completes Acquisition of
ITToolbox, Extends Service with the Addition of a Professional Online Community
 TechNet and MSDN

Microsoft TechNet and MSDN systems are a collection of blogs across the entire Microsoft enterprise and products.
Employees who are working on projects are encouraged to blog about the products they are making, blogging as a form
of outreach from the developer or project manager to the population at large. This social outreach for Microsoft
products helps people find Microsoft oriented solutions to the problems that they are having. There are very large
numbers of individual blogs that are written by members of the company. There are also supporting niche sites, like
Channel 9,178 that cover what is happening with Microsoft technology and provide audio, video, and written
commentary about the people, the projects, and the technology within Microsoft. There is also Port 25 179, which is the
open source outreach site at Microsoft. One of the distractions to the Microsoft blogging system is that there is
confusion in the branding and purpose at times between TechNet and MSDN (the Microsoft Developers Network), but
both systems serve different needs. Both systems also serve two different audiences in what they are looking for on the
site. It is not always easy to distinguish between the two systems or their reason for existence as separate systems.

The MSDN180 (Microsoft Developers Network) is more about writing code using Microsoft products. The topics cover
general coding and coding practices. The reason that MSDN exists is to help developers find and learn how to use
Microsoft products to build something. TechNet181 is geared toward professionals across all levels of an organization,
from the help desk person to the purchasing decision maker in an organization. TechNet is where you will find
information about conferences and meet-up groups that help educate users on new products or older products that are
firmly in the middle of their life cycle. TechNet is aimed more at the day-to-day operator or system administrator than
aimed at developers. Because of that focus on using and administering Microsoft products, the tone, language, and
detail are very different from the MSDN site.

Each product that Microsoft makes also has its own web site that cross-links to TechNet and to MSDN, depending on
what people what to accomplish. Not all the web sites that Microsoft has are blogs or are even in the blog format. The
communication strings outside of Microsoft to get information are complex, varied, and suited to how a person wants to
get their information, e-mail, news, static web site, or blog. There are many ways that Microsoft tries to accommodate
people who are searching their web sites for information about the product or service that they seek to consume or
learn more about.

What is interesting about the two systems, along with supporting direct and indirect information sites is not just the
success of bloggers in the general noise that is the Microsoft web system but also the ability of Microsoft to encourage
and understand that blogging is a valuable outreach process for a company. Bloggers are usually given wide latitude in
what they can write about and are encouraged to write about some of the cooler aspects of the technology that they
are working with. This encouragement goes a long way to putting a human face on Microsoft and the people who work

178
http://channel9.msdn.com/ is a technology outreach that showcases people, technology, and the cool things you can do with
Microsoft technology
179
http://port25.technet.com/ is the Microsoft outreach to the open source community about Microsoft software, and how it can be
used in an open source project.
180
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/default.aspx is the home page for Microsoft Developers Network (MSDN)
181
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/default.aspx is the home page for Microsoft TechNet
for the company. For example, Mark Russinovich has his own blog on TechNet 182, and he is a recent acquire from
Sysinternals183. Reading his blog at Microsoft is much like reading his blog when he was on his own, running his own
company184. For a corporate blogging system, the Microsoft approach to helping people find information by segregation,
function, purpose, and technology comfort level helps the reader work out what they will want to read. What also
makes this successful is that bloggers are not only encouraged to blog, but that they are given a simple set of rules to
follow and minimal editorial interference in what they get to write about on their blogs. There is even a simple to use
and search master directory of Microsoft blogs so that you can get to the writer or subject matter easily 185. Not all
employees early on were so lucky with blogging at Microsoft. More than one vendor/permatemp employee lost their
job for posting something186 on the web that Microsoft believed could have been a security concern for the company187.
The reasons that the Microsoft blogging system is successful are:

1. There are many blogs bringing many different voices, speaking about technology and general geekery
with Microsoft products.

2. Different approaches in the Microsoft information delivery system allow people to find and consume
information in a way that they are most comfortable in using. There is no one route to information; there are
multiple routes, all leading to the information that people are looking for.

3. Many of the blog entries are written in a natural voice, with little editorial control obvious in the blog
entries.

4. The passion of the writers for the subject matter they are talking about is obvious.

5. The blogs answer questions about technology issues that people are having with products or services
offered by Microsoft.

As an example of a corporate blogging system where employees are given relative freedom to talk about the neat things
that they do in relationship to pushing the envelope of hardware, software, coding, coding practices, and other
information, the MSDN/TechNet blogging system developed by Microsoft is an example of when corporate blogging
works. There are also blogs outside of the Microsoft corporate system that take a different track to Microsoft, and in
many ways call attention to some of the issues that Microsoft has as a company. There can be no discussion of Microsoft
blog without mentioning two off-Microsoft blogs, MSFT Extreme makeover and Mini-Microsoft. Both of these blogs have
been on the internet for over a year and are in various stages of being used or shut down voluntarily. Mini Microsoft is

182
http://blogs.technet.com/markrussinovich/ is the address of Mark Russinovich‟s blog at TechNet, he discusses a lot of technology,
especially how to make it do more or sometimes neat unexpected things.
183
http://news.cnet.com/2100-1016_3-6095376.html Microsoft purchased Sysinternals in 2006, and has continued to give away the
"software for free" process that originally started with the suit of tools that Sysinternals built to manage windows servers.
184
http://blogs.technet.com/eileen_brown/ is an event manager‟s blog, so you can keep track of Microsoft events as a blog or
subscribe to it and stay in the loop if you are looking for a Microsoft event to attend.
185
http://www.microsoft.com/communities/blogs/portalhome.mspx is a master list of blogs at Microsoft so that a user can easily find
the author or subject matter that they are looking for.
186
http://www.michaelhanscom.com/eclecticism/2003/10/23/even-microsoft-wants-g5s/ is the blog entry that got Michael Hanscom
laid off from Microsoft where he worked as a vendor employee
187
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/business/146115_blogger30.html Michael Hanscom who was a vendor (Perma Temp) employee at
Microsoft was let go from his position for posting a picture of a shipment of Mac G5‟s that were on a loading dock on his personal
web log. The official reported reason for being let go was that posting the picture was considered a security issue at the time.
more about "creating a lean mean customer pleasing profit making machine188." MSFT extreme makeover has decided
to close their writing189 after being unable to meet the goals that they wanted to meet.

Both Mini and MSFT are assumed to be written by inside Microsoft employees who blog using Blogger system, the
Google blogging platform. They bring up issues, ideas, and concerns that are not addressed in the general Microsoft
corporate blogging system. While the goals are the same, the writing styles are very different, and the outcomes are
different. Mini has been informally credited with some minor changes at Microsoft, by being so prolific in talking about
them190. Mini has also been interviewed by Business Week191 and the Seattle Times192, discussing the relationship to
what Mini sees as the issues at Microsoft and how Management can address them. Mini has not been officially
discovered but provides an open and often interesting counterpoint to the official blog entries that are on the Microsoft
web site. Management so far has ignored193 Mini and the copycat blogs because the writers of those blogs are still
apparently working at Microsoft. At least one of the copycat blogs, MSFT Extreme Makeover, 194 has quit after running
the blog for a year.

The Microsoft blogging network and the associated side blogs is a rich eco system of the good and the bad at Microsoft.
The one distinct feature of Microsoft blogs is that while there are standards and practices on how to blog and what to
blog about, from there the blogger is able to talk about the technology, the things they are doing, or showcase
something wonderful without much oversight from Microsoft itself. From energetic computer programmers writing
about their latest and greatest code to blogs about best practices, consumer outreach, technology, and specialized sites
addressing a specific audience, as an eco system of corporate blogs, the Microsoft networks, MSDN, TechNet, and all the
other associated blogs is a success story in corporate blogging. Even off-Microsoft blogging, while not directly
encouraged, did not lead to a generally bad situation for those that chose to pursue Microsoft in ways outside of the
Microsoft Blogging network.

Google Blogs

188
http://minimsft.blogspot.com/ this is the tag line from the Mini Microsoft web site out on BlogSpot
189
http://msftextrememakeover.blogspot.com/ is the site of MSFT extreme make over on BlogSpot
190
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mini-Microsoft is the Wikipedia entry on Mini Microsoft that talks about some of the changes that he
might be able to take credit for at Microsoft.
191
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/05_39/b3952009.htm is the business week interview with Mini Microsoft, which
is an interesting article to read about Mini and how he views Microsoft.
192
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2003024110_
danny28.html is the Seattle times interview with Mini Microsoft
193
This assumption is made based on a number of conversations with people who work inside of Microsoft, including Microsoft legal,
the desire to hunt down Mini and others is not the issue, the issue is to give them less to argue about in many ways. By "returning
towels" that were taken away as a cost cutting measure, Microsoft was able to remove that rallying cry from Mini‟s blog. By removing
issues rather than trying to find the blogger is very interesting thing for Microsoft to do, but then Mini is an employee, and while
Hanscom was fired for posting pictures of the loading dock, there are at least four years between those events, showing that Microsoft
has changed a number of their approaches to internal bloggers.
194
http://msftextrememakeover.blogspot.com/ he quit blogging on his 100th post, basically citing that it was time to leave Microsoft
and go do something else as in his mind, Microsoft is a failed corporation.
Google uses blogs to talk about their products and release information to people about Google products, changes and
updates, or new products. Using the BlogSpot platform195 (that customers also use when they develop their own blog at
BlogSpot), Google blogs encompass just about everything you would want to know about Google. What makes the
Google blogging system distinct from the blogging system used by Microsoft is the hierarchy of how the blogs are
organized on the right hand navigation screen. What is also different is that Google blogs link to external web sites (sites
we are reading) and personal blogs run by company personnel. This difference is also part of the Google culture, in that
sharing information is usually good. However, Google has also fired bloggers for various reasons. Mark Jen 196 (covered
later in this book) was one of the more public firings for talking about what it was really like to be a Google employee.

Some sources that consider Google blogs was nothing but a Public Relations exercise197, there are also concerns because
early on Google blogs did not allow comments on their system as well198. Some Google blogs still do not allow comments
but do have a link-back process so that people who link to the official Google blog can have the benefit of the link on the
Google blog site. What is interesting is how much Google blogs have provided a window into Google and what they are
thinking, what they are launching, or how they are improving products. For some people within Google, this is the only
way that they know what is happening in other divisions199.

Google blogs are the default resource to find out what is happening with many of the projects and products that Google
is working on. As a way to let people know what is happening at Google, the blogs work out well. For more detailed
information, like how to program for a Google product, use of Google API's (Application Programming Interface) for
Google programs, diving deeper into Google blogs takes you to more of a composite wiki/blog system rather than how
Microsoft blogs. The Adwords API blog is a perfect example of this, and like Microsoft, they deliver information in
multiple formats to accommodate how people search for information. There is a blog, there is a forum/wiki, and there
are code examples available on the site200.

This multiple style of content delivery holds true for many of the technical areas. Some of the Google blogs are
specifically for Public Relations, while others provide only a general overview of a product or service from Google like
the Google Health blog201. Some Google blogs are also infrequently updated, making their content dubious at best, or
leaving gaps in information for people who are doing research on that particular project. The inattention to some of the
blogs can confuse or otherwise annoy people who are trying to find the latest information about a product or service,
and are unable to do so directly from Google. This also leaves outside voices to talk about a product or service, meaning

195
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/ is the home of the official Google blog
196
http://it.toolbox.com/blogs/ask-dave-it/google-fires-blogger-and-the-evils-of-gossip-and-innuendo-3083 covers the story about
Mark Jen and Google.
197
http://blogs.zdnet.com/micro-markets/?p=832
198
http://blogoscoped.com/archive/2007-10-18-n80.html this caused some to wonder if the removal of comments or the ability to
comment would somehow make Google blogs less of a blog and more of a public relations vehicle.
199
http://searchengineland.com/071018-062059.php
200
http://adwordsapi.blogspot.com/ is a perfect example of the multiple format content delivery; the blog is a highlight system for
what is new or what has changed, while the forum and API documents go more in-depth with what is happening with the API, how the
API can be used, and getting programmatic help with the API.
201
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/02/google-health-first-look.html is the example of a blog that is for information only, to dig
deeper into the subject, how to use it, why would you use it, that information is there. How to code for Google health information is
not available.
Google does not control the conversation. This is both a good thing and a bad thing. It is good because Google does not
control the conversation, and it is a bad thing because people start assuming things that may not be real or realistic.

What is interesting about Google is that like Robert Scoble and Microsoft, Google has copied the idea of having an
informal public face of the company by having Matt Cutts be the unofficial spokes-blogger and speaker for many of the
issues that influence or impact web masters and companies when working with Google202. He often follows what is
happening on the internet, in relationship to what other bloggers are talking about, and when he speaks, many people
listen203. He is considered the voice of Google204, regardless of how official or unofficial his position might be in the
blogosphere. Usually when a controversy breaks, it is Matt who is leading part of the damage control team on his
blog205, and on other blogs in comments206, to help control or undo the damage that was done in the public blogosphere.
What makes Google blogs successful are?

1. There are two types of blogs: blogs with nothing but an informational spin and blogs with technical
information about products that people use in their everyday life.

2. Blogger spokesperson Matt Cutts as an evangelist over what is happening at Google, who the world can
liaison with to find out more. He also takes on bigger issues and has the ability to influence change within the
company, in relationship to the issues that are raised by other bloggers. Because of this, he is extraordinarily
credible as a resource and as a source for information within in the Blogosphere.

3. Most blogs are written by real people, and it is obvious that it is their own voice, even when the blogs
are more informational than they are technical.

4. There are different levels of blogs, from simple to deeply technical, that people can use depending on
their own need and their own desire to know more. People are not immediately taken to a highly technical blog
or wiki.

As company blogs are an important viewpoint into the corporation, new products, and what people are doing, Google
blogs are following a winning formula. Google also profits from having an outspoken and credible person who is the
unofficial spokesperson for Google and many of their products. There is a varying level of detail that people can dive into
within their own level of comfort or expertise about a subject. Across the Google blog experience a person can find
everything from good programming examples, to easily consumed marketing materials for Google products. What is
different for a corporate blog through is that the Google blog network will also point to external blogs that are run by

202
http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/ is Matt‟s official blog, where he talks about all things that happen to influence Google and the web
spam division of the company.
203
http://www.onetipaday.com/2007/08/13/15-seo-tips-from-googles-matt-cutts/ this article was reprinted so many times about how to
do SEO for Google, that the influence of the speech altered how people did SEO (Search Engine Optimization) based on what he said.
204
http://battellemedia.com/archives/002917.php is a great interview where the idea of being Google‟s evangelist and public face is
discussed
205
http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/common-google-chrome-objections/ matt took great pains to ensure that what was being talked
about with a new web browser built by Google, Chrome, was properly discussed away from the hysteria that can often influence the
blogosphere as stories spin out of control across the internet. He usually takes a direct approach in how he handles issues, and is very
credible when it comes to delivering information about Google products.
206
http://techwag.com/index.php/2008/09/03/there-are-just-some-weird-things-in-chromes-eula/ this story was picked up by
Techmeme, and Matt went around to all the blogs that were on Techmeme for this subject and commented back. Changes were made
to the Chrome EULA because of the blogger outcry over section 11.1 of the original EULA when the contents were found to be
unusual as far as a browser EULA went.
Google employees or those that Google considers important. The external links to private employee blogs and other
blogs written by non-employees is also an important contrast to other corporate blogs on the internet. This is one of the
things that also help people when working with or wanting information about Google; the company realizes and
promotes other writers who are covering Google as well. Google blogs are the window on the company, and while
Google blogs have had their difficulties207 since they were started, overall, this window is an increasingly important way
to learn what is happening at Google and where Google products are going.

Robert Scoble

Robert Scoble has a long history of working with companies to demonstrate, market, sell, and engage both the company
and people with technology208. The Scobleizer blog is an extension and a crucial part of the evangelism that Robert has
used throughout his career to bring people closer to the shiny geeky toys, technologies, and fascinating information that
he comes across his blog. There is freshness in his voice, the obvious enthusiasm that he has toward new products. The
ability to talk about where technology and people intersect has made Robert one of the preeminent technology bloggers
in the field.

Robert was one of the first people to use and begin to understand the power of blogs and blogging, based on a tip from
Dave Winer and Dori Smith209. As his efforts to blog and using blogging as a tool to bring customers closer, he was
eventually noticed by Microsoft; where he worked on Channel 9 at Microsoft, part of the MSDN/TechNet blog grouping.
The Economist magazine called him a "spokes-blogger210" because of the difference that he made bringing the public
closer to Microsoft, although not without pain or controversy. Two of the more prominent controversies that
surrounded Robert at Microsoft were the "Clicks for Cash" issue211, where Robert looked at how Microsoft was paying
people and companies212 to use their search engine213, which has cropped up here and there as Microsoft tried to
expand their search engine reach and use. He also took on and talked about some of concerns about a takedown that
Microsoft Spaces did with a Chinese Blogger214. Robert called Microsoft in question on 215 shutting down a Chinese

207
http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/editors/22074/
208
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Scoble is Robert‟s Wikipedia entry and covers a lot of the early history that is generally
unknown to many of his readers.
209
http://www.7nights.com/asterisk/archive/2004/08/a-good-about-page#comment11 is a comment back on the web site 7nights. It is
a fully interesting story to follow about Robert and his early views from 2004.
210
http://www.economist.com/people/displayStory.cfm?story_id=3644293
211
http://tech.blorge.com/Structure:%20/2007/03/18/microsoft-rocked-by-live-search-cash-for-clicks-controversy/ where Robert
talked about shipping a better product, not bribing users to use something that they did not want to use in the first place.
212
http://www.alleyinsider.com/2008/5/microsoft_s_cash_back_google_search_killer_great_idea_won_t_work covers some of the
difficulties in engaging with clicks for cash with the search engine and why ultimately it was doomed to failure.
213
http://www.adweek.com/aw/content_display/our-products/in-print/digital/e3i79d689a151cb745ac3e07f7462d131b2 covers some of
the controversy in relationship to how Microsoft has tried to engage people to use their search engine.
214
http://venturebeat.com/2006/01/04/microsoft-and-bokee-mired-in-chinese-free-speech-controversy/ is a view into the controversy
about censoring a Chinese pro democracy blogger.
215
http://scobleizer.com/2006/01/03/microsoft-takes-down-chinese-blogger-my-opinions-on-that/ Roberts‟s blog entry on the Chinese
blogger at the request of the Chinese government216. Robert pointed out that Microsoft more or less hurt their
reputation over the censorship issue in America. He also pointed out that Microsoft needed to address the issue directly
with the American public217. However, at the time, there were similar events also happening at Yahoo, where the
information that Yahoo turned over lead to the arrest and imprisonment of a Chinese blogger218. The crisis looked bad
for both Microsoft and Yahoo, but when Robert dealt with it directly on his blog much to the chagrin of Microsoft at the
time.

When Microsoft took no punitive actions and did not fire Robert Scoble for his comment. That is the defining moment of
his legend; that is when he became everyone's evangelist. He suddenly and nearly overnight became someone who
brought a very humanizing side to Microsoft and showed that dissent between employees and employers could take
place without someone being fired219. Before this, there had been a number of bloggers who had been fired for drawing
the ire of their employers. By bringing the concern to the public eye and engaging the social community of blogs and
bloggers to help digest and discuss the issue, a very real concern came to the forefront. How does a company work with
a government that will randomly request that the company take down information or provide information about an
account holder? Do they say yes, or can they say no? The greater debate highlighted many of the issues about doing
business globally and helped define many of the conversations that were happening at the time.

Throughout this time, Roberts's blog remained on its own domain, scobilizer.com, and he used that and Channel 9 to
push Microsoft products. He often had video and audio that allowed people to see the very real and very human folks
behind Microsoft technology. Based on Robert's then innovative work, Channel 9 is still very successful drawing a large
audience daily. Channel 9 has also kept the original style that Robert helped pioneer and define for Channel 9. The
Channel 9 outreach that Robert worked on has proven its marketing and humanizing touch, since day one. The outreach
worked and worked well enough that other companies started emulating or trying to hire Robert directly. Eventually
though, as the offers kept coming in, Robert left Microsoft to go work at PodTech June 2006.

While rumors flew round the blogosphere that Robert had been fired for his previous stand and the relative
embarrassment of the China episode earlier, Robert felt compelled to write a blog entry that attempted to dispel the
rumors220. The decision to leave Microsoft for PodTech could have been very lucrative, if the company had taken off and

blogger take down, and he did compare Microsoft to Nazi‟s, and he did comment about how this could lead to a slippery slope where a
company becomes an agent of a government.
216
http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/jan2006/tc20060112_434051.htm there are a number of issues when doing
business in china, many of them center on the idea of censorship of the internet for internet and media companies. It is a fine line to
tow for many companies, and sometimes devastating mistakes happen.
217
http://scobleizer.com/2006/01/03/followup-to-chinese-thing-off-to-ces/ is Roberts‟s second review of the issue where he is more
concerned with reputational damage for Microsoft, and how this would look to the American public.
218
http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0909/p01s03-woap.html yahoo‟s involvement with the Chinese government lead to the arrest and
imprisonment of a Chinese blogger before the Microsoft issue, but the tension on the internet with jailed bloggers at that time had
inflamed sentiment around the blogosphere. The issues about the role and responsibility that corporations should have in protecting
free speech and what happens when information is turned over that resulted in adverse things happening to people who use the internet
for a cause.
219
http://sloantech.blogspot.com/2006/01/scoble-takes-on-microsoft-and-prc.html covers more information about the issues, and raises
some interesting ideas about alluding or hinting that Robert was ready to leave Microsoft
220
http://scobleizer.com/2006/06/10/correcting-the-record-about-microsoft/ Robert goes into why he left Microsoft for PodTech, and
attempted to dispel the rumors that he was fired because of his previous viewpoints on issues and concerns about actions that
Microsoft had done while he was there.
lived up to its promise221. Before the PodTech folded though, he moved on to Fast Company, who introduced changes
into his blog, from a new look and feel to the addition of advertising. The changes did not go over well with a segment of
the audience,222 and the controversy this time was short lived.

Given Robert's ability to state things, he has had an amazing influence223 on technology, people, and other geek
bloggers, serving as both inspiration and source of information about what is happening in the world of technology. He
has also done a lot to help legitimize technical blogging as a way to reach out to people and help bring people closer to a
company. The reasons for Roberts's success are:

1. He believes in what he is doing and is outspoken about what he is doing.

2. He has an ability to be in line first, so you can count on him for first breaking information.

3. He is an expert in his field and is generally respected for this, even when they run contrary to the
company's current actions.

There is a steady stream of information on his blog about the things that will happen or are happening now in the world
of technology. The confidence that he has in what he is doing and how the technology that he follows can help change
the world is something that is an important issue to note about Robert blog. The fresh approach that he has toward
each new web service, system, mobile device, or way to connect to other people is novel in the world of blogging. The
approach is refreshing in a world of facts about price, size, and weight. He goes into how he uses the product to bring
people closer. He does not worry about thousands of followers on Twitter224, or thousands of followers on Facebook225.
He is more interested in how those thousands of followers use the technology to grow closer over an issue, a
technology, or a new system. The perspective that Robert has on technology, blogging, and the rise of new media
systems like blogs, blogging, and team/group blogs he exerts a very large influence in the technology community. His
influence will continue to grow well into the future as Robert has successfully become a personal brand as well as a
blogger.

ProBlogger

221
http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/07/17/podtech-sells-for-less-than-500k/ is the final obituary on PodTech, selling for much less,
than people had invested in it.
222
http://it.toolbox.com/blogs/managing-infosec/blogging-at-work-who-owns-what-22012 points to two blogs that actively talked
about the site redesign that was done when Robert joined Fast Company.
223
http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/04/20/who-are-the-top-tech-bloggers/all-comments/ Techcrunch article on who are the top 100
tech bloggers
224
http://venturebeat.com/2008/05/29/twitter-dont-blame-ruby-blame-scoble/ one of the jokes running around the blogosphere, and
now that twitter has limited followers to 2000, was that the 26,000+ followers of Robert Scoble was somewhat responsible for the
outages that twitter has been having.
225
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=501319654 Robert has a few under 5000 followers on Facebook in line with Facebook‟s
restrictions on the number of people who will be allowed to follow someone.
ProBlogger is part of the B5Media media network226, and the primary writer is Darren Rowse. Darren is a co-founder of
the B5Media network and has been blogging since 2002227. While he is part of a "network of blogs," he is also a single
blogger at ProBlogger. Much like other media systems, like the MSDN and TechNet blog networks, each blogger has
their own space but is part of a major chain of blogs. The ProBlogger blog, though, is unique as it is focused on one core
issue: how to write better and how to make money off your blogging abilities. The focus works in driving people to the
site because many new bloggers are looking for a way to increase readership, learn how to get more readers, or in
general expand their own small blogs into something bigger. The ProBlogger web site is the one site that is almost the
authoritative clearinghouse for all things that a blogger needs to know to be successful. There are many ways of finding
advice on the internet, and some of that advice is even interesting228 or viable, but the work that is done at ProBlogger is
based on their own experience.

For many people, making money off a blog can be an inexact science, and many new bloggers start off thinking that they
will get rich overnight, not realizing the level of work and effort that goes into continually writing at a blog or the
expenses associated with blogging. This is one of the myths that ProBlogger tries very hard to dispel within their pages.
ProBlogger even wrote a book about how to make money blogging, using their experience as a basis for the book 229. The
book is based on the experiences that both Darren Rowse and Chris Garrett have learned about making money from
blogging. Adding to the book, the web site for ProBlogger averages twelve thousand230 visitors a day, all in to find out
how they can make more money, have a better blog, be more widely read, or just how to break into the business.
Putting more value into the web site for those that want to try to attempt a Professional Blogging path, ProBlogger runs
a very active job board for people looking for a pro blogging job or people offering a pro blogging job.

There are some caveats to the job board, though, that are worth noting 231. You want to make sure that you and the
blogging system, group, or editor you are looking at is compatible232 with the things you want to write about. This caveat
is not fully disclosed on the board, but like any other job you will have, professional blogging requires that the writer be
disciplined, meet deadlines, and meet the editor's expectations on what will be delivered. ProBlogger does not go that
deeply into the relationship between blogger and editor, or how those relationships will work over time. However, it is
still interesting to have the resource of the ProBlogger job board as a way to extend a blogging career.

226
http://www.b5media.com/ lists all the blogs and writers that they currently employee, Darren‟s name is absent from the list of
bloggers, but on the management page here http://www.b5media.com/about/
227
http://www.problogger.net/about-problogger/ is Darren Rowse‟s bio and information page on ProBlogger.
228
http://technology.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/tech_and_web/the_web/article2054733.ece is almost a tongue in cheek article on how
to get rich blogging, but many bloggers will never meet any of the criteria for this, or have the ability financially to withstand a
lawsuit.
229
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0470246677/105-7677854-0666040?ie=UTF8&tag=0010-
20&linkCode=xm2&camp=1789&creativeASIN=0470246677 Amazon carries the book, and you can buy it here.
230
http://www.sitemeter.com/?a=stats&s=sm1problogger site meter statistics for ProBlogger
231
http://www.blogherald.com/2008/07/10/blogger-jobs-what-are-they-looking-for/ covers some of the reasons that folks are out there
looking for bloggers, you just have to make sure that you are doing is what you can do.
232
My own experience with the idea of working for an editor was less than stellar, so you have to make sure that everything is spelled
out, including viewpoint as to what is being blogged about. Moving from your own blog to a professional situation is a very different
environment, and something you should watch out for when making a pro blogging deal. This is not to say that it cannot be done, but
to make sure of what you are getting into, and if you have the time and energy to devote to professional blogging.
In an interview233, Darren talks about the early days of blogging and how he stumbled upon the things that have made
him successful. He is also very honest about a number of reasons that bloggers go into blogging and the pitfalls of
blogging. He is also honest about people are not realistically going to get rich quick or find that they have suddenly
engaging with a public. Blogging is hard work, and something that you have to apply yourself at to become successful.
Darren is always on message when it comes to blogging, that it is hard work and that you have to engage with the social
public, that you will not get rich over night. Darren does set an example and helps to extend his credibility, and
believability in his approach to making money from blogging, because he has field tested everything he talk about.

The key to ProBlogger is that they focus on the things you can do to make your blog better. They cover topics like better
writing, how to monetize your web site, how to use associated systems like friend feed, Flickr, AidRSS, and social
networking sites. They offer a source of practical experience in these systems, as well as a host of excellent tips on how
to improve your blogging exposure. As a resource for better blogging, the site definitely has much to offer any blogger,
either just getting started or fully professional. They also try out the things that they talk about to help build additional
credibility for the techniques that they advocate. The keys to success to ProBlogger as a standalone blog is that they:

1. They are talking about making something better and continually remain on focus with the subject
matter.

2. They often talk about better ways to extend, monetize, and integrate your blog into systems that can
drive readership.

3. Their subject matter is appropriate for everyone, from just getting started bloggers to professional
bloggers attempting to get more out of their existing blog.

4. The writer is an acknowledged expert in the field of blogging, meaning they have a lot of credibility
when it comes to writing because they have been successful doing it or have tried it themselves.

5. The writers are passionate about what they are writing, and that passion shows with every article that
they have, from those written by Darren, to the guest bloggers on the site.

6. They are unique; no one else comes close to the prices or quality of blog job postings on their site.

As a resource for new bloggers, ProBlogger is one of the best blogs about blogging and making money from blogging
that can be found on the internet. They are passionate about what they write about and have excellent writing skills,
with the ability to tell a solid story backed with data from their own experience. They are also interested in making the
social fabric better, helping bloggers with not just making money but finding their own blogging voice along the way.
With a lot of attention to detail, the overall quality of their writing and web site, the job board, as well as the other
information that they provide, ProBlogger is an excellent example of a good single blogger within a bigger corporate
blogging system that controls their own domain. With the addition of a book and other methods of getting the word out
about how to be a better blogger, ProBlogger is a site that will continue to grow as blogging extends into other areas of
the world. ProBlogger has credibility that was built up over time and consistent excellence in information. Along with
services that aim to help people meet or get more professional in their blogging efforts, ProBlogger is the example of
how to write, market, and monetize an individual blog.

233
http://websearch.about.com/od/bookandproductreviews/a/darrenrowse.htm is an interview with Darren where he basically covers
the same territory that he covers on his blog. By remaining on message all the time, Darren is able to extend his credibility into many
aspects of owning and running a blog.
 Beth Kanter

Beth Kanter is one of the few people who has taken the idea of mission, combined it with blog and other new media
tools, and then started teaching non-profits on how to take these tools and use them to reach their goals234. Those goals
can be as simple as raising awareness to using new media, blogs, wikis, and video to help raise funds for a cause. With
the focus on helping non-profits, Beth has worked very hard to teach groups to best leverage the new media systems
that are in the blogosphere. The approach that she uses is part social networking and part "getting the message out."
There are many good causes out there, but by leveraging the social aspects of new media, connections, relationships 235,
and new media systems, she has demonstrated the ability to leverage those systems to raise awareness and money for
the causes that she serves.

Beth started blogging in 2003 and since then has risen to be in the top blogs. She is twenty-ninth on the list of the fifty
most influential women bloggers236. In an interview with IT Conversations237, Beth talks about her approach to teaching
people how to use social media to support the goals of a specific cause, which helps set the tone and idea of what she
strongly believes in. Moreover, the approaches to fundraising, social media, blogging, and new media that she talks
about are also the approaches that she uses. By demonstrating how her approaches work by having real data to back up
her assertions, she immediately obtains credibility for what she is talking about on her blog. The ability to combine both
facts with usability issues is what helps her achieve her expertise and credibility in the blogosphere.

By teaching non-profits, Beth provides an example and excellent resources for non-profits to be successful in blogging
and raising money using social media. Beth focuses on the ideas that the initial foray into new media (blogging and social
media) it is ok to start off small, with an approachable goal. She uses an example of raising four hundred dollars for a
specific issue, and then using contact lists, e-mail, wikis, and blog entries highlighting the idea, and help people donate
money. She also points out that it is necessary to keep people informed how the fund raising is going, and eliciting
further support across the internet. The idea of teaching small projects for discreet goals is part of the success that she is
able to show to the groups she works with. Rather than taking on a huge monumental project, the "start small, get a
quick win" approach also appeals to non-profits who are cash strapped and need money for a specific project. The
"project approach" also helps teach the non-profit the viability of fundraising using social media. And with incremental
small wins, as confidence grows, and the social networks they use grow, the more likely a non-profit is to use the

234
http://beth.typepad.com/ is Beth Kanter‟s blog on social media and how nonprofit organizations can use new media to further their
social goals
235
http://beth.typepad.com/beths_blog/2008/08/how-long-does-i.html At Gnomedex 08, Beth challenged the audience to provide 2500
dollars to send Cambodian kids to college. In 90 minutes, Beth was able to exceed her goals, meaning she would have a deeper reach.
By leveraging her connections and relationships, as well as where she was, the mission of raising money for a specific cause was
accomplished during her speech.
236
http://www.bethkanter.org/about.htm is Beth‟s about page that covers much of her amazing blogging career, how she got started,
and what she focuses on.
237
http://itc.conversationsnetwork.org/shows/detail3293.html is an interview with Beth Kanter about the use of social media for non-
profits.
process over again. If you are raising money for Toys for Tots, then you can use new media to help drive the campaign238
by providing information, getting people to talk about the project, the benefits, how the money will be used, and what
people can gain from donating239.

Beth is also not afraid to experiment with different kinds of technology to see how well they will work, or how they can
be leveraged to provide for a community or cause. In 2006, she used Second Life to broadcast a show as an experiment
in using virtual reality to deliver a message240. Colleges, companies, and other groups have used virtual worlds to help
establish a presence in the virtual world241 that co-exists with their presence in the physical world. These virtual
presences have been successfully used the use of virtual worlds and physical worlds242 to help build community or
provide an environment for groups, causes, and systems.

A slide show of her approach and how she uses new media is summed up in her story of supporting Cambodian orphans
and families in improving their lives243. The most dynamic example of her ability to leverage her social network to
accomplish a specific goal is the story of how she was able to raise ninety thousand dollars for Cambodian Orphans by
leveraging her social network to keep her on top of the fundraising244 effort245. The ability to gather people on a global
basis for a specific cause is the major strength in Beth's approach to using and then teaching what works and what does
not work with new media.

What makes Beth successful is:

1. Her passion about the causes that she takes on, Creative Commons and the Cambodian people

2. Her willingness to help others achieve their goals when it comes to using new media to accomplish a
task

3. Her ability to write and speak on the subjects that matter to her

238
http://www.livingstonbuzz.com/2008/08/21/beth-kanter-on-social-media-for-change/ covers some of the ways that new media can
be used to effect social change. This is an interesting interview because Beth goes into detail on how to use media to accomplish a
goal or task.
239
http://blog.chipin.com/2007/04/02/wall-street-journal-article/ covers the use of widgets for fund raising, and how a simple widget
helped her raise money to send a person to college in Cambodia.
240
http://beth.typepad.com/beths_blog/2006/07/reflections_on_.html
241
http://www.fastcompany.com/articles/2008/08/interview-philip-rosedale.html approaches the viewpoint of having business
meetings in second life as you would have around a conference table. The idea of presence in these virtual worlds is somewhat
contentious, as companies both join and leave second life or other virtual worlds after failing to establish what they were thinking they
were going to establish.
242
http://freshtakes.typepad.com/sl_communicators/ covers some of the cross over technology between virtual and physical worlds
that companies will use to engage with people.
243
http://gsp4good.wikispaces.com/ is the slide show without audio can be found. While the slide show is a bit dry, and it is much
better with her giving her speech, this is the next best thing to learn more about how Beth uses social networking and new media to
deliver a message that achieves results.
244
At her Gnomedex 08 speech, Beth had made specific reference to people watching her stats or current percentage donated for fund
raising, and then leveraging their knowledge of Beth and her causes to raise money from many countries around the world. The ability
to leverage deeper networks to raise money for a cause was the specific reason that she was able to win this award in raising money.
245
http://gsp4good.wikispaces.com/ discusses the approach and the way that she was able to use the social fabric of blogging and
other technologies to further her goals of winning the contest Global Causes for America‟s Giving Challenge in January 2008
 4. Her ability to mobilize a group of people using social media to accomplish a specific task or goal (like
raising money for a cause)

5. The use of her voice to help drive social change and reach out to other generations, like Gen Y. 246

By leveraging her voice, her causes, and her willingness to experiment, Beth Kanter has become one of the more
influential bloggers in the world for non-profits. By having a specific mission or goal, the things that she talks about, and
her willingness to teach and take on causes has helped provide countless hours of expertise to non-profits that might
not have otherwise been able to raise money for a cause. The uniqueness to Beth's approach centers on how she uses
her social network to accomplish social change247. Beth also supports groups like Creative Commons248 that promotes
the ability to license information according to the developers or creators wishes. She also supports causes that have a
direct relationship to people, like supporting Cambodian Orphans where she tests out many of her fund raising
approaches. She has gone out, tested, and tried249 each of the approaches that she advocates, with examples of how to
accomplish a specific task250. It is her willingness to experiment with new tools and techniques and then report on those
experiments that has helped deepen and define her relationships with others in the social media space.

ICanHasCheezeburger

I Can Has cheeseburger is one of the fastest growing blogs on the internet. In a Gnomedex 2008 speech, they were
estimating that they were well on their way to a billion page views on their site for 2008 251. LOLCats and the whole
LOLCats meme are relatively new. Starting in 2007, the original idea of the web site started with an email with a cat
captioned in LOL Speak 252. This started the idea of the web site, and since then, the entire LOLCats meme has been
driven by users submitting pictures of animals that are captioned in some way. Some of the memes are stickier than
others, like the walrus and the bucket, or the ceiling cat memes that make up some of the humor that is LOLCats. The
whole LOLCat Phenomena can be pointed to a site called 4chan 253 that originally had a "caturday" on Saturday with

246
http://www.livingstonbuzz.com/2008/08/21/beth-kanter-on-social-media-for-change/ covers some of her views on blogging across
generations.
247
http://philanthropy.com/live/2008/07/tight_budget/ this interview covers many of the issues of donor burn out, and how new media
can quickly exhaust donors and sponsors with the continual need to be on line, and constantly promoting the cause that they are
seeking donations for. As well as how to use Facebook to help, build a community around a Facebook group.
248
http://creativecommons.org/weblog/entry/7806 discusses some of her work about the widget that she uses to raise money, as well
as how creative commons has helped her reach her goals with non-profits and social media outreach.
249
http://beth.typepad.com/beths_blog/2008/07/nptech-summary.html covers some of what she has learned about how new media and
new social media can be used, and how to rise above the general noise level that the internet can be when many are competing for
coverage of the same issue. It is easy for someone to become drowned out in the general noise level and not be able to appropriately
pitch the message or raise the funds needed.
250
http://barbararozgonyi-wiredprworks.com/2008/06/12/new-media-the-wizard-behind-the-curtain-by-beth-kanter-notes-takeaways/
covers one of her speeches where she goes into the use and demonstrates the use and the results of one of her projects.
251
http://techwag.com/index.php/2008/08/22/morning-gnomedex-08-session/ covers much of the mornings Gnomedex 08 speakers.
252
http://blog.wired.com/underwire/2008/04/behind-the-me-3.html covers the idea of how LOLCats, and I Can has cheeseburger started
off.
253
http://www.4chan.org/ is an image-based forum, and while not a blog, this is not a safe for work web site, and the site is not
people posting nothing but cat pictures 254. Using the established meme, and turning into something new that more
people could connect with is the charm and the reason that ICanHasCheezeburger took off the way that it did.

The mass appeal of ICanHasCheezeburger is that the meme is universal, in that the images and speech are approachable
by anyone, at just about any age. Kids and adults will find the whole thing amusing, and the meme has a strength that
goes well beyond the ICanHasCheezeburger web site. That is part of the charm of funny cat pictures, and a bigger reason
behind the explosive growth of the web site255. People have been taking pictures of their pets since cameras became
cheap and easy to use. The approachability of digital photography, the ubiquitous nature of digital cameras around us
means that pictures can be taken on the fly.

The idea of using a caption for what the pet is thinking is also not a new phenomenon. However, it took the
ICanHasCheezeburger web site and the development of a captioning widget to bring the whole meme together so that
anyone can use the system to show off pictures of their cats, dogs, and other animals doing funny things. The universal
appeal of the web site and its content helps. The approach is easy, and it all runs off a blogging platform. That is the
nature of blogging; the software is simply a platform for someone to do something at his or her leisure.
ICanHasCheezeburger extends the platform to support the entire widget, captioning, and presentation process for the
things that people create.

The meme has been so popular that blog entries have been written about how to LOL Speak 256 and LOL Cat grammar257.
The addition of wikis, documents, and other blog entries on how to caption, how to create, and how to take good
pictures of pets supports the web site and the creation of content by users. Other viewpoints on the LOL Cats theme
have brought out the idea that the entire meme can be expanded into almost any situation 258. ICanHasCheezeburger is
also exploring with the meme to see if they can recreate the meme in new ways by launching extra sites like, LOLDogs,
Matching Faces, LOL News and Politics, Office Graph Fun, Fail pix and videos, and Engrish sites, all based on the same
blogging platform and captioning widget259.

With the expansion of the initial concept of ICanHasCheezeburger to include additional types of pictures they have
significantly expanded their readership. By keeping pictures within a niche, they do not dilute their main brand with off
topic pictures but allow people with different interest to participate on specific web sites. Some pictures might cross
over between two of the web sites, each web site is focused on a particular part of the LOL Meme. Adding additional

moderated in any form, and just about anything goes on the web site.
254
http://www.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,1821435-2,00.html has the story of 4chan, where the entire LOLCats
phenomena got started with the idea of "caturday" where people would post funny cat pictures on the site. It is thought that the
original picture that set off the idea of ICanHasCheezeburger was originally from the 4chan web site, although that has been disputed,
and cannot be proved one way or the other.
255
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB118798557326508182.html
256
http://speaklolspeak.com/?t=anon is the wet paint based lolspeak wiki that goes into the whole process of developing, using, and
learning the entire art of Lolspeak. This site is billed as the definitive Lolspeak Dictionary, and is amusing to visit.
257
http://www.dashes.com/anil/2007/04/cats-can-has-gr.html is a treaty on lol speak and lol grammar that is a serious look at how to
construct a proper LOL Cat caption.
258
http://laughingsquid.com/roll-your-own-lol-not-just-for-cats-anymore/ shows many of the more interesting creative uses for the lol
cat meme and its application to just about any other kind of media or source
259
http://icanhascheezburger.com/ points to all these sites, while all of them are new, the idea is to expand the meme into other areas
that people will find amusing, and generating more page views for different kinds of content, to appeal to different audiences.
sites also helps them when they discover a meme; they can develop a new site, and see how far that new site will go,
and what kind of audiences the web site will draw260 261.

ICanHasCheezeburger has some unusual aspects when it comes to how they run their blogging system. They are hosted
at WordPress, which is used for very large web sites that need the major datacenter and bandwidth to support their web
site. Many sites have their sites hosted by them, and most of these web sites are blog based on the WordPress software
blogging platform262. They also time their releases onto the front page to coincide with when people are likely to visit
the web site263. They have also built out the social components of the web site to help further develop community 264 so
that people can share what they find, tag the pictures, and share the pictures with other media sites like Digg, Stumble
Upon, and others. Considering the site has been in operation since 2007, the growth curves that the site has enjoyed
have been huge, and in line with developing a super massive blogging site that is able to generate income for its
investors265. In July of 2007, Ben Huh became the CEO of ICanHasCheezeburger, buying the entire site for 2 $million266,
freeing the creators of the site to just work on the site and leave the management headaches behind267.

The reasons that the ICanHasCheezeburger site is wildly successful are:

1. They saw a previously released meme and figured out a way to improve it using blogging, tagging, and
social networks

2. There was no logical collection of LOLCat pictures anywhere on the internet until the
ICanHasCheezeburger site went live. They were able to collect these pictures from other sites, tag them, and
work on the social networking side of the business.

3. They worked on a widget and built it to caption pictures so that anyone could use any picture they had
and make a caption for it. The end result was that anyone from a five-year-old to an elderly person could use the
site and show off their creative talent to family, friends, and complete strangers.

While the site continues to grow and draw more visitors, more page views, and generates more money from advertising,
there is no reasonable expectation that the LOLCats phenomena will go away any time soon. The massive growth in the
web site shows that there is room for a meme that was previously well-known but had not been as accessible to people

260
http://www.internetnews.com/bus-news/article.php/10791_3714326_2
261
http://icanhascheezburger.com/about/ is the sites about page where they go into a somewhat interesting review of how they were
started, and what ended up happening with their site. As well as the niche within the LOLCats phenomena that they were able to fill
overall.
262
http://inphotos.org/flickr-blog-now-hosted-to-wordpresscom/ being hosted at wordpress.com is a badge of honor that the blog you
are running has become so big, that it would be difficult to get hosting anywhere else.
263
http://www.businessweek.com/smallbiz/content/jul2007/sb20070713_202390.htm covers much of the internal workings at the
company
264
http://thephoenix.com//Boston/Life/55486-cuteness-surge/
265
http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/08/18/engrishfunny-is-newest-site-in-lolcats-empire/ talks about the money that the site is
making, on order of 80 cents per page view.
266
http://www.smh.com.au/news/web/bigger-than-ben-huh/2008/07/18/1216163118049.html
267
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13772_3-10023722-52.html covers the history of ICanHasCheezeburger from the Gnomedex 08 talk.
What is amusing is the anecdotal story that was given at the speech, and talked about at Gnomedex that "imagine telling your investors
they just bought a web site that features funny pictures of cats."
before the ICanHasCheezeburger web site. The addition of social networking components, the development of
community, and the development of the caption widget simply threw the web site ICanHasCheezeburger over the top,
in relationship to anyone else who has a similar site268. The ease of use and the ability to do this in a quick, easy, and
continual manner has made ICanHasCheezeburger very dependent upon user submissions. If the web site has an
Achilles heel, it is the dependence upon users uploading content to the site on a regular basis. ICanHasCheezeburger has
a large number of copycat sites, and the Engrish site is a copycat site of other sites that show the general misuse of
English in other countries.

The meme might become old and tired at some point, so the expansion of ICanHasCheezeburger into other memes, and
other ways for people to express themselves is a good business backup. There is also the potential at some point that
the site will alienate its regular readers269, but that is unlikely as the niche they chose was already well-developed and
had a very long run before the ICanHasCheezeburger site went live. As long as the web site can keep up with user
submissions, remain funny, and keep on developing with new social technologies, ICanHasCheezeburger will be around
for a very long time.

Techcrunch

No discussion of Top blogs would be complete without coverage of Techcrunch. Few other blogs out there carry the
weight and ability to generate page views for a company as much as Techcrunch can. It is well known that if you have
new technology and Techcrunch covers you, they can literally send thousands of people your way the minute it hits the
cover. Techcrunch is a regular feature of aggregation systems like Techmeme, Digg, Stumble upon, and others.
Techcrunch was started in 2005 and is tightly focused on covering new products, new technology, or new companies
that are doing something interesting. Michael Arrington and Erick Schonfeld edit Techcrunch, and both of them are not
afraid of controversy. Michael Arrington has been involved in multiple controversies270 on the Internet; either by choice
or by being dragged271 into them that has helped Techcrunch become one of the largest technology blogs in the USA.
Controversies also help bring in page views, resulting in more internet fame for the blog.

Like other top blogging systems, Techcrunch has deep roots in both their subject matter, startups, and in the blogging
system that they use. All their senior editors and their CEO come from a media background. All have worked in some

268
http://aha-moments.com/2008/08/i-can-has-social-network-from-meme-to-community/ goes into more of the LOLCats phenomena.
269
http://aha-moments.com/2008/08/i-can-has-social-network-from-meme-to-community/ covers the idea that no one should mess
with the web site. That the web site is what it is, and this is what the readers expect to see when they get there. If they changed the
look and feel, or how the web site interacted with people, they could stand to lose what has become a lucrative business because they
did not consider their users.
270
http://thenextweb.org/2007/12/14/arrington-and-sethi-throwing-mud/ covers some of the issues surrounding Blognation (that is
covered later on in this book), and how the relationship between Michael
Arrington and Sam Sethi was used to help raise the issues and concerns about the failure of Blognation as a company.
271
http://www.crunchnotes.com/2007/11/09/blogworld/ is an interesting if bizarre story of how Michael Arrington was supposed to be
at a convention in Las Vegas, and was on the bill, even though he had not confirmed that he would actually be there. Rather the issue
exploded when someone said that he was blowing off the convention, when in reality he did not say that he would go.
form at other web sites as writers, managers, or as editors272. With the focus that they have on technology and the
strong management background in technology and media, they have seen rapid and phenomenal growth since 2005,
quickly rising to be part of the Technorati Top 100 blogs. Techcrunch currently gets more than five million page views
per month273 and is one of the top article contributors to Techmeme. They are also number four274 in the PC Magazine
"Must Read Every Day" list, meaning that the blog is not just authoritative but one of the better-written and interesting
blogs out there. They have also expanded into other countries, like Techcrunch UK,275 to help focus on specific markets
in specific countries. Being in front of the pack though, means that Techcrunch and its owners also have to deal with a
number of issues about companies trying to pitch to them.

Most of the issues with Techcrunch center on their outspoken and often charismatic leader Michael Arrington. Because
he is the public face of the company in many respects, he is considered a "king maker276" when it comes to a new
startup. If Techcrunch covers your startup, you will get traffic. If it does not, then it will make it harder to get traffic.
Being on Techcrunch is almost a rite of passage when it comes to getting your company before the public. While many
local bloggers will cover startups in their area, no one has the same power as a Techcrunch review. Often, this can lead
to complications, like people busting into his apartment trying to get media coverage for their product 277.

There are also conflicts when writers for Techcrunch or one of its affiliates gets in trouble with the bigger newspapers278.
Conflicts surround Techcrunch and the site thrives on the controversy that surrounds some of the actions the company
takes, like publishing internal information about twitter279 that was sent to them by a hacker 280. Some companies have
concerns about sponsoring Techcrunch when it is not assured that Techcrunch will give a company a fully positive
review281. These are some of the issues and concerns that have dogged Techcrunch in both in popular media like the
Gilmour Gang282 and other outlets283. Eventually any discussion about Techcrunch also leads to a discussion on Crunch

272
http://www.techcrunch.com/about-techcrunch/ Techcrunch‟s about page goes into the people who are running the company, what
they do and some of their background in media.
273
http://advertisers.federatedmedia.net/explore/?site=techcrunch
274
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2319421,00.asp
275
http://uk.techcrunch.com/ focuses on a European audience than the regular Techcrunch.
276
http://www.fastcompany.com/articles/2008/05/interview-arrington.html
277
http://www.wired.com/techbiz/people/magazine/15-07/ff_arrington?currentPage=all this is one of the more interesting stories about
people trying to get his attention for a product.
278
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/28/opinion/28pubed.html?_r=2&oref=slogin&pagewanted=all&oref=slogin covers a freelancer
that was writing for crunchgear and the NY Times who wrote two articles about mobile gear, and then the conflict of interest was
noted. Since Techcrunch is deeply embedded in promoting startups, new stuff, and new companies as well as Michael Arrington‟s
investment in some of them, this can cause problems down the road for some of the writers for Techcrunch.
279
http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/07/16/twitters-internal-strategy-laid-bare-to-be-the-pulse-of-the-planet/
280
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/pda/2009/jul/15/twitter-hacked-techcrunch-defends
281
http://kalsey.com/2006/06/be_a_sponsor_and_techcrunch_changes_their_tune/ talks about coverage on Zoho an online document
system that was initially panned by Techcrunch but then thanked as one of their sponsors. While this is not necessarily a conflict, the
product might not have met all the criteria for Techcrunch to call it good; to thank their sponsors is also normal.
282
http://www.crunchnotes.com/2006/05/29/on-conflicts-of-interest-and-techcrunch/
283
http://www.crunchnotes.com/2006/11/01/techcrunch-bashing-heats-up/
Notes and what role Crunch Notes has in the bigger Techcrunch blogging group. At times what happens on Techcrunch
on other media sources is about building out the mythos that Techcrunch is the center of the technology reporting
universe284. The things that make Techcrunch a success are:

1. They are an expert in their field, both in terms of media and in terms of understanding startups, their
needs, and how they work. They have deep roots in technology, news, journalism, and venture funding.

2. They have hired excellent writers; with their backgrounds in journalism, they have the experience to
write great articles discussing a product.

3. They have branched out from just Techcrunch into other sites and the Techcrunch 50 expo, where new
startups can show off their products. The Techcrunch 50 has become the must-go-to convention for many
startups to show off what they can do.

4. They are ambitious and driven. They know what they want to do and have very good ideas on how to
get there.

There are many reasons why Techcrunch has become the site that it has become. Like other sites, there is a strong
editorial process with excellent writers. One of the founders is a charismatic leader and character who does not shy
away from controversy, while the CEO and other co-founder are all top in their class when it comes to working in media,
both traditional and new media. They also have the ability to handle a crisis or controversy well when it comes to the
media. Old media has also helped them become who they are. Techcrunch has gotten where it is today because of its
interaction with the media, in addition to the glowing reviews given to them by the media." There is also the real idea
that when Techcrunch speaks, many people listen. The credibility that they have built for themselves, based on their
backgrounds, past affiliations, and often with full disclosure of whom they have funded and supported in terms of
startups is also an important device for building their credibility.

They write about startups, new products, and cool things that are happening in the technology world. They also invest in
those products, use them, and generally have a pattern down that allows them to be the top in their field. What is
interesting is that even while they are panned in some media circles and adored in others, the fact remains that what
they think is going to happen in the blogging world stands a very good chance of happening 285. Techcrunch is deeply
embedded in new media, how it works, and what new media can be used for in a larger context to support business.
While the vision of new media differs from Gawkers, or even from other major sites like Toolbox, Techcrunch is a
formidable vehicle for learning about new technology, new companies, and new ways of doing things.

Gawker Media

What makes Gawker media interesting as well as a success story is the view they take toward blogging as a business.
Gawker Media is run as a business to sell ads286, while it is the bloggers and the content they develop that helps drive
traffic. What is out of the ordinary though is the approach that the owner of Gawker, Nick Denton, has in his approach.

284
http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/01/28/some-things-need-to-change/
285
http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/03/28/paidcontent-vs-techcrunch-two-visions-of-bloggings-future/
286
http://www.iwantmedia.com/people/people49.html
Of all the blogs out there, short of a missing business plan287, the blog group is probably one of the most tightly
controlled media groups out there. While he tightly controls the numbers of the business, he also (in contrast to many
blogs) leaves all his blog metrics available to anyone who wants to see them 288. This is an unusual thing for blogs to do;
usually their actual visit numbers are tightly controlled, while the owners talk about money freely. Gawker turns this on
its head and discusses statistics freely for anyone to see while money is a closely-guarded secret.

Nick Denton is the owner of the Gawker Media Group, and from most public records, he is seen as either idealist or slave
driver289. Nick Denton is also is calculating when he decides if one of his media sites should remain open, based on the
number of people who visit the sites over time290. The public has a love-hate relationship with Nick, as much as some of
his bloggers do. Some bloggers and editors have lasted less than a day 291; others have been with the blogging group
since day one. Nick proves to be a complex mix of personalities, depending on what you read about him. He is a slave
driver, a monomaniacal business owner292, or an astute observer of the human space 293, with an innate ability to
understand what works and what does not work has helped propel Gawker Media to be one of the strongest blog
networks out there.

Gawker Media was founded in 2002294 as part of an outgrowth of two previous startups 295. Originally, Nick wanted to
purchase blogger.com,296 but his board of advisors at Move over overrode his decision and the deal never went through.
In the end, he sold and left the Move over startup that he had founded and came up with the idea of bringing blogs to
the next level297. From the onset, Gawker media and its twelve properties (Gawker, Gizmodo, Valleywag, Fleshbot,
Kotaku, Jalpnik, Lifehacker, Deadspin, The Consumerist, Jezebel, and IO9) were all designed to cover various forms of
gossip, sex, gadgets, science fiction, fashion, and the celebrity world. The interesting part is that he demanded and
wanted to have a level set of "snarkiness298" to the whole process. This was not supposed to be clean journalism299; this

287
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/08/business/yourmoney/08blog.html?pagewanted=all
288
http://www.sitemeter.com/?a=stats&s=sm5gawker is the statistics page for Gawker.com. Usually the company itself tightly
controls the numbers of actual visitors. Gawker in contrast across all its properties leaves their site meter statistics open for anyone to
see how much traffic they are getting. This is an unusual move, while most blog networks talk about their numbers in relationship to
money openly, but little on statistics, Gawker is the opposite of others in this regard.
289
http://techwag.com/index.php/2008/01/16/nick-denton-slave-driver-or-idealistic-entrepreneur/ carries an interview with Nick
Denton via Beet TV.
290
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/webscout/2008/04/interview-with.html
291
http://nymag.com/daily/intel/2008/01/gawker_writer_quits_after_just.html
292
http://egos.alltop.com/ he was featured early in 2008 in the alltop list of A list bloggers as one of the most influential voices and
ego‟s in the blogosphere.
293
http://cartegic.typepad.com/mapping_strategy/2005/05/blogging_lunch.html
294
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gawker_Media
295
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/12.06/blog.html is an interesting look at the early Nick Denton, and what he was doing during
the dot com boom and bust
296
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2008/mar/09/gawker
297
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/12.06/blog.html?pg=2&topic=blog&topic_set=
298
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=snarky Any language that contains quips or comments containing sarcastic or
satirical witticisms intended as blunt irony
was meant to dive into the dirt from the start. Valleywag is the epitome of that standard, which is commonly read by
technical bloggers. That is what sets the Gawker network into its own. The initial philosophy was to sell ads and dive into
the things that the sixteen- to thirty-four-year-old300 audience would love. There are rumors that Nick also wants to
open up a blog aimed at the gay audience as his next big thing301. He has also licensed Defamer, Gizmodo, Kotaku, and
Life Hacker in Australia302. Blogs that do not generate the audience numbers that he is looking for (like Gridskipper,
Idolator, and Wonkette) were sold303, and he has no problem shutting down blogs that do not make the cut, like Sploid
and others.

Originally, Gawker media paid per piece for their bloggers, but in 2008 crossed over to the more standard pay per page
view304. While the immediate effect was a 40 percent increase in page views305, less popular bloggers found themselves
finding their incomes slashed because of the changes. This meant that writers had to start playing the popularity card in
writing, meaning that the writers would have to start writing to a broader audience, with a broader appeal. For some, it
was too much; for others, they saw an immediate pay raise. For others, this created a high level of uncertainty on what
they would get paid. Of course, this creates competition amongst bloggers, and while there was a general uptick in page
views, writers would have had to work harder in some cases. What was the most interesting about the model is that
people who needed or wanted an immediate quick audience either had to get a scoop or self-select out of the
company306.

The idea of putting a price on the audience that can be generated by the blogger means that bloggers who can find the
compelling story will more or less be the winners in the new system 307. It also means that bloggers who are just starting
out will be willing to work for the page views that they get as they build their audience. This increases completion, and in
some ways can help make the blogs more effective in the longer run. Deep linking, link sharing, and getting links back
from stories become more important to the blogger as they build up their audience. This could also cause in linking
abuse308, where the writers link to their own stuff deeper into the blog, hoping to capture the extra page views. When it
does not suit him, Nick does not talk to the media and will happily inform his staff not to talk to the media either309.

299
http://www.ojr.org/ojr/stories/051101glaser/
300
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2006/dec/11/news.mondaymediasection
301
http://www.tempcity.com/dramanyc/blogs/rllc/index.php?showentry=93
302
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gawker_Media
303
http://valleywag.com/379406/nick-the-slasher-denton-cuts-loose-three-blogs-gridskipper-idolator-and-wonkette, which was
interesting reporting as Valleywag, is also part of the Gawker Media group. The ability to poke fun at their own boss, and their own
properties is something not often seen in the business.
304
http://www.pbs.org/mediashift/2008/04/gawking_at_numberswhy_paying_p.html
305
http://bloggasm.com/gawker-media-traffic-up-40-since-introducing-new-pay-rate-based-on-page-views
306
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/03/business/media/03gawker.html
307

http://www.businessweek.com/innovate/content/aug2006/id20060822_170430.htm?chan=technology_technology+index+page_more+
of+today%27s+top+stories
308
http://www.calacanis.com/2008/07/03/the-evil-genius-of-nick-denton/
309
http://www.slate.com/id/2145413/
He is also not afraid to make fun of the visitor numbers that some traditional media sites have310. There is also distain for
people who would ask him about his ambition or the role that blogs play in the greater role of human communication311.
This is what makes Nick Denton and in general Gawker Media such an interesting blogging empire. He is both
conciliatory and disdainful of everything new and old media. Rather, he sees them as a tool, a way to sell advertising—
not a way to change the world. By remaining quiet about how well the Gawker Media system is doing, he can keep the
lid on how much wages are in relationship to how much the company makes. By both courting and blowing off the
traditional media, he shows his control over what is being said over the Gawker Media Group. His ability to react long
before anyone else does is also emblematic of how Nick runs the blogging group312.

Additionally, by encoding the blogger's voice, or how they should write for Gawker, is another way to standardize the
entire empire and make them appear more in line with the main stream media that they at times distain. By insisting on
a universal voice for the network, they are doing the same thing that many journalists do for their papers: adopting a
universal tone and style that fits in with the overview view that the paper has. The addition of a book 313 is also doing
something that had been used with other successful bloggers and blog sites as well. The idea behind the book was to
show people how to capitalize on the process of developing a popular blog or blog empire314.

What has made gawker media successful is as follows:

1. They have a highly creative and focused leader who has definite opinions about the company. While he
claims there is no business plan, he does have a business idea. He uses the web sites to sell advertising and
make money. In this case, that business model is good enough to make it work.

2. Targeted age group of eighteen- to thirty-five-year-old males. And since sex, porn, gadgets, and lifestyle
are important; his most trafficked blogs reflect that.

3. Gawker is not afraid to court controversy 315, cut costs, and divest the media group of subjects or sites
that are not making the cut, as well as understand and use the undercurrents in the industry to his best
advantage.

4. Gawker is also unique in being able to understand and use media, like papers, based on Nick Denton's
past experience in the traditional media as well as the new media316. Gawker is willing to experiment with new
things and new ideas to see how well they go over.

310
http://www.alleyinsider.com/2008/8/gawker-s-nick-denton-to-la-times-i-scoff-at-your-puny-web-site
311
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/08/business/yourmoney/08blog.html Nick Denton is simply not interested in answering questions
about many of the aspects of Gawker.
312
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/08/business/yourmoney/08blog.html
313
http://gawker.com/news/gawker-cribs/the-gawker-book-party-307214.php
314
http://www.amazon.com/Gawker-Guide-Conquering-All-
Media/dp/1416532994/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1220668732&sr=8-1 the title alone is most interesting, The Gawker
guide to conquering all media, the book is selling well on Amazon and is worth picking up if you are interested in following along in
the gawker model of blogging.
315
http://blog.clickz.com/061114-111219.html
316
http://money.cnn.com/magazines/business2/business2_archive/2004/06/01/370437/index.htm
While Nick and the Gawker media system are no strangers to controversy, with some of their sites focused on creating a
tone that is based on the standard gossip rag/zine style and format, overall the entire model works and works well.
While there is no way to truly know what the value of the entire Gawker system is or how much it generates, the belief
is that the system is worth $150 million317 and generates as much as $15 million a year in revenue. What is paid to
writers and what is paid to support the technology processes is unknown. As long as Gawker keeps to the formula that
they have started out with on their main sites, and use alternative sites to test and try new ideas or new concepts, odds
are likely that they will continue to grow as long as online advertising continues to grow. Nick Denton has shown that he
is not afraid to treat his blog network as a business, so even if advertising slows down or increases (depending on the
economic conditions of the time); he will make the tough decisions. When the economy slid into recession in 2008, Nick
decided that for Gawker, it would be best to cut staff now318 rather than try to cut staff later on. The ability to make calls
based on what in mid 2008 turned into a rapidly declining economy for online advertising was one of his best calls as a
manager. Many other groups followed later on, like Venture Capital groups asking the companies that they sponsor to
cut 20% of their staff in October of 2008319. What will be interesting to see is if other blog networks that follow the
Gawker model or if they will follow some other model to become successful as a blog network.

Huffington Post

The Huffington Post is the number one blog in the world according to Technorati 320. The web site is a blended media
site, consisting of both blog and newspaper style entries, across a diverse number of topics. The primary topic, however,
for the Huffington Post is politics. The blog was founded in 2005 as the idea of Arianna Huffington and Kenneth Lerer
and has not stopped growing since it was started321. The Huffington Post was recast as an internet newspaper322 early in
2008 as a way to try to engage audiences better, as well as provide a way to develop a strategy to carry the site well past
the presidential elections of 2008. While the blog is mainly left-leaning and liberal, the web site also carries a number of
other types of stories, from celebrity to media and living, as a way to extend the property. She has written a number of
books about how the Republican Party 323 has become captive of special religious interests, which is highly controversial,
and will generate an immediate response in the blogosphere. She also believes that America has lost its way and must
regain the moral high ground that it previously had.

By using a number of high profile guest writers and bloggers, there has been much speculation as to how much the
Huffington Post is worth324. She is able to capitalize on star powered names325 to help generate interest and page views

317
http://www.alleyinsider.com/sa100/nick-denton.html and this is a best guestimate of how much value the blogging group has
overall.
318
http://technosailor.com/2008/10/04/sucks-to-be-a-blog-network-these-days/?disqus_reply=2841849#dsq-alerts
319
http://www.xconomy.com/seattle/2008/12/05/layoff-update-intrinsyc-iterasi-marchex-razorfish-realnetworks-and-targeted-
genetics-cut-staff/
320
http://technorati.com/pop/blogs/ top 100 blogs, the Huffington Post commonly rides in the number one position on that system as
the most popular blog as measured by Technorati.
321
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Huffington_Post
322
http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/03/31/technology/huffington.php
323
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/arianna-huffington
324
http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/09/26/how-much-is-the-huffington-post-worth/
in the Huffington Post. By having big star names write for her blog and engaging in some of the more contentious
debates, she is able to grow her audience not just by the name but honest options outside of the general Hollywood
Studio PR machine326. The controversy, however, over her beliefs and those espoused in her blog (along with the sniping
from various other parties and equally right-leaning blogs) has set up a confined feedback loop of linking and cross
linking. The more outrageous she or her writers write about the political right, the more outrageous the political right
writes about her. This never-ending loop helps set up much of the reason why this blogging system is so heavily cross-
linked. When a star says something as well, this will also get heavy coverage in the blogosphere.

This never-ending loop of retaliation-based arguments across the internet helps feed the system that keeps the
Huffington post on top. If you hate what she or other writers say, you link to it and speak your mind. If she hates you and
she links to what you wrote, you feel the immediate return of traffic as her readers want to find out what has annoyed
her. The key to success is keeping people talking, keeping attention focused on issues and concerns, and then using
language and information in such a way that someone cannot help but get worked up about what is being talked about.
This winning success formula has been repeated in other systems like the Drudge Report, but the Huffington Post relies
heavily on Arianna's own fame and popularity as well as the star power that she can bring to her blog.

Kenneth Lerer is the other founder of the Huffington Post and quickly dropped off the public Huffington Post map. He
has written few entries on the Huffington Post web site and has served as chairperson of the Huffington Post 327. He is
currently the vice chairperson and investor in holding of Betaworks328. His role in getting the site established and up and
running was more from the business side rather than from the content creation side.

What makes the Huffington Post successful are a number of factors that would be difficult to reproduce in the exact
form. Arianna Huffington comes from a background in writing, both on her blog and as a novelist. She has been a
Republican in the past329 and carries some of the changes with her, and her bombast and scorn for the Republicans
underscores what appears to be her own disillusionment with the Republican Party 330. She would have seen much of the
Republican themes during the time of Bill Clinton's presidency and the Republican Party response to it via Newt
Gringrich and the "Contract for America331" period in 1994. She would have seen it as an insider to the process through
her former husband. As her politics changed in 2000, she became more and more Democratic Party leaning, for
whatever reason:332 either disillusionment or just the natural changes that people go through as they change their
options and opinions about things. The process that began in 2000 found its final expression in the Huffington Post, and

325
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/alec-baldwin/lets-hope-the-writers-ge_b_70494.html
326
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/alec-baldwin/the-first-annual-carl-ica_b_103303.html
327
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kenneth_Lerer
328
http://www.alleyinsider.com/sa100/ken-lerer.html
329
http://www.wmagazine.com/celebrities/2008/05/arianna_huffington is a fascinating interview with Arianna Huffington, with some
background material on her past.
330
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arianna_Huffington this article shows some of the complexity, with her husband, a confirmed
republican her early years were spent within the republican party, during the "contract with America" as part of Newt Gringrich‟s
plans to help bolster the republicans during Bill Clintons presidency.
331
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contract_with_America
332
http://dir.salon.com/story/opinion/feature/2003/02/11/arianna/
since 2005 has been going strong as the "must read" bastion of the liberal left333. The things that have made the
Huffington Post a winning blog are:

1. The primary writer has a solid writing background, both as a novelist and as a blogger. She has learned
the tradition of writing and keeping people's attention.

2. She is an "insider," on both sides of the fence. Originally as a Republican and now as a Democrat, she
has deep connections and an insider on what is happening in political circles.

3. She has contacts with major stars and political people who are willing to write on her blog. You read
people as they really think about an issue, without intervening layers of public relations filtering the contents

4. She has learned the tit-for-tat style of closed-loop blogging, where no matter what she says, it will be
picked up by other web sites, to either agree or disagree with whatever the issue is right now. This style helps
make her blog or online newspaper heavily cross-linked on the internet.

5. She courts and knows how to handle controversy. If anything, she relishes the controversy334 that her
words can create in the blogosphere and in traditional media335.

6. The Huffington Post has developed other information channels on the web site to support other social
needs like media, lifestyle. These are available on the site when people want to read about when they pass on
the political commentary. There is a reason to stay there once you have read all the other flagship political
writers on the site.

With the strengths that she brings to her media group, the strength of her blogging voice the Huffington Post has thrived
in the competitive environment of political blogs. Her blog sets the example of what a good internet newspaper might
look like in the future. There is also the strong ability to manage controversy that would be difficult for many smaller
blogger. The insider approach to every story that is posted has also supported the rise of the Huffington Post to be the
top blog on Technorati. It is interesting to see how the looped linking has worked out, and while probably not an
intentional way of starting out, it has become the key reason that this blog is so heavily linked by outside sources. By
being the insider, she is able to discuss anything that has a relevant weight to the regular reading public, who will then
use her and back link to her in enough numbers to help her page rank and Technorati ranks. Additionally, because she is
so controversial, anything she says will be discussed in the far-right press, with links back to her original argument or at
least the use of her name which also helps with her succeed with track backs and the conversations that happen around
the content being produced.

Her past history as a writer, speaker, and knowing how these systems work also give her much experience336 and the
ability to write a compelling story, about a controversial subject, without a lot of language usage issues that people not

333
http://www.savvymiss.com/ambitious-women/ambitious-women-archive/article/arianna-huffington-the-fearless-woman-everyones-
talking-about-1103.html
334
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/05/01/tim-russert-doesnt-want-y_n_99693.html the fall out from the Tim Russert black
balling on NBC was challenged, and successfully brought to people‟s attention, in many respects she seemed to be ready to deal with
the controversy and the fallout that her book created on her blog.
335
http://www.deadlinehollywooddaily.com/is-tim-russert-blackballing-arianna-at-nbc-during-her-book-tour/ is another view of the
Tim Russert fiasco with NBC.
so well steeped in the journalism industry would have. In her YouTube video337, she goes into the process of why the
Huffington Post has been successful. The Huffington post is sold as an aggregation system of liberal bloggers and their
views, along with a community setting around a subject, with community interaction. The other winning success factor
was the expansion of the web site to include other than political information and not keeping solely on the political side
of the debate. By bringing in other channels, like media, lifestyle, and other items of interest to people, the extra
verticals help drive extra traffic. But the reason that people go to the Huffington Post is to read the political
commentary. As she stated in her Blogher 2006 Keynote: we must "look in the mirror to lead, 338" and obviously, she has
become one of the leading voices in political news reporting in the United States.

John Chow

John Chow is a unique example of a winning blog339 and a winning strategy that goes against the standard grain of how
blogs operate. This is what makes the story of John compelling for bloggers who read his work. John Chow runs a blog
that talks about how to make money online or making money from your blog. There are many web sites that discuss
this, but many of them feel like Spam or feel like a con. No one who says, "Make millions overnight" is credible, and John
is very credible because he is not talking millions. He is just talking thousands.

Thousands sounds much more "doable" in the longer run than millions. Making money off their blog is an important
thing for many people who have migrated off Blogger, MSN Spaces, or Live Journal and have started their own blog on a
hosted system. Making money is one of the primary reasons that people start blogging, but it is third 340 on the list. The
list points out that writing is what blogging is about, but when a blogger looks at all that blank space on their blog, they
want to fill it with something, and that usually means ads. John combines writing with advertising, and there is a lot of
advertising on his site to prove his point. Much like Gawker, the appearance of John's site is more about wrapping
content around advertising, rather than advertising complimenting content.

What makes John a winner is that he has developed a legendary status341 for himself and his blog in that he bucked the
system. The idea of creating your own legend, what "brand management342" is about, and then using that legend to your
own purposes is not new. What was new was how the John Chow legend was created and then used to win the one
battle he had to win, and that was against Google's ability and willingness to ban websites that do not follow the Google
webmaster best guidelines when it comes to what they do on their website. In 2007, Google changed how it ranked sites

336
http://www.newsweek.com/id/42501 in this Newsweek article she talks about many of the issues that people have about women in
power, and how she essentially started off on her career naïve about many of the trappings about the USA and how as a culture we
work with women in power.
337
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tl-pvwF1dQE&feature=user
338
http://www.blogher.com/node/8576 is a transcript of her Blogher 2006 keynote address.
339
http://www.johnchow.com/
340
http://www.marketwatch.com/News/Story/Story.aspx?guid={D355242B-1918-48CC-AB3B-
5CCD0FE58985}&siteid=mktw&dist=nbc
341
http://www.terencechang.com/2008/01/27/who-is-the-key-reason-of-john-chows-success/
342
http://www.brandchannel.com/features_effect.asp?pf_id=169
that used paid links. This change impacted hundreds of web sites including sites like the NY Times. John Chow was also
impacted by this change, and had to learn to make money when his web site had a page rank343 downgrade. All he had
on his blog at the time were the standard paid links and other monetizing programs that Google took an exception to as
manipulating the Page Rank system. The saga is long and complex. At one point his web site was banned, then nearly
banned, and then not banned by Google. In some ways, by being reinstated into the Google index without
compromising, he won against Google, even though they banned his site from the Google index 344 and told him to clean
up his act before he would be reinstated. Google reinstated him into the Google index, but John did not change anything
about this site, thinking that Google had no right to tell him how to run his web site.

That is a reality of the way that the modern search engine environment works. It is no longer the personal portal or even
a news site that people go to first. It is all about Google and the other search engines and how they display search
results that drive the majority of traffic345. If you are banned in Google, for most intents and purposes, your web site
ceases to exist for the some 69 percent346 of all internet users who use a search engine to find things. However, in some
respects, the way that John has gone about building his blogging credentials and has been successful doing so, goes
against the grain of every known rule, or supposed rule, to blogging. That is what makes him and his blogging system a
winning blog formula, but not one for the faint of heart347.

With the caveat in mind that John runs and teaches high-risk ways of making money off your blog, he has a hugely loyal
audience and can often be found speaking about his experiences. His blog focuses on how he makes money online from
text link ads to pay per post or pay per review blog articles, as well as for affiliate marketing. All of these are ways that
people can make money off their blog, but they do come with their penalties. Know More Media (written as a blog
failure case study) used similar tactics and when they lost their Page Rank (they were not banned in the Google index348),
it hurt their business model so that they could not make enough money to survive.

John describes himself as a "Dot Com Mogul349" and has a booming business as his primary job, the techzone.com,350
which is a price comparison site for electronic hardware. The blog, however, is something that he does because he can.
The Google ban is not the only ban from a system that John Chow has had to deal with either; he was also banned from
Digg351 and from Technorati352. It does not seem that he has been banned anywhere else. This is what is makes John so

343 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PageRank
344
http://www.pinoyhack.com/2007/07/02/john-chow-banned/
345
This is one of the realities that new bloggers need to understand, you make compromises to keep traffic coming to your web site,
and many of the compromises you make will be to ensure that there is a steady flow of Google traffic at first. As you grow, Google
traffic will drop off. On one of my newly launched site, Google makes up 85% of all referrers, while on a more established site that
has dropped off to 36% of all traffic. As you are more established, Google becomes less important, but will always be important
because that is how many new people will find your site for the first time.
346
http://blog.compete.com/2008/02/08/search-market-share-january-yahoo-microsoft-google-ask-aol-msn-live/
347
http://www.pronetadvertising.com/articles/why-we-rank-1-for-john-chow-and-why-you-shouldnt-mess-with-google.html
348
http://www.searchenginejournal.com/matt-cutts-confirms-paid-links-google-pagerank-update/5906/ John uses many of the same
techniques that Know More Media used, but Know More Media‟s business model could not accommodate the change in page rank
that accompanied the downgrade of all sites using paid links or paid reviews.
349
http://www.johnchow.com/my-first-post/
350
http://www.thetechzone.com/
351
http://www.deepjiveinterests.com/2006/11/26/john-chow-confirms-mobs-rule-at-digg/
interesting. The blog is not a primary way that he makes money, although he does. It is the techzone site that also
provides him a source of income. Yet he is still an underdog hero for standing up to the bigger powers (Google353,
Digg354, and others for "manipulation" of their systems) and not sweating how he does make money on the internet. He
even speaks at big events355 so that he can teach, and he provides a free e-book for people to download and learn how
he makes money off his blog.

While he might have "won" the battle with Google by being re-indexed and being the number one search result for his
name again, that alone builds up the myth of John Chow. He becomes bigger than what Google thinks of him because
the event was skillfully marketed as a "David and Goliath" issue. In this case, while Google still did the things they
needed to do, John Chow today is available as the first entry in Google when you type in the name. However, in the end,
the myth of John continues, while Google apparently capitulated by putting him back into the index. The things that
make John Chow successful as a blogger are:

1. Passion, he is very passionate about what he is writing about.

2. He is the acknowledged leader in his niche. He has the checks from Google's Adsense program to prove
that he has made significant money doing what he is doing.

3. There is an almost reckless disregard for larger systems. If he sees a worthy battle, particularly Google,
he will not back down; this leads to an almost mythical reputation on the internet. The compelling factor is that
he is believable. He is doing this because he believes in it

These attention-seeking behaviors, along with his social friend base, help him become and maintain his popularity on
the internet. If you blog, you need to be aware that while John is successful, this has been a hard-won success. While
some of the things that he does are excellent, some of the methods—unless you have a large group of friends—might be
difficult if not impossible to duplicate. New bloggers who try his techniques might end up being banned in Google, but
no one will listen because the community has not been built up yet. This does not mean that the new blogger should not
be working on their myth, but they should know that there are limits at first to how far that myth will spread on the
internet. It helps to have a large and vocal support base to help perpetuate the legend if you choose to go this route in
blogging.

Chris Pirillo

Chris Pirillo is a unique blogger in that he runs multiple ways of getting information to the people who follow him. He
shares many of the similarities in terms of background that other successful bloggers have, such as a journalism
degree356 and a long time blogging. He also does life streaming357, runs forums358, and runs a trade show called

352
http://andybeard.eu/2007/06/how-to-avoid-being-banned-by-technorati.html
353
http://jalaj.net/2007/07/19/dont-mess-with-google-john-chow-experience/
354
http://www.deepjiveinterests.com/2006/11/26/john-chow-confirms-mobs-rule-at-digg/
355
http://www.johnchow.com/find-me-at-blog-world-and-get-a-t-shirt/
356
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gnomedex#Gnomedex
Gnomedex359 in Seattle. He is based out of the Seattle area and lives his life online. That is what makes him more of the
total package blogger than other successful bloggers out there. What makes his model interesting as a blogger is that
essentially he is online all the time, and has a live webcam in his house that shows him working at his computer all day
long.

Originally, Chris got started in television, being a host and co-host of the TV show Call for Help, where people would call
in with live questions about problems with technology. Since then, he has moved online and uses his "total media"
concept to deliver information to people who follow him. His site Pirillo.com is one of the smaller successful blogs,
measuring his page views in the tens of thousands 360 rather than millions per day, but because he is so multi-faceted and
has so many things going on the internet at any given time, his quanticast statistics could be deceptive361. There is no
particular focus of his blog, which can be disturbing to some viewers, as it follows a more beat generation style stream
of consciousness viewpoint. Where Chris's mind wanders on issues and ideas, his blog and journal entries reflect that
stream of consciousness. This also sets him up as a unique resource on the internet. While most blogs focus on one
thing, Chris is more of a renaissance person362 when it comes to the internet. His primary focus though seems to be on
marketing, but also on technology, general geekery, and using technology to bring people closer.

The thing to note about Chris is that based on what is available, he has more of the traditional look and feel of the
consummate sales person. The web site is literally infested with branding, advertising, and ways to interact that deliver
content and more advertising. He has a very large registered followership, and he builds on that to help drive buzz
around his web site. If you watch his live video feed, there are ads every fifteen seconds, and it is branded with his own
image. The key point to the blog and various web sites are to sell Chris Pirillo, and at times offer content, contests, and
information that people will someday want. This is in contrast to other bloggers who try to build a corporate profile;
Chris's website is all about building out the personal brand. He is his own market and has taken personal branding to a
level that is not often seen on the internet.

Everything that Chris does seeks to entertain, enlighten, and expand the personal brand. This is one of those cases of
where the brand becomes indistinguishable from the person involved. If you want to create a truly personal brand
around an internet persona, then Chris is the example that you would want to follow. This is also what makes him
unique from other bloggers, or even other internet personalities. He has the background in traditional media and has
worked out ways to ensure that his traditional media background stays relevant in the modern internet age. By live
streaming, he stays with his traditional TV roots. By blogging, he stays in line with his journalism degree, and the way
that he uses advertising, he is able to make money from the many web sites that he has on the internet. His site is not
for everyone. It is busy, cluttered, and the ongoing soundtrack from the live stream in the background can be distracting.
The scrolling feed of comments from his forum/board information system can also be distracting. The lockergn0me web
site (part of the group of web sites that Chris runs) is more traditional, but the articles are short, and the entire article is
framed in advertising. He carries on the same idea as Gawker in that the web site is for advertising, with some content
wrapped around it. The things that make Chris successful are:

357
http://chris.pirillo.com/
358
http://geeks.pirillo.com/
359
http://www.gnomedex.com/
360
http://siteanalytics.compete.com/pirillo.com/?metric=uv
361
http://www.alexa.com/data/details/traffic_details/pirillo.com
362
http://www.toprankblog.com/2006/10/interview-with-chris-pirillo/
 1. He has successfully blended both old and new media standards into his web site, playing on his
strengths. The live interactive support and help process is still ongoing on his web site, and the live streaming
plays to his television background.

2. He has incorporated personal brand and internet brand so that the two facets of Chris are
indistinguishable. He is his web site, and the web site reflects who he is.

3. He has successfully marketed himself into multiple internet venues, as well as a trade show, to extend
and expand the personal brand.

By playing on his strengths, television and journalism, Chris has been able to build a powerhouse brand for himself,
ensuring that he will always have an audience. His demographics point to the valued eighteen to thirty-four and thirty-
five to forty-nine age ranges in visitors363. What is interesting about his demographics is that they point to a disjointed
audience set, as the majority of his traffic is passersby. That is in contrast to the number of people who have signed up
to participate on his site; the repeat customers are the important ones in blogging. The official statistics might be
flawed, as he has a very large participation rate in contrast to the statistics. They are less likely to go somewhere else to
get something similar. Yet the personal brand is probably Chris's greatest strength. It is by blending personality and
brand, creating the brand of Chris Pirillo that other bloggers are going to want to focus on. It is one of the best examples
for developing a brand around the name in a funny and technologically perceptive way that provides many ideas to
emulate.

Blogs that went out of Business

A number of highly public blog systems and individual bloggers have collapsed under the weight of their own ambitions,
business management style, or lack of readers. These are more business failures when the expectations of the business
do not meet the reality of what was really happening when the blog or business went live. Technorati used to run the
"State of the Blogosphere364" report, which stopped when a new CEO at Technorati came on board at the company. The
last report was from 2007 and covers some of the issues that currently surround abandoned blogs, splogs, and blogs
that are updated infrequently for one reason or another. The reports also showed the explosive growth rate of the
blogosphere. With upwards of 120,000 new blogs being created daily, it is near impossible to make an immediate splash
in the blogosphere unless you bring a personality to the table first. If you are already public or running for office, a blog
is one way to get your message across and gain immediate readership. If you are just your average person, starting as a
splash in the blogosphere is near impossible.

The ability to gain market share, either as a group blog or as an individual blog is difficult given the level of noise that is
on the internet. Not only are you competing with bigger blogs, but you are also competing with smaller blogs,
newspapers, e-mail address lists, and many other forms of communication. Then there is management style, ambition,
goals, funding, and other barriers that will preclude instant success making millions each year. Starting a blog is a long
hard process, one that requires constant attention, constant writing, and the ability to build rapport with your readers,
your writers, and your business partners.

363
http://www.quantcast.com/pirillo.com
364
http://www.sifry.com/alerts/archives/000493.html these reports, which provide an important resource on the growth of the
blogosphere from 2004 through 2007.
Each one of these failed blogs or blogging systems used as an example had a public break up, naturally enough, using the
blogosphere to voice their issues and eventually their demise. What is interesting about bloggers that have been fired
for blogging on the job is that some have stopped blogging, some sold their content to other sites, and few have kept on
blogging about the things that interest them. When a whole blogging system has failed, most of the professional
bloggers have been able to find other work in the blogging industry. Usually, it is the blogger's writing skills that have
caught the attention of another blog, and offers are generally made. In some cases where blogs have failed, the entire
blog group has been made an offer of a buyout, and the buyout was not received well causing the deal to fall apart.

The other interesting part is that when a big blog system fails or a blogger is fired, the media (both bloggers and
traditional) often take up the news. For bloggers who have been fired, this can be uncomfortable, as they have fame,
but not in the way that they might have expected or wanted. In the case of failed blog networks, how it failed and what
happened before, during, and after its failure will influence people to talk about it. Some blog empires fade away
gracefully; some suffer major public flameouts as writers, and owners take their issues and opinions to the streets. This
is what makes a blog failure so interesting: the use of blogs to influence opinion and writers using their skills to tell a
story, even if the story is hard to tell.

Blognation

The story of Blognation365 is a complex story of failure; there are many issues and mistakes that brought about the
failure of Blognation, run by Sam Sethi366. The failure of the Blognation network came as a surprise to a number of
Blognation writers, who were unaware of what was really happening to the company under the hood 367. In the good by
letter from Sam Sethi on the Blognation web site, Sam points out a number of reasons that the blog network failed368.
However, the letter left many confused, and in some ways dissatisfied about the way that the problems were handled.
As troubles at Blognation began to mount, the failure of Blognation became a war of words, blogs, and reputations.
Blognation's failure was public369, using the blogosphere to help inform and form the various camps, which were either
pro or against the CEO of the company. In business, ultimately the CEO of a company is responsible for everything that
happens when they are the boss370. In the end, in Sam's good-bye note, he acknowledged that he was responsible for
what happened at Blognation.

365
This is one of the more difficult stories to cover as the Blognation saga continues on, and shows no sign of stopping.
366
http://www.crunchnotes.com/2007/12/14/the-fact-and-fiction-of-sam-sethi/
367
http://techwag.com/index.php/2007/12/14/blognation-dead-pool-confirmed/
368
http://updates.blognation.com/2007/12/13/heres-to-you-mrs-arrington-goodbye-and-good-luck-startups/ is an interesting viewpoint
into the reasons that the owner believed that his network of blogs failed. While he places much of the blame on others, when
reviewing the information posted from his writers, there additional issues that cannot be fully substantiated. Some of the writers for
Blognation believe that they were deceived by the owner of Blognation in that he had funding, when in reality he did not. This is what
makes the failure of Blognation a complex issue, without a single point of failure, rather the failures compounded upon each other,
until the entire system collapsed under the weight of business decisions, pulled funding, writers striking to be paid what they were
owed, and a host of other issues.
369
http://howtosplitanatom.com/news/open-letter-to-sam-sethi-some-thoughts/?disqus_reply=31857#comment-31857 covers the
discussion around what was going on at the time.
370
http://www.webpronews.com/insiderreports/2007/12/14/amid-drama-blognation-is-kaput
The story started to hit the public blogosphere when Oliver Starr wrote an open letter to Sam Sethi on his blog,
owstarr.com371 concerning some of the issues and concerns that would soon become the subject of many discussions in
the blogosphere. At near the same time on the same day, 5 December 2007, Debbie Jones at Mobile Jones' 372 blog also
penned an open letter to Sam Sethi, which further sparked the debate in the blogosphere. Sam Sethi undertook various
attempts at damage control, especially when it came to Mr. Starr 373. However, the information had hit the blogosphere,
and being an open system, the public debate took off once Techcrunch covered it 374. Hundreds of bloggers started
forming sides as to who was most at fault over the failure of the company375. Some were more charitable than others
were when it came to the public flame out of a company. For some, it was hard to make the decision to go and leave
Blognation because of payment issues376. It was this confusion about the shutdown and the confusion with the
arguments in public that lead to the very messy public disclosure and discussion of the shutdown overall. Everyone who
had an opinion, informed or not, chimed in on this "meme du jour," which confused and convoluted the actual story as it
unfolded.

Many had an opinion, and some even offered a reason why a community blog system like Blognation could fail, such as
"fixed costs, variable income,377" which many community blogs have. What comes out of this though is that there were
very real issues that can be used to keep a community blog from imploding. These in general are the reasons why
Blognation failed:

1. Most bloggers trust their employers. The trust that bloggers had in the CEO of Blognation broke under
the idea of non-payment, amidst the continual comments that they would be paid.

2. The CEO appeared to blame the failure on everyone other than himself, then take responsibility later on,
leading to conflicting messages. This was immediately latched onto in the blogosphere, causing additional
commentary that, at some points, was denigrating to everyone involved.

3. The involvement of the blogosphere, the formation of camps either pro or con, supporting or not
supporting the eventual failure of the company and the stepping down of Sam Sethi also influenced its demise.
As people worked though the range of materials available to them, various forms of "truth" appeared, and the
more popular the blog, the more weight was carried for that particular brand of truth. As a PR (Public Relations)

371
http://owstarr.com/2007/12/05/an-open-letter-to-sam-sethi/ this is one of the more interesting open letters that appeared in the
blogosphere about the failure of Blognation.
372
http://mobilejones.com/2007/12/05/blognation-the-bloggers-prelude-and-tale/ this was the second post on the same day that
essentially questioned the issues of funding, payment, and how secure Blognation was as a company.
373
http://owstarr.com/2007/12/08/sam-speaks/11/ is a copy of a conversation that Oliver Starr that was posted on the owstarr.com web
site. It provides further reading on what was happening at the time, and how the power of blogging was used to bring what would
normally be a quiet matter, the flame out of a private company into the public sphere.
374
http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/12/05/blognation-meltdown-writers-never-paid-promises-not-kept/
375
http://blog.oflaherty.dk/2007/12/05/blognation-in-serious-trouble/
376
http://crueltobekind.org/archive/2007-12-05/my_comment_on_olivers_post_abo is an excellent post by Nichole Simon‟s about
why she was approaching the idea of stopping working on Blognation until she was paid by the company. These kinds of decisions are
hard to make at a personal level, to have spoken so eloquently on the subject also helps understand one of the root causes of the
Blognation failure.
377
http://www.stoweboyd.com/message/2007/12/oliver-starr-qu.html
 exercise, when Sam Sethi stepped down on the 12th of December 2007 from Blognation, he had lost the public
relations side of keeping the company going.

There was a continual trust issue between the writers and the owner of Blognation. Most of this lack of trust centered
on the fundamental issue of payment for services rendered, or what were considered legitimate expenses on the part of
the bloggers. People rarely work free or without compensation; they have bills to pay and things to do. The main
problem centered on the idea that some people got partial payment while others did not get any payment at all. This
caused more confusion on the part of the writers 378. Some bloggers and affiliated parties blamed the failure of
Blognation on the massive coronary and death of Marc Orchant, because of payment issues, and other pressures that
Marc had to meet his expenses and bills379. When starting up a community blog, payment is something that needs to
happen so that your writers will continue to write for the community enterprise and the community good. Payment is
not a negotiable thing; people need to be paid for the work that they are doing for the company 380. If people are not
paid, then the issue can quickly spin out of any form of control, as people (especially bloggers) will take their concerns to
the blogosphere. While there are accusations of unprofessional behavior on all parts, 381 this did nothing to address the
core issues of the blog network failure. It seemed at times, and through to today, that the true cause of the failure was
multiple issues, no one single event can be pointed to as the "root cause" of Blognation’s failure as a blog network. The
final key issue is that past due accounts continued to accrue for Blognation as writers continued to attempt to be paid
for the work that they had done 382. This eroded trust and in the end was a direct key issue for the failure of Blognation.

There is a direct relationship to what was happening with funding (or lack of funding) at Blognation and the continual
proclamations that Blognation was successful. There were reassurances that funding was coming, and that everyone
was going to be paid and indeed some were paid for their work as the bad news about the blog network continued to be
debated on the Internet383. The clear point though is with the suppression of bad news and the CEO's personal
responses were the one thing that people were going on when they made the decisions to stay and write at Blognation.
They made the decision based on the information they had; even through the information was questionable. The
problem with a lack of transparency is that decisions were based on hope rather than solid business facts. Much like the
dot com boom, the reality belied the hype.

378
http://blog.awakenedvoice.com/2007/12/19/blog-titans-and-their-wolf-packs/ covers the issue of payment, nonpayment, and partial
payment. There is the general tone that this is the kind of information that should have been released earlier, so that other people
would not be caught up in the blog network.
379
http://owstarr.com/2007/12/09/in-memoriam-marc-orchant/ this is a nice obituary on the death of famed blogger Marc Orchant who
died soon after Blognation that he wrote for imploded, owning the estate money. Some of the money was recovered by Marc‟s widow.
380
http://www.mathewingram.com/work/2007/12/13/sethi-everyone-is-to-blame-except-me/ covers some of the loss of trust issues
that arose with Blognation.
381
http://www.pcmech.com/article/the-soap-opera-of-blognation-reminds-me-of-efront/
382
http://owstarr.com/2008/01/25/did-sethi-ever-pay/
383
http://www.slyck.com/story1733_P2P_BitTorrent_and_Net_Neutrality there is many similar concepts here, in that there are denials
that something is happening when it really is. While this covers P2P, as a behavior, Comcast desperately attempted to hide the idea
that they were traffic shaping on P2P systems, they denied, they refused to answer questions, even as the information broke that they
were doing traffic shaping in popular blogs and news sites. Eventually they were fined by the FCC for their practices, but the key here
is that the lack of open transparency about what was happening is applicable to Blognation, the suppression of information, the denial
that things were happening, only to eventually be reported that indeed bad things were happening, and with Blognation, the step down
of the CEO 12 days (December 12th) after the initial news broke.
In Sam Sethi's goodbye note384, he started by blaming others and then ended it by owning up to the responsibility for
the failure of the company. He points to the failure to obtain VC funds early enough or quick enough to keep the
company afloat. However, the information was released to Techcrunch about the term sheet.385 It was Sam's
responsibility to do as much damage control as possible, but the sequence of events around the blog failure is
convoluted, for example the Techcrunch article that caused Sam problems appeared a month386 before Oliver Starr's and
Debbie Jones. The term sheet that Sam states was the key reason why the angel investor pulled out was published two
days387 after Oliver and Debbie's articles on their respective blogs.

Since term sheets are highly confidential, this file should never have been shared with anyone until Blognation could
issue a stable press release. The mistake was sharing confidential information with someone outside the company. The
investor would be rightly concerned then with how private data would be used and shared throughout the system. With
privacy laws in the US and Europe in favor of users right now, sharing of private information on this level would
generally lead to a further erosion in trust around Sam. In Sam's goodbye letter, he blames Techcrunch for publishing it.
But given the nature of Techcrunch, this was information that was "too good to pass up," as it was exactly what
Techcrunch specializes in: first heard information about technology companies. There was an added dimension with the
Techcrunch publication: many of the Blognation writers and Techcrunch writers knew each other, and there were
professional and in some cases personal relationships between the people who wrote for each blog. These personal
relationships could have clouded the decision to print or not print the term sheet.

With available records and blog entries, the failure of Blognation is one of loss of trust, poor management that was
unable to deliver on its promises, and the eventual disillusionment of writers and potential sources of funding. Of all the
mistakes, any one of these alone could have lead to the failure of the blogging system, but together, they formed a
perfect storm of events, which took eight days to unfurl Blognation, from the initial letters on December 5th to the final
step down of Sam Sethi on the 12th of December 2007.

Think Secret

Think Secret was one of a handful of Apple Rumor blogs on the internet and one of the few that was shut down by direct
legal action from Apple. Nick Ciarelli ran the blog and wrote under the pseudonym of "Nick De Plume."388This single-
person blog covered Apple rumors and apparently had a number of insiders that were feeding him information that he
then subsequently used. At the end of a three-year court case, Think Secret was shut down by court order. Apple and

384
http://fourstarters.com/2007/12/05/blognation-falling-apart-open-letter-to-sam-sethi/
385
http://www.crunchnotes.com/2007/12/14/the-fact-and-fiction-of-sam-sethi/ claims that the term sheet release was from an
anonymous source, which is fine; the problem is that term sheets are still confidential, and as the CEO, Sam should have gone into
serious efforts at damage control on this.
386
http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/11/05/mykinda-blog-network-for-eastern-europe-launches-amid-serious-drama/ covers some of
the startup issues with Blognation, with the threat of litigation from other blogging systems; VC‟s would be skittish of investing in a
company that looked like it was going to be sued. The time to talk about the issues was the day Techcrunch broke the article, not a
month later when most of the Blognation Staff was forming a camp for or against Sam Sethi.
387
http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/12/07/blognation-may-rise-from-the-ashes/ is the term sheet, the date on the Techcrunch article is
posted as December 7th 2007, two days after the initial allegations and complaints of nonpayment from Oliver Starr and Debbie Jones.
388
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nick_dePlume is the Wikipedia entry on Nick Ciarelli aka Nick De Plume.
Nick Ciarelli reached a settlement, whose details have not been fully released389. While Apple chose to pursue the
lawsuit, members of the blogosphere and social organization started petitions390 online, as well as various rallying cries,
to "save Think Secret."

The reason for the failure of Think Secret was a lawsuit brought by Apple Computing against the web site, rather than a
direct business model failure. As a business model, the blog had advertising, a steady stream of readers, and an Apple
rumors niche. It was also one of the longer running Apple rumor blogs, as it started in 1999 and had built up credibility
because on occasion it was actually correct in the information that it was reporting. The true cause of failure for this
blog was that it got shut down because of a legal action. The legal action on the part of Apple also helped establish an
answer to a number of issues that otherwise would have remained unsettled if the lawsuit had not happened. Some of
the issues surrounding free speech391 and protection of sources392 for bloggers were established as precedent during this
case, which eventually would have had to be settled at some point.

In 2004, Think Secret and other Apple information sites were ordered to turn over information that was related to a
product called Asteroid (that was never released) to identify the internal or external source that was turning over
information to these sites393. Think Secret was also sued394 in 2005 for providing readers with information that Apple
claimed was corporate trade secret data 395. These lawsuits were seen as bullying396 practices but also addressed a reality
that bloggers often face. Not all reporters or blogger sites thought that Apple was being a bully about the process 397.
There are some realities to blogging, however, that also made the case difficult. Nick did not have enough money for a
lawyer398 but wanted to pursue this case in court. Eventually, he was represented by the EFF 399 (Electronic Frontier
Foundation) and Terry Gross, of the San Francisco-based firm Gross & Belsky.

Bloggers often own their own web sites, and are often the publisher, journalist, and system administrator of their blogs.
Often, they do not have the deep pockets of traditional journalists400 or the support systems that larger publishing

389
http://blog.wired.com/business/2007/12/apple-and-think.html this wired story covers a lot of the personal feelings and viewpoints
from Nick Ciarelli noting, "He was very satisfied" with how the whole thing worked out.
390
http://www.petitiononline.com/tsisok/petition.html is the petition for Think Secret out at Petition on line.com seeking an alternative
to shutting down the web site.
391
http://www.mathewingram.com/work/2007/12/21/whether-nick-was-paid-isnt-the-point/
392
http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/12/20/oh-my-god-apple-killed-thinksecret-those-bastards/
393
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20041217/1631228.shtml
394
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20050105/1923251.shtml
395
http://news.cnet.com/Apple-goes-to-court-to-smoke-out-product-leaker/2100-1047_3-5499814.html
396
http://www.macobserver.com/article/2005/02/02.11.shtml also points to an editorial in the Washington Examiner for this case. The
negative PR for Apple was minimal though in the longer run, as Apple successfully went about its business and did not worry or try to
respond to the various blogger articles and newspapers that covered the court cases.
397
http://www.macsimumnews.com/index.php/archive/apple_not_a_
bully_for_the_think_secret_lawsuit
398
http://www.wired.com/gadgets/mac/news/2005/01/66293
399
http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2007/12/apple-and-think-secret-settle-lawsuit
400
http://www.jkontherun.com/2005/01/the_blogger_as_.html covers some of the issues in relationship to a blogger being able to
defend himself or herself against a lawsuit against anyone. This alone is its own form of chilling effect as most bloggers will simply
houses can provide. What seemed to be the biggest trigger for Apple, however, was how Think Secret solicited
information401. What Think Secret would do is take the information that people would supply anonymously and publish
on the web site. While not all the information was correct, it was correct enough, enough of the time, to be considered a
danger to Apple and its corporate trade secrets 402. Apple has aggressively pursued the release of information that could
reasonably be considered trade secrets403, much like any other company does. What is interesting is that when going
after the rumor sites, they in their own right confirmed some of the rumors to be true, which further fanned speculation
on what the company would do next.

While Apple focused on the idea of people inside the company reporting and dropping inside information about Apple
before Steve Jobs could report it, there are discrepancies in the argument. Think Secret and other Apple rumors sites,
like MacRumors,404 have the "report anonymously" in the upper right hand corner of the web site405. One of the core
responses from Apple was that the solicitation of information encourages people to violate their confidentiality
agreements406. The other question that came up during the debate is whether or not bloggers should be considered
journalists407 and whether or not they were covered under the same guarantees that journalists408 are covered under by
keeping their sources secret. One important question raised by the lawsuit was should journalists or bloggers publish
corporate trade secrets, in relationship to the public good like publishing government secrets 409. The 2004 case ended

comply with the take down order rather than expend funds to fight a first amendment or protection of sources lawsuit that can drag on
for years, and even still not reach a satisfactory conclusion.
401
http://web.archive.org/web/20080213234139/http://www.thinksecret.com/ the archive has a copy of the web site before it was shut
down, by operating a secret tip line and offering an anonymous way for people to share information, this was one thing that few other
sites did.
402
http://news.cnet.com/Apple%20sues%20over%20trade%20secrets/2100-1047_3-5513582.html covers more of the lawsuits that
were happening at the time. It is common practice for companies to issue lawsuits in batches, so three different lawsuits all within a
short period is not unusual with some companies. RIAA and MPAA also release their lawsuits in batches as a comparison.
403
http://news.cnet.com/Apple-suit-foreshadows-coming-products—page-2/2100-1047_3-5513582-2.html?tag=mncol this is not
surprising, many companies do the same thing, but the side effect is that while the companies seek to know the identity of those
providing information, they inadvertently show that some of the information is true in one form or another, and then draw more
interest in the subject matter.
404
http://www.macrumors.com/ Mac Rumors also has a reporting "got Mac news/rumors" submit it button clearly on their masthead.
405
http://web.archive.org/web/20080213234139/http://www.thinksecret.com/ is the archive dot org wayback machine copy of the web
site before it closed down.
406
http://online.wsj.com/article_email/SB110566157500825906-lMyQjAxMDE3MDE1NDYxNjQxWj.html covers the idea in a core
statement ½ way through the article. It is an interesting read from both vantage points, both apples and Nick.
407
http://news.cnet.com/Bloggers-have-rights-too/2010-1034_3-5632544.html covers the idea of bloggers rights, and how those rights
should be realized and protected globally.
408
http://www.pbs.org/mediashift/2007/10/post_4.html opens the debate on bloggers as journalists, on a global basis, since bloggers
have been arrested, harassed, and otherwise had to deal with the same issues that journalists have in protecting sources, information,
and the idea of being able to report what is happening, without fear of government or private reprisal for writing.
409
http://publishing2.com/2007/12/20/apple-shuts-down-think-secret-do-journalists-have-the-right-to-reveal-corporate-trade-secrets/ is
a thoughtful article on the idea of publishing trade secrets and government secrets in the interests of the public good. The argument is
over the idea of what is truly in the public good and when does the publishing of an idea or concern constitute a trade secret or
something that should be published in the public good.
with Think Secret and other web sites having to turn over their sources for the story 410, which started the conspiracy
theory that Apple was trying to shut down the many Apple rumor sites and apple fan sites. All these Apple fan and
rumor sites picked up the story and started running with it 411. The Apple rumor sites, however, just continued to grow
and gain more audience share as more people started to purchase Apple products. Think Secret through broke the news
with the surprise accurate story hit (back in 2004) with the IPod, and the ITunes store. People started to take an interest
in Apple, meaning many more rumors were going to come out of the company. This kind of popularity is very hard to
ignore for some employees, and it is very hard for a site that depends on rumors not to publish.

The shutdown of Think Secret though highlighted the issues of bloggers being able to protect their sources for story. In
the final shutdown order, Nick was able to keep the sources protected, but this was a hard won concession for Nick. This
was a victory for many bloggers though that they can keep their sources private if they choose to do so. There was also
the eventual backlash against Apple; because Think Secret was very popular. The public relations hit for Apple while
small, did cause problems by highlighting that there was something to the site and that they had accurate information.
The "Streisand Effect412" in people trying to take down data means that as the news gets out, this creates an effect that
everyone is going to want to see what the issue is about and continue looking for the information 413. While the issue
might seem like nonsense,414 once everyone has checked it out, the problem is that the take down or the cease and
desist brings attention to the issue. There were even dissenting opinions on this issue, in that Think Secret was not
engaged in journalism and that they were merely publicly releasing trade secrets415. The attention that the lawsuits and
take down orders generated might result in surprising and unexpected ways for a company that is trying to get the
information suppressed416. With Apple computers, devices, software, and with the company gaining market shares in
double digits over the last few years, what Apple does has an immediate influence on many people.

While Nick has moved on, the growth of Apple rumors sites and sites that are seeking to provide information about what
Apple is doing has seen steady growth. With Apple fortunes well-established, with popular products, and a generally
tight non-rumor public relations department, the desire to have people provide information to these sites is going to
grow rather than abate. As other Apple rumor sites emulate the "got information to share" buttons seeking information,
as well as people wanting to
talk about Apple products, keeping information close is going to remain a cat and mouse game between Apple and
bloggers.

410
http://macdailynews.com/index.php/weblog/comments/5146/
411
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/4319715.stm discusses much the fear that was happening at the time, for companies that
were running rumor sites, this would have gone far beyond the apparent Apple case, and this could have been used as precedent in any
case where any blogger wanted to protect their sources for information in the US Courts system.
412
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect
413
http://www.parislemon.com/2007/08/real-fake-fat-short-new-ipod-nano.html is from Paris Lemon who was told to take down a
product picture. The caption would make many people go immediately to a search engine and search on images for the product. This
would be all over the internet once it has been published once.
414
http://www.webomatica.com/wordpress/2007/12/22/apple-inspires-think-secret-to-shut-down-thumbs-down/
415
http://theshapeofdays.com/2007/12/20/think-secret-is-dead.html is an interesting and cogent argument about what Think Secret was
all about as a dissenting piece to the general idea that Think Secret should have been protected under the idea of free speech and has
journalistic protections for their site. This is an interesting piece because it ties a number of events together, and takes a long look at
how bloggers and journalists should be kept on a "shorter leash."
416
http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2007/12/apple-and-think-secret-settle-lawsuit there were some key differences in the lawsuits against
Think Secret and other apple rumor sites.
 Know More Media

Know More Media (KMM) shut down August 1, 2008417, but without a large amount of controversy on the internet or in
the blogosphere. While there will still inflamed tempers418 as people digested the news and tried to work out what they
wanted to do next, a bailout offer happened between B5 Media and Know More Media. From sources, it looks more as if
Know More Media was not able to meet readership targets, which made it more difficult to get sponsors, and in an
unfolding circle of events, the business was not able to meet its metrics, meaning it did not meet its revenue goals, and
slowly was unable to sustain the system 419.

The death of Know More Media was a slow death, until management pulled the plug on the web site. By working with
their bloggers and keeping people informed throughout the process, management handled the entire shutdown openly
and with due consideration of the people who wrote for them. While this opinion may vary among those who were
impacted by the shut down, in relationship to other blogging systems that were shut down, this was a controlled
descent rather than a sudden shutdown.

The biggest controversy was not that Know More Media went under. Management handled the entire process in a
reasonable manner with employees. It was rather how things were misunderstood with the takeover buyout offer from
B5 Media. The offer that was so misunderstood that B5Media decided they needed to explain the offer better 420. Many
bloggers offered a show of support by covering the going out of business process and showed a phenomenal amount of
support for the bloggers impacted by the shutdown421. The cross-linking and supportive environment of the blogosphere
in regards to the shutdown was evidenced by the careful and considerate articles that appeared on line422 about the
shutdown. This also helped people adjust423 to what was happening, and how the story was unraveling in the public
space of the blogosphere.

The essential way that Know More Media made money was through advertising, which is common enough among blogs.
What is more important is what kind of advertising that Know More Media used, including paid links and paid blog
entries424. This incurred the "Google penalty" for paid links that can "manipulate the page rank" of a web site 425. There

417
http://twitter.com/easton/statuses/869125909
418
http://www.ensight.org/archives/2008/07/25/open-letter-to-know-more-media-founders-team-and-bloggers/
419
http://www.corporate-eye.com/2008/07/the-know-more-media-business-debacle-a-series-of-unfortunate-events-are-you-ready-for-
unfortunate-events/ is a concise well thought out reason why Know More Media failed because it was unable to meet its revenue
goals, leading to the eventual shutdown of the whole KMM blogging system in relationship to being paid to blog.
420
http://www.ensight.org/archives/2008/07/28/followup-to-our-know-more-media-letter-and-an-alternate-proposal/ is the second
explanation of the buyout takeover offer, with more detail as to the terms and conditions of the takeover or buyout.
421
http://www.bizchicksrule.com/know-more-media-professional-courtesies-doing-the-right-thing/
422
http://wordpress.com/tag/know-more-media/ is a digest of articles about the Know More Media shutdown, in contrast to other blog
shutdown; this one was relatively calm, except for the B5Media controversy.
423
http://theanalyticsguru.wordpress.com/2008/07/21/know-more-media-goes-belly-up/ is one person who was influenced by the
shutdown, while the entry is short, it hopeful.
424
http://www.sparkplugging.com/sparkplug-ceo/what-does-the-end-of-the-know-more-media-blog-network-mean-to-you/ as
reported, paid links and paid entries have been a very controversial Google decision that often means companies make very hard
were also issues with paid articles that were not clearly shown to be paid articles. There were a number of companies
that were also caught up in the advertorial issues426 when Google decided to change how they did things. There were
many tier one web sites like the Washington Post, SF Gate, Forbes, and others that were caught up in this whole page
rank debacle, in October of 2007427.

Having to make the tough choice of making money off their web site or alienating Google was a tough call. Google right
now is the search engine with a near 60 percent market share428 in searches conducted in the USA, and near a 90
percent market share in the UK 429. Those are simply numbers you cannot afford to lose sight of. The loss of page rank for
carrying paid links and paid articles has not just impacted web sites but the companies that link bloggers and people
who will pay for articles from bloggers, like Izea. The reasons that Know More Media failed are as follows:

1. Revenue models changed. By using paid links, the ultimate Google penalty of lowered page rank hurt
and in the end cut off a significant portion of revenue. By not being able to adapt to the way that Google did
linking and cross-links, it made it difficult for Know More Media to keep operations going.

2. They were unable to reach readership goals, meaning that the revenue model became harder to realize,
ending in a circular motion of low readers, harder to make revenue, harder to advertise, harder to get more
readers.

Management was exceedingly open with their bloggers about what was happening, and were prompt with payments to
their bloggers. What caused the initial issue with the company was how Google approached the whole idea of paid links
and advertising on in the internet. While it was easy to put in the needed "No Follow" code so that search engine spiders
would not follow the links that defeats the purpose of paid links. Google found this to be gaming of the "page rank
system," and in that, instituted the penalties that influenced the page rank of many top-notch sites. In that market
environment, Know More Media was unable to meet their revenue goals, and it had to make the very hard choice of
shutting down or trying to do a reduced system. Know More Media decided to shut down.

The offer from B5Media did and did not cause problems, as there was a small spate of blogs that were purchased by
other companies. At the time there was consolidation happening in the blogging industry when Conde Nast purchasing
Ars Technica430 and CBS purchasing CNet431 before the B5Media offer to purchase Know More Media. One of the
interesting aspects to the shutdown of Know More Media was that the company made offer to their bloggers to blog

decisions about how they get money to support their blog.

425
http://www.searchenginejournal.com/matt-cutts-confirms-paid-links-google-pagerank-update/5906/ paid links that can artificially
alter Google‟s page rank is a definite not something you want to do as a web master, but very tempting to try when your entire revenue
model is based on advertising.
426
http://www.centernetworks.com/paid-reviews-izea-vs-advertorials is an interesting view into the process of paid articles that some
blogger business models rely on.
427
http://andybeard.eu/2007/10/pagerank-update-2.html
428
http://www.bloggingstocks.com/2008/07/17/google-nearing-70-search-market-share-in-u-s/
429
http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/technology/2008/06/10/google_uk_closes_in_on_90_market_share.html
430
http://www.downloadsquad.com/2008/05/17/conde-nast-scoops-up-ars-technica-for-wired/
431
http://news.cnet.com/8301-10784_3-9944882-7.html
with no payment or to let them buy the internet domains that they blogged under to see what they can do with them 432.
This was in contrast to the B5Media offer that wanted to look at the total business and see if the properties could be
appropriately monetized. This was a big risk for B5Media, but the deal never went through.

With available records and blog entries, the failure of Know More Media is more of one where the business model
ended up not being viable after changes in Google regarding Paid Links and that form of advertising. While Google did
state that there would be an easy way to get around the restriction by putting in a "No Follow" link, those defeat the
purpose of paid link advertising. With the loss of their primary revenue model and no real viable way to make that
revenue back, the owners decided that it would be better to let all their employees know and work out a way to transfer
domains to the bloggers. Some bloggers took up the domains and continued to blog on their own, while others moved
on to other projects. In all though, it was the failure of the business model: advertising driven revenue streams amidst a
change in how Google looked at paid link advertising, causing the site to lose revenue, rather than anything else along
the way. From all appearances, the breakup of Know More Media was more under a state of resignation over the issues,
rather than a flame out as in the Blognation case.

MyKinda

The Eastern European Blog network, MyKinda shut down in February of 2008 433. Over its very short five-month life span,
the similarities between MyKinda and Blognation were the topic of discussion within the blogosphere 434 for the same
issues of not paying its writers. The focus of MyKinda was on Eastern European countries and Russia. The initial MyKinda
sites covered the Ukraine, Romania, and Bulgaria, covering the events, happenings, and social meetings that were
happening in the area. Based on the same concept as Blognation, the owner of MyKinda, Lee Wilkins, left Blognation to
start up MyKinda435.

The commonalities between MyKinda and Blognation are striking in their similarity: the idea of country-based blogs that
would cover events for those countries, relying on local bloggers to help get the stories out into the blogosphere. These
local blogs, along with how difficult it can be to get readership when the internet population is not dense, made it
difficult to get the money needed to run the web sites.

The key similarities between MyKinda and Blognation are similar enough, that the cause of failure was the inability to
generate readership quickly enough to capture sponsorships and other advertising deals that would have allowed them
to expand the system. While Wilkins believed that the shutdown was temporary, he had burned through his bootstrap
money and had run up a significant amount of debt436 in the five months trying to get the system going. There was still
the issue of unpaid writers and the lack of incoming revenue to make the Eastern European blog network work the way
that the business design indicated. What is interesting is that both Blognation and MyKinda were centralized around

432
http://coutorture.wordpress.com/2008/07/29/what-happens-to-the-blogs-of-know-more-media/
433
http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/02/29/blog-network-mykinda-to-shut-down-today/
434
http://bloggingablogging.blogspot.com/2008/03/mykinda-doesnt-pay-writers.html is a very short blurb about not paying the blog
networks writers. This caused some good conversation about blog networks, and how sometimes the niches might not have enough
appeal to generate the large sponsorships or advertising revenue needed to run a major blogging platform.
435
http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/02/29/blog-network-mykinda-to-shut-down-today/
436
http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/02/29/blog-network-mykinda-to-shut-down-today/
individual blog properties based on countries, and were both the brainchild of Wilkins. They both suffered the same
fate. Both shut down because the business model did not work. However, the drama that accompanied the MyKinda
shutdown did not reach anything near the proportions that Blognation did. The key reasons that MyKinda shut down
were as follows:

1. The business model did not work. The sites did not get enough readership, and they were unable to get
the advertising revenue needed to make the networks grow bigger.

2. Writers were in the end unpaid, meaning that quality if not quantity would have stopped long before
the blog networks shutdown. This made it harder to see if the model would have worked in the end.

3. The system was online for only five months. This was not enough time to see if the model would work.
Funds were limited from the start, meaning there was not enough money to carry the company for the first one
or two years while content, quality, and readership were built to see if they could grow big enough to interest
big advertising dollars.

Without deeper pockets and with limited news coverage on the launch, it would be difficult to get the readership levels
where they needed to be in a very short period. The only way that they could have effectively competed would have
been to either work with a travel agency or travel data system to point to the blogs or share information off the blogs to
gain a larger readership. They would have also needed to work with local portals, local sources of information that
would have taken the syndication feed to get more distribution of the information that MyKinda was generating.

Since MyKinda is completely off line and the archive's records are spotty437, it is difficult to determine if quality of the
writing was an issue. Without knowing how well the company was writing, it is hard to determine how well they were
performing in their niche. That performance, much like the performance with Messy Media and others, is important in
determining if there was enough material to sell advertising around on the web site. Quantity was also hard to
determine, as the life span of the system was too short to get a good representation of the number of blog entries that
were being generated by the blog network.

This is the type of shut down that is hard to quantify. The system could have been successful if there had been an angel
investor or someone else who would have been able to invest more money into the blog network. Since this was a
bootstrapped company and no angel or VC fund gave them money to grow, the limits of funds were based on what
Wilkins would have been able to generate on his own.

As it was, he ended up 144 thousand Euros in debt trying to get the network off the ground, after putting up 175
thousand Euros of his own money. It would have been interesting to see if a blog network would be able to take off and
be of value in Europe. Nevertheless, two attempts so far have failed to generate enough readers to attract high value
advertisers and sponsors. It will be a long time until someone else decides to do a blog system like this in Europe.

Creating Passionate Users

437
http://www.archive.org usually covers dot com sites on the internet, since the life span of this blog network was so short, there is
almost no information in the Way Back machine at archive.org
Kathy Sierra438 ran the highly popular blog Creating Passionate Users,439 where she wrote about the things that people
could do to help people440 design, develop, and build software better, with regular humans in mind. Kathy Sierra found
herself at the center of a blog storm 441 in 2007442 that in the longer run did help set standards for people’s behavior on
the internet, but not before she decided to remove herself from blogging and some public engagements. The decision to
stop writing on the blog was a series of unfortunate, events that centered on death threats, abuses of her work history,
and the release of her personal information on the internet443. Kathy got her start writing books on Java programming
called the "Head First" series,444 which won multiple awards for the unique approach that the series used. The focus on
using a graphic intensive environment to teach was unique for the time and garnered multiple accolades from the
technical community445. Her success at writing technical books extended nicely into the blogging format to support not
just her books but her beliefs in how people could learn to be passionate about the things that they did or the people
that they came in contact with446. Often, her blog entries would start a conversation within the blogosphere,447 in order
to digest what Kathy was talking about on her blog.

She opened up her blog with the same philosophy of a graphic intensive site that used pictures more than words to
spread the message that it is possible to create happy users for a product. Very few of her articles were word dense 448.
Many of her blog entries were a few words and an image that conveyed what she was trying to say. As a blogger, this
not only broke all the rules, but it also was highly successful in gathering in an already over-read audience. At the height
of her internet fame, she suddenly quit, in a speech at ETech, under the cloud of death threats 449. The story is
convoluted450 because there are so many people that weighed in, both for and against Kathy Sierra, when the story

438
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kathy_Sierra is the Wikipedia entry on Kathy, and many of the issues on why the blog closed down.
439
http://headrush.typepad.com/ is the home of Creating Passionate Users
440
http://headrush.typepad.com/
441
http://it.toolbox.com/blogs/managing-infosec/the-darker-side-of-blogging-15351
442
http://www.onebyonemedia.com/my-epilogue-and-editorial-of-the-kathy-sierra-saga/
443
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/6499095.stm is the BBC article on the entire episode, what is interesting to note is that
throughout this process, a good majority of the blogosphere was sharply divided between free speech, what should be done, and what
reasonably could be done to keep blogging going, in an increasingly hostile environment.
444
http://headfirstlabs.com/books/hfdp/ is the site for learning about this style of learning and books that use this style of learning for
various subjects including java programming.
445
http://www.headfirstlabs.com/kathy.php Kathy‟s bio on Head First labs discusses her awards with the series.
446
http://blog.alphamind.biz/category/case-studies/kathy-sierra/ is a series of articles that cover the interesting things that Kathy kept
on coming up with as she studied the mind human interface and how we all have it within ourselves to find our own passion about
something.
447
http://srtsolutions.com/blogs/diannemarsh/archive/2007/01/03/my-responses-to-kathy-sierra-s-blog-on-5ish-questions.aspx is just
one of the many conversations that Kathy‟s blog started when she wrote something.
448
http://headrush.typepad.com/creating_passionate_users/2006/04/the_myth_of_kee.html this is one of the few articles that is word
dense, but still good because she talks about data reduction, how to cut the stuff that does not matter and find the stuff that does.
449
http://www.informationweek.com/blog/main/archives/2007/03/death_threats_f.html
450
http://doc-weblogs.com/2007/03/27#gettingPastTheBottomOfWhatWentWrong is probably the best time line of the entire issue,
even still this is a hard story to piece together, as the time lines and commentary are easily drowned out by the noise that accompanied
this blogosphere blowout.
broke451. The good part of the problem that happened to Kathy leading her to abruptly drop out of the blogosphere is
that the outcome of the story is unusually bright due to the influence of A List bloggers, and important movers and
shakers in the IT field.

Robert Scoble did a quick blog strike along with hundreds of other followers to support Kathy in her decision to stop
blogging and stop writing. Tim O'Reilly was also another source of support during the blog storm. Tim successfully
mediated between the bloggers who were responsible for the ownership of the web site that was involved and Kathy.
The mediation was successful to the point of getting Kathy and the other blogger to release a joint statement on the
issue452. The issues that Kathy raised were even featured on CNN American Morning, on April 02, 2007. The other good
thing that came out of this was an informal bloggers code of conduct. This effort was also spearheaded by Tim O'Reilly in
hopes that by setting up a minimum expectation for bloggers behavior the blogosphere would be able to avoid losing
important voices online. The draft of the bloggers code of conduct first appeared on the internet at O'Reilly Radar, in an
article penned by Tim O'Reilly. The draft bloggers code of conduct that is on the internet is directly relatable to the Kathy
Sierra death threats incident453. This was a break through document that while panned and supported influences many
bloggers and their behavior today through emulation of popular bloggers, or by personally adopting the code of
conduct.

In the final summary, with the Creating Passionate Users web site not updated and much of the information fading and
no longer available on the internet, the bottom line was that many of the people who got involved in this have all moved
on. While Kathy still has not picked up her blog, everyone else has gone on to do other things, with some cautionary
messages that had to be learned the hard way. Most of the commentators that made direct threats against Kathy were
never found454. Many participants who later confessed or spoke publicly stated that they were embarrassed by their
involvement, and the damage they have taken to their reputations on line and in life455. The controversy around the
death threats began an amazing conversation on line about free speech, hate speech, and guilt by association, in the end
though, the event highlighted issues among bloggers that could influence their professional and personal lives by whom
they associate and with what they do online. Since then, the blogosphere has been making attempts at being more
civilized, and in some respects been successful (such as the warm atmosphere at sites like FriendFeed456) and sometimes
bad (like the flash mobbing behavior on FriendFeed457). The public shaming of trolls and people who behave badly on
the internet has become the defacto standard of blogging behavior. Even with the way that we approach people, there

451
http://sethf.com/infothought/blog/archives/001188.html is one of the many articles that covered what was going on at the time that
Kathy started getting death threats.
452
http://www.rageboy.com/statements-sierra-locke.html is the joint statement from Kathy Sierra and Chris Locke, one of the focal
points of the issues that surrounded the death threats, the web sites meankids, and unclebobism, along with the ideas and concepts that
were what the sites were meant to be before death threats and violence against women comments were made.
453
http://radar.oreilly.com/2007/04/draft-bloggers-code-of-conduct.html is the draft version; however, attempts to update it, or have it
viable have fallen apart. In general, though many people did subscribe to it, and while there is always going to be controversy about
censoring comments, and keeping the internet in general civil, this good attempt never really made it out of draft mode.
454
http://www.wired.com/techbiz/people/news/2007/04/kathysierra is a good summation about the generalized hunt for the people
who made the death threats to see if they were capable of doing what they had said they wanted to do.
455
http://www.onebyonemedia.com/the-sierra-saga-part-3-who-are-the-real-culprits-in-the-kathy-sierra-saga/ is another good article
on the generalized search for who did what, who wrote what, and who did it.
456
http://beth.typepad.com/beths_blog/2009/07/guest-post-by-laura-norvig-friendfeed-as-nonprofit-technology-water-cooler.html
457
http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/06/28/friendfeeed-syphilis-and-the-perfection-of-online-mobs/
is still a long way to go in defining behavior standards online, in blogging, or on web sites. Kathy Sierra was unfortunately
one of the first people to be truly devastated by an online mob, and she has since been very quiet on the internet.

Why this blog failed is part of the way that the blogosphere works. Many blogs and many sites allow anonymous posting
of comments. Some sites, like the ones involved, did not keep any logs or allow for tracking of users to determine who
had made the death threats and other threats to Kathy's life. Because the threats were made and she was not sure if the
person making the threats was capable of actually doing them, she dropped out of the social fabric of the internet458.
This loss of her blog, her books, her speaking, all measurably reduced the global conversation about how to create users
and people who are able to find their passion. The news that Kathy Sierra was pulling out of the public role to take a
more private role inflamed the blogosphere, 459to the point where things got even more out of hand than the original
death threats460.

By pulling out of the blogosphere, and indeed all public functions, Kathy essentially cut herself off from not just the
detractors, but the people who supported her as well. While the supporting relationships have undoubtedly continued,
in the shotgun blast of incrimination461 that followed the initial revelation, many people who were not involved got
hurt462 and their reputations were tarnished. There was a loss of trust across a swath of A and B list bloggers that made
the final refusal to continue the blog the only viable option that Kathy had left.

There is no way that a person can tell if a death threat, cyber bullying, or other things that are happening online could
expand into the real world. There have been many times when cyber bullies463 have expanded into the real world, with
devastating effects. By Kathy removing herself as a target for a group of people who she does not know but were
threatening her life, did all she could realistically do. Unfortunately, the removal of herself from the blogosphere
reduced not just her exposure to harassment but left many of her fans and online friends behind, wondering if she
would ever come back to the blogosphere.

PVR Wire and Other Weblogs Inc properties

458
http://www.horsepigcow.com/2007/03/27/the-unsinkable-kathy-sierra/ covers the final message that she sent to some of her
partners for that ETech conference, and the idea that she would not be going, and why she would not be going.
459
http://www.rageboy.com/2007/03/re-kathy-sierras-allegations.html when the newspaper hunted down Chris, he decided that it was
time to get the story into as many hands as he could, so he published his response on his blog rageboy.
460
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/sfgate/detail?blogid=19&entry_id=14783 is an excellent summation of the story line at the
point where it was published.
461
http://www.onebyonemedia.com/the-sierra-saga-part-1-dissecting-the-creation-of-the-kathy-sierra-blog-storm-4/ is one attempt to
discuss just how fast this broke on the internet, and the side effects that influenced everyone involved, and many who were not directly
involved in the incident.
462
http://galvanized.wordpress.com/2007/03/29/kathy-sierra-affair-minding-the-company-you-keep-in-the-blogosphere/ is one
response to the guilt by association process that immediately happened as soon as the news hit the blogosphere
463
http://www.coxwashington.com/hp/content/reporters/stories/2008/05/16/CYBERBULLY16_COX.html and the issues carry
through to this very day, where the Lori Drew MySpace suicide case has prompted many states to attempt to enact cyber-bullying laws
that would make what happened to Kathy Sierra illegal in many states, or at the federal level.
AOL shut down PVR wire464 and a number of associated blog properties as not being profitable enough to keep on
spending resources465. What makes this blog shut down interesting was not that it was the failed advertising model, but
the failure of the long tail466 in blogging. The long tail assumes that people will read older articles on the web site and
have advertising shown on those older articles. AOL had bought WebLogs Inc, which was originally owned by Jason
Calcanis467 who had noticed that there were a number of things that AOL was doing with the blogs that could hurt the
brand image468. Jason Calcanis had noted that, there were a number of things happening with advertising that would
have annoyed most audiences469 that were visiting the blog network. Another part of the concern that Jason had was
that there were a number of people leaving the Weblogs Inc properties470. This would have reduced either the quantity
or quality of the entries for those associated properties. While many of the bloggers who left found work at other
Weblogs Inc properties, as people moved around, it became more difficult to produce content in quality and/or quantity
that would continue to make the blogs profitable. This put the blog network at a disadvantage that contributed to the
eventual decline of visitors to the blogs. This also made the blog network vulnerable to AOL management who would be
looking at raw numbers of visitors and the advertising revenue being generated by the blog network.

When AOL started shutting down underperforming blog niches the idea that “AOL Killed the Blogs" started immediately
in the blogosphere. This might have not been necessarily true, but made for great blogger outrage and discussion on the
blogosphere. As a business manager, many people look at the profit/return of what they are doing, and if it is not
enough, they will make a business decision to either retire or sell the properties in place. This was demonstrated by
Gawker Media, and a number of other blog networks in late 2007 when the blog industry started to consolidate before
the recession of 2008/2009 started gaining steam. What was more interesting about the AOL decision to shut down the
smaller Weblogs Inc sites was that they had always been small, and as a result, were having a hard time gaining
audience471. The blogs that were shut down were niche blogs that might not have had a broad appeal meaning those
blogs would have had a hard time making revenue projections472 and the minimum profit as determined by AOL to be
appropriate for one of their properties.

464
http://www.pvrwire.com/2007/02/01/pvr-wire-blogging-in-tv-squad/ is the farewell message from PVR Wire.
465
http://blog.9rules.com/2007/02/passion-the-long-tail-blogs-and-revenue/
466
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Long_Tail is an excellent description of the long tail as described by Chris Anderson of Wired
Magazine as a niche business strategy.
467
http://www.calacanis.com/ is the home site of Jason, he is one of the more colorful personalities in the silicon valley startup scene,
and is currently working on Mahalo
468
http://www.calacanis.com/2007/11/07/i-would-not-have-allowed-this/ discusses changes to the blogs at Weblogs Inc with
advertising that AOL was using on the sites, and how it might damage the brand that had been built.
469
http://valleywag.com/tech/aol/a-warning-to-niche-blogs-230122.php covers many of the weblogs Inc sites that were shut down like
BBHub, Divester, DV Guru, and PVR wire because they were not as profitable as they needed to be to remain open under AOL
management.
470
http://www.brianalvey.com/news/2007/05/24/why-i-am-leaving-aol/ covers a number of people who were leaving the AOL
properties to move on to other blogs or other opportunities soon after the buyout.
471
http://www.calacanis.com/2007/02/11/another-interview-about-weblogs-inc-retiring-a-couple-of-blogs/ is Jason‟s take after the
announcement on why shuttering the smaller blogs, and knowing that the writers were going to have a soft landing that his take was
that this was a business decision, and that AOL had bought the writers and the management team, not necessarily just the properties.
472
http://blogs.tech-recipes.com/davak/2007/02/19/is-niche-blogging-a-myth-small-isnt-the-new-big covers this topic nicely, as well
as the controversy surrounding the AOL decision to shut down niche blogs that were not taking off. He also raises the very good
question, as bloggers seek niches, some niches might never be profitable enough to return adequately on the investment no matter how
The question though is when is a niche too small? For AOL, the blog sites that were shut down were most likely too
small, but for a smaller blogging system or a different business model, those blogs might have been very successful in
their niches473. However, these niches were not successful enough to ensure that AOL would want to keep them open
under the AOL umbrella. That is likely the root cause of the shutdown, rather than some other reason. Simply, it seemed
from the public record that the blogs were not drawing enough audience shares to remain of interest to the larger AOL
Company. What is also apparent from the public record is that the blogs that were shutdown did have an interest to
Jason, and where they fit into Jason's view of the Weblogs Inc brand.

Why these blogs failed is also complex, as it has to take into account both the AOL Media Group's expectations of profit
and the site's original expectations of profit. This simple difference in cultural awareness is part of the reason that the
blogs were sold. While some would have held onto them thinking to grow them, when a larger company has different
expectations, it becomes difficult to keep the earlier startup expectations.

1. The blogs were unable to make enough money to keep them open.474

2. People moved on to other blogs or other opportunities, some of this as a direct response to the
shutdown of various underperforming blog properties.475

3. The bloggers were left without a brand leader and effectively had to fend for themselves when the
company was purchased by AOL and Jason moved on to other projects.476

4. Indirectly, in the movement from startup to being part of a big company 477, many people had a hard
time acclimating to this change.

5. The blogs that were shut down might have been in too small of a niche to ever return money
adequately, either to pay their bills or to make up for the investment put into them 478.

It was a business decision and one that made sense to AOL. AOL being a larger company who is comfortable with web
sites that garner millions of page views a month, a web site garnering tens of thousands would not be as profitable as a

well the
writing is.
473
http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/6_startup_lessons_2007.php covers the idea that no niche is too small, depending on the
business model and revenue models used. However, for a company like AOL, they were probably too small to justify the cost of
keeping them open.
474
http://www.bloggersblog.com/cgi-bin/bloggersblog.pl?bblog=120071 covers the theory that in the bigger AOL model, some of the
niche blogs just could not make a decent return on investment to interest AOL.
475
http://www.inquisitr.com/2064/aol-proves-that-big-companies-and-blog-networks-are-a-difficult-mix/ with money as the incentive
and the mix, the niche blogs that were shut down, many of the bloggers were moved to other Weblogs Inc properties.
476
http://www.micropersuasion.com/2006/11/without_jason_w.html makes that direct question, will Weblogs Inc lose its edge when
Jason left, which did not happen as the bigger Weblogs Inc has done well under AOL management.
477
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/venture/161370_vc20.html covers some of the issues around people taking their buyout money and
often going on to start their own company, or just find something different to do on their own terms
478
http://nofilmschool.com/2007/02/dvguru/ is an interesting recap on why DVguru should have stayed open, and been given an
opportunity to compete in the niche with NewTeeVee launched by GigaOM.
web site getting the millions of page views. There will be a tension between the needs of a big company and the needs
of the smaller units within that company. The eventual end of near 60 percent 479 of the properties operated under the
Weblogs brand was a very large number of underperforming blogs or units within the company. The view of this is that
AOL simply shut down blogs that did not make sense to them from an economic standpoint. They were not generating
the number of page views or revenue that would be needed to keep them going.

As a blog network, Weblogs Inc is still very strong on AOL's flagship brands. Shutting down underperforming blogs makes
sense. There is no reason to spend capital and effort on blogs that are not meeting the business goals. This typical
business decision in the longer run ended up removing niche blogs from the bigger Weblogs Inc framework while adding
additional bloggers to the systems flagship systems. This reallocation of resources is also common in business world,
where the bottom line of risk to profit is usually the final determiner of whether a project continues or is shut down.

Fired for Blogging

There are a number of people who fall under the heading of fired for blogging across multiple industries, dating back to
near the start of the blogging online journal era. People who have been fired for blogging reach across all industries, and
job positions. Many of the people who have been fired for blogging could have been approached differently by the
companies they were fired from, and a different conclusion could have been reached. Unfortunately people are still
fired for blogging, with no foreseeable decrease in this process. The first bloggers who were fired usually ended up being
fired for something they posted on their personal blog. Since the blogosphere was still tiny in comparison to where it is
today, the net result of the first firings was that there was little initial reaction from the blogosphere. The blogosphere
had not learned the power of their collective voice or the pressure that they could bring about to effect change. The first
firings were left to be fully covered by the traditional media networks.

The term "Crowd Sourcing 480" had not been coined into the popular lexicon during the initial phase of blogging. No one
had thought about the role of the amateur in helping drive what was on the internet or how the amateur would report
on the events of the day. While many bloggers were discovering the collective voice of the blogosphere, the role of
"citizen journalism481" had not even been discussed in the blogosphere at a level that would help influence the changes
that were happening. It is possible that Heather B. Armstrong was the first person fired for blogging482 because of
information that she was sharing at Dooce.com. While many thought that the firing should not have happened, without
a collective blogosphere voice ready to cover issues loudly or in concert, the Streisand effect did not happen, and there
was no momentum to cover the issue as fully as other issues later on. Without a collective voice, the blogosphere is not
a potent force for change. At the early stages of blogging, there were not enough people blogging who had power and
followers to cause an issue for a company dealing with people who were blogging about the company.

479
http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/09/23/aol-quietly-cans-weblogs-inc-life-sciences-blogs/ is a blurb about the total number of
blogs shut down by AOL.
480
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/14.06/crowds.html
481
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizen_journalism
482
http://www.mentalfloss.com/blogs/archives/15329
People fired for blogging range from Ellen Simonetti who was fired from Delta for posting pictures of herself on her
journal in uniform on a Delta plane483. To Washingtonienne484 that was run by Jessica Cutler and covered her life in
Washington DC; she was fired for unacceptable use of Senate computers 485. Other notable cases of being fired for
blogging were CNN Producer, Chez Pazienza486, and Joyce Park who was fired from Friendster for blogging487. Neither
Google nor Microsoft are immune from firing people for blogging; Mark Jen was fired from Google for blogging and
speculating about Google Financing488, and Michael Hansom who posted a picture 489 of Apple's G5 on a loading dock at
Microsoft. Nintendo fired Jessica Zenner for her blog490, and this list goes on. Bloggers are fired from their day jobs on a
regular basis, making this a common enough concern that some bloggers go to great lengths to hide their identities 491
like Mini-Microsoft492 who blogs about Microsoft, and often not in a positive light.

There are so many people who have been fired for blogging, that the EFF has an entire section of their web site
dedicated to bloggers493, bloggers' rights, intellectual property, icons and images for your web site, and other resources
to help bloggers understand their rights better. Corporations have started coming out with blogging policies494 and social
media policies in relationship to Facebook, MySpace, and other systems that can tie into the blogging process. These
policies, procedures, and processes within a company shield both the blogger and the company from employees who
blog. Corporations are seeing blogging as an important tool in helping bring customers and interested parties closer to
the company, getting answers to questions that they might have495. Companies are also aware that bloggers need to
portray the company in a positive light, but this will not always happen. While the company or corporation usually
sanctions professional blogging, there is also the personal blog, as well as information that is associated with that
personal blog on MySpace, Facebook, and other social networking sites.

483
http://queenofsky.journalspace.com/
484
http://wonkette.com/4162/the-lost-washingtonienne-wonkette-exclusive-etc-etc
485
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jessica_Cutler
486
http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/02/14/cnn-producer-says-he-was-fired-for-blogging/
487
http://jeremy.zawodny.com/blog/archives/002498.html
488
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2005/03/07/tech/main678554.shtml
489
http://www.michaelhanscom.com/eclecticism/2003/10/23/even-microsoft-wants-g5s/
490
http://www.thestranger.com/seattle/Content?oid=322407
491
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/05_39/b3952009.htm
492
http://minimsft.blogspot.com/ is the home site of the infrequently updated site; Mini was discussed earlier in the MSDN/TechNet
blogs section. His is a blogging career that is well worth following, and noting many of the things that he has to do to keep his identity
secret from his employer.
493
http://w2.eff.org/bloggers/ this is one of the most important resources for bloggers to know what their rights are as a blogger, and
what they can do to support bloggers rights. While many of the reasons that bloggers were fired early on have been resolved by
companies building blogging policies for employees, early on, and continuing through to today, bloggers always face issues when
their blogs do not meet with the standards and practices of the organizations culture that they work for in real life.
494
http://www.corporateblogging.info/2005/06/policies-compared-todays-corporate.asp
495
http://www.socialtext.net/bizblogs/index.cgi
Many blogs are simply a viewpoint into someone's life. However, there are times where social networking has enabled
the boss to catch an employee in a lie or doing something that they said they were not doing 496. Companies are also
increasingly looking at what people post in their profiles, or blog about, as a decision point for making or not making the
hire497. It was the personal blog that caused many companies problems, but as blogging went professional and people
could see that it was a powerful tool for informing and engaging people, the idea of the corporate blog took over and
became the next big thing. Companies took a while to see how blogging could be used to bring customers closer and
started small experiments with bloggers inside the organization to see how it could be done498. Over the last five years,
blogging has become more acceptable in the corporate world. However, it is still a dangerous world to be blogging about
the company you work for499, the people you work with, and other things that could be taken in a negative light, even if
it was not meant that way.

Employers will read your blog or your MySpace profile, and Google your name or e-mail address looking to see many of
the things you have written on line500. Most of us at some point will show up in a Google search result. If you are writing
a blog or have associated your e-mail address to a blog, a forum, or comments, then odds are likely that when an
employer Google's your information, that they will discover your blog or other information that you have put in about
yourself on line. Most states have "at will" employment, meaning you can be fired for just about any reason, including
for your blog. The key to keeping your job and your blogging job are as follows:

1. You must follow the corporation's rules toward blogging.

2. Never try to cover the blog up. You should be open with your employer and co-workers that you blog.
Give them the URL if they ask for it, but do not feel like you have to bring it up after that. If they choose to
follow you, that is their choice.

3. Do not blog from work, do not print off blog entries at work, and do not access your blog at work.

The idea is that you are going to blog, but you have to be careful. If you already blog professionally, make sure that
when you fill out the NDA and disclosure statements for your job that you get to keep your blog and the data that you
generate in your personal blog. If you blog on company assets, talking about company products or projects, that is one
thing that can get you into a lot of trouble at work. Part of the other issue with using work assets is that the employer
can also insist then that because you are using company property, everything you do on the computer belongs to the
company. It would be bad if you had to pull down months or years of content because the employer believed that they
owned it, because you used corporate equipment to blog.

If you are already an established blogger, one that has any content that an employer might want, you need to ensure
that the company does not attempt to take over and claim copyright or ownership of that information as well. You can
easily write in the exceptions to that in your employment contract, and you should write an exception into your
employee contract that states that anything you write belongs to you. There might be issues, and you might not get a

496
http://techwag.com/index.php/2007/11/13/busted-via-facebook-so-much-for-lying-to-the-boss/ covers the story of Kevin Colvin
who was caught lying to his boss for what was posted on Facebook. The blogosphere had a great time with the story, and in the end, it
was a minor blip in the blogosphere for everyone, for Kevin, it ended up being a serious issue.
497
http://jobsearch.about.com/od/jobsearchblogs/a/jobsearchblog.htm
498
Robert Scoble‟s career is a perfect example of this process.
499
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2005/01/24/BUGCEAT1I01.DTL
500
http://technology.findlaw.com/articles/00006/010851.html
job because of that, but if your blog makes money on its own, you do not want an employer thinking that they own what
you write on your own time and on your own equipment. You might want to float the idea and see if the employer will
agree to that stipulation, or you can see the companies' blogging policy to see what rights the employer wants before
you take the job.

Some employers believe that they own everything that an employee creates when they are working for them. This
includes ideas that are generated at home or blogging from home. If you professionally blog from work, using company
resources to blog, the employer has a good case to make the argument that those ideas or that data is theirs because of
where you blogged or worked from. This can cause a problem later on if you want to use the content of your blog for
other purposes. As a blogger, you have to make sure you know what your employer wants or expects from a blogging
effort. As companies start seeing the value of blogs, the company might try to lay claim to your non-company sponsored
blog. You will have to make sure that this is covered in your employee contract or that you have a waiver for this kind of
content seizure. You do not want to end up in court having to fight to retain the content you built on your own time, on
your own equipment, because the employer thinks they own everything you do.

While many companies support blogging now, and in some cases actively seek bloggers for their corporation, there is
still the risk that you could be fired for blogging or for saying something that the employer does not like. That is a hard
and fast reality in the blogging industry. There are people out there who have very thin skin or who have very strong
opinions about an issue. When you write, you can easily run into problems with people who will contact your employer
because they do not like what you wrote. They will cause problems for you with your employer, because the person
making the complaint does not see what you were driving at with your corporate sponsored blog. If you make an
association between yourself and your employer on your non-company sponsored blog (which is generally something
you should not do to keep yourself and your content semi-protected), your employer is going to be called at some point
because of something the blogger posted on their blog. This is an event you should be prepared for, and be prepared to
work out a way to solve the problem. Usually, this will require that the article be pulled down if it was truly offensive or
in poor taste, according to local cultural norms.

The key to keeping your job and remain blogging is to make sure you understand the corporate polices, know the things
you can and cannot blog about in regards to the place you work. Another very good point for not being fired for blogging
is to keep your blog as professional as possible. The key between a professional blogger and a personal blogger is that
professional bloggers are often talking about the things they do, and in ways that show unique ways of doing things. If
you blog about your boss, your co-workers, and others in the company in a negative light, you are courting being fired.
As long as you are open about it, keep the blog within your niche, and pay attention to the rules, you should do ok with
your blog and your employer.

What makes a successful Blog?

Based on the case studies above, the ability to create a widely read blog seems on the surface to be easy. The reality of
blogging, especially professional blogging, is that there are a number of things the blogger needs to be aware of in
relationship to getting a readership. Nothing about blogging is easy, from the cranking articles, to finding time to crank
out articles, and figuring out that in many ways this is just as much work as anything else that a person can do. Blogging
is not an easy thing to do, pay attention to, or care and feed. Blogging is something that you must do every day of the
week to make sure that you are keeping your readership happy. Much like newspapers and successful blogs, there is
something new there every day, and blogs are no exception to that rule. You have to blog every day to build out a
readership. You have to blog every day to ensure that there is fresh new content on the site that will bring in new
readers.

The more you get into blogging, the more you realize this is a habit just like anything else you do. The more you do this,
the more you can end up on a treadmill of searching for readers, wondering what will bring people to your blog, and
how to keep the momentum for your blog going. There are steps that new bloggers can take to become successful, but
all of them require work, and in some cases a lot of work, to reach the top of the blogging world. While these steps or
processes are not all inclusive, these are lessons pulled from the case studies and experience in blogging for many years.
We all have differing ideas of exactly what success is. In the end, it is your concept of success that will drive your own
blogging career. The first question you need to ask yourself, and this is the most important question, is, "Why are you
blogging."

If you know why you are blogging, the rest is easy. If you are blogging to have a voice and you do not care how many
people read you, then blogging is easy. You do it when you want to do it; you do not worry about being linked to, and
you are just writing for the sake of writing. If you are blogging because you want to make money from it, then you are
going to have to be blogging every day, and doing what you need to do to keep your audience coming back day after day
to read your stuff. If you are blogging to plug a book, then you have to make at least one blog entry every day on the
topic of your book. If you are blogging a product, then you are going to worry about who links to you and how buzz is
being created around your blog and your product. There is also a lot that can be learned from blog networks and blogs
that have failed.

Each blog failure, either through a failed business model, loss of trust in management, or being fired for blogging all has
a core causal effect. Something did not work the way that it was originally planned to work, and there was not enough
flexibility in the system to support changes in those plans. While being fired for blogging is not uncommon, there is
always a barely visible line between what the employer will find acceptable and what they will not. Employment is
generally an "at will' process, meaning the employer does not need a valid reason to fire you. If the employer is looking
for any reason at all, blogs are often convenient as an excuse. These kinds of firing are not rare, and with any failure, the
blogger has to learn from those kinds of mistakes. Other blog failures are more centered on the business model or being
sued out of existence. Bloggers need to have a plan to make sure that they can survive those experiences.

All the successful blogs equally have something in common: passion, voice, professionalism, something to share that
others will find interesting, being part of the conversation, and being knowledgeable of things that are happening in the
blogger's chosen niche. The other commonality is that these people write. They have a background in writing, either as a
journalist or as a novelist. Those skills will do you well and are worth exploring at a community college or at a regular
college. Building up your skills in marketing, writing, and journalism501 when you start blogging is in line with the
approaches that have made successful blogs in general. There is nothing that says you cannot take classes while blogging
either. While it is impossible to know everything that is going on in your niche, there are tools that can help you find out
more about what other people are writing about on their blogs.

One of the most common tools out there is to use an RSS Reader. RSS stands for "Really Simple Syndication" and is a way
to get content from a web site without having to visit that web site 502. An RSS reader is something you can use to track
the blogs that you find interesting. You can also embed an RSS reader into Google, or use an RSS reader to read sites like
Twitter, Friend Feed and others that you find interesting. Using an RSS reader can help focus you on what the leaders in

501
http://www.blogherald.com/tag/journalism/ is a series of interesting articles that discusses the issues surrounding how journalism
can respond to new media tools like blogs. This is one of the better series to read on this subject.
502
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RSS
the industry are saying, as well as help you cut down on the general noise on the internet and find things of interest. The
RSS reader is probably the most important tool that you have, by selecting the top blogs in a niche or bloggers you find
interesting when you research a story, you can cut down on the noise and increase the good information that you are
getting about a subject that you are writing about.

Success is something that the individual experiences by his or her own expectations of success 503. You work hard on
those things that you want to be successful at. You can be a successful employee, mom, dad, or anything else you want
to be, and blogging is no different. There is a lot of work to become successful in blogging. There is a lot of content
development; there is a lot of working with others in the same niche. There is also the amount of time you will have
available to join in with others to help them, as much as they will help you achieve your goals. Very few other bloggers
or writers will tell you any different. Nevertheless, all of the successful blogs have the same things in common, and they
are easily identified and discussed. How you approach blogging, and how much you are willing to put into it helps. It also
helps if you can bring about the concepts of what makes a successful blogger, making that work for you, in your own
style, and in your own way.

Be Unique or have a Unique Voice

The greatest strength you have as a blogger is your voice, and you need to find it. Some people never will; some people
will find their voice and use it for good. For some, the only voice they can find is the mean nasty voice that tries to
denigrate everyone they meet. You have a view on life and the things that are important to you that are unique to
yourself. There are things you like and things you do not like. To be a successful blogger you have to find your voice. It
can be difficult, scary, and in the end something that will be harder to find in many ways. Paying taxes and dying are
easy; finding that place where you are really you and then writing articles on a blog about those things you believe in
can be difficult.

The art of being unique and sharing your unique viewpoints is not something that we teach in school, but as you find
your voice and as you find your place in the greater social fabric of blogs, it becomes easier all the time to use that voice.
You do not have to deal with an editorial process 504, and you may not even have to deal with getting something
approved on a group blog or your own blog before hitting the "publish button." Readers need to find you being honest
and genuine. The more you are, the better the ability you have to connect with your community. It is normal to struggle
with finding your own voice; however, the effort pays off because you start developing your community and provide
authenticity to your readers505.

503
http://www.timesdaily.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070604/NEWS/706040314/-1/BUSINESS01 covers some of the reasons
that people stop blogging like work life balance, or things that suddenly become more important than the blog.
504
http://www.problogger.net/archives/2007/02/08/how-to-blog-with-voice-and-increase-community-and-readership/ there are many
advantages to finding your own voice, being genuine will often lead to a wider audience share in the longer run, as long as people find
your voice honest and genuine.
505
http://bloombergmarketing.blogs.com/bloomberg_marketing/2005/02/another_quotama.html discusses some of the difficulties in
finding your own voice. We are taught throughout life to be risk avoidant as a general population; we do not teach innovation creative
thinking the way that a blogger needs to approach a subject. Overcoming these societal built and enforced limitations becomes
important the more you attempt to find your own voice and those things that make you unique.
Companies understand the value of voice and how the voices of people and individuals transcend the millions of dollars
spent on public relations each year506. The personal voice and the corporate voice do not have to be at odds. If you love
what you do, you want to share the information with others, and you can write well enough on the subject to answer
questions from users, then blogging for a company makes sense507. If you are unhappy with your job, your co-workers,
or your management, it might not be a good idea to be a member of a corporate blog. The voices that most people will
want to associate themselves with are professional voices. Even on celebrity scandal sites the voices there are generally
professional. If you can find the professional voice inside you, then you have a basis for starting a professional blog and
working on your "brand reputation508" or your own process of "reputation management509." How you use your voice and
how you approach the community will help determine how well your voice reflects yourself and how that establishes
your own reputation and brand as a blogger. As a blogger, it is important that you represent yourself in the way that you
want to have the world see you. Since your primary communication will be through your blog, your guest entries on
other blogs, and your comments on others' blogs as well as your own, how you write, what you write about, and how
fair you are will help you establish your reputation and brand.

Be open to the community

Being open to the community requires that you be right and acknowledge when you are wrong. However, this is not
always the case. There are some blogs that are very popular that have no regard for the community. There are many
times that a blogger can be wrong: they got the wrong facts, they got the wrong story, or in general, they were simply
wrong about any number of issues. This will happen at times, and you need to be able to do errors and omissions as
much as any other newspaper or journal will do510. Everyone gets it wrong eventually, and it is important to be able to
acknowledge that fact openly in the community. If you can prove your point though, sometimes your original blog entry
was not clear enough to convey your point.

Being open to the community also means that you listen to the comments on the site and that you respond to them
when you can. When you answer back to comments, you become a real person to the people on your web site. They see
you as a member of the community, not just a person who writes stuff and leaves it on the internet with no follow up.
Comments have a tendency to take on a life of their own, so you also might want to consider moderation of comments
that are off track, off post, and do not make sense to the article. Sometimes the community can be a little crazy and call

506
http://jcmc.indiana.edu/vol11/issue2/kelleher.html
507
http://www.allacademic.com/meta/p_mla_apa_research_citation/0/9/2/3/5/p92355_index.html
508
http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/10/brandyou.html brand reputation, yourself as a personal brand, what is on the internet
about you, or what you do on the internet is a core concept in the personal brand. This concept is heavily tied to reputation
management.
509
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reputation_management is the process of "vanity searching" or searching for your name or email on
the internet using Google, Yahoo and Microsoft search to see what others are saying about you on the internet. Employers use this
same tactic to finding out exactly the same thing who are you on the internet, with some employers using this information as a
determinate in if they should hire you or not.
510
http://www.slate.com/id/2197488/ Slate has a regular corrections feature that they use all the time to correct stories that showed up
previously during the week. This makes a great example of what a blogger can do to correct stories. Some bloggers correct stories in
line by scoring out the wrong words and inserting the right words so that there is an obvious correction to the article. How the blogger
does it is up to them, but it should be obvious that there were corrections made to the piece.
moderation of comments a denial of freedom of speech.511 Moderation is a policy that you as a blogger need to decide
on. There are some legal protections against slander if you do not moderate comments512, but if you are worried about
it, you will seek competent legal advice.

The other side of comments is commenting on other people's work, on their blogs. If you have written article based on
someone else's blog entry, you can leave them a note on their blog and supporting their efforts. Many bloggers want to
engage with people, and if you write something on your blog, it would be great to leave a note on their blog as well.
Being open to the community also means that you intelligently discuss the issues in comments, both on your site and
others. Bad comments, trollish behavior, and other bad behavior eventually will be filtered out at some point 513, and
negatively reflect back on the people involved in the behavior. This can hamper your voice and hamper how people
perceive you. There is debate on if the comments work. They do not provide you with any additional bonus in Google,
either, but what they do is bring people to your blog if others read the comments. If your comments are good enough,
people will want to track back to your blog and see if you wrote anything interesting on the subject yourself. The traffic
might not be much, but it is traffic that you would otherwise not have. It might also open up your blog to new readers
who find your writing interesting.

The other side of this is sites like Valleywag514, TMZ515 and others that specialize in nasty behavior are understood to be
that way as a business model. They have made this their brand, and this is their identity516. Depending on what kind of
blog you are doing, choosing this model is your choice, but unless you can make a living from blogging already, outside
employment might be limited, as your personal brand could be damaged by this kind of blogging. Since this kind of
blogging carries the greatest risk for personal reputation and further employability. If you are blogging part time, this
might have to be done anonymously at first. Being open to the community is always the optimal approach when
blogging or engaging with other people on the internet. Sometimes the people who are avid readers of the blog will
submit "scoops" or information that is breaking news. Then the blogger must also weigh when the scoop or submission
might not be in the blogger's best interest to publish. Sites like Think Secret are a perfect example of being user
supported with information that eventually led to being sued by Apple.

511
http://www.thepowellblog.com/2007/07/is-moderating-blog-comments-censorship.html talks about blog comments, censorship,
and free speech.
512
http://www.thepowellblog.com/2007/07/is-moderating-blog-comments-censorship.html talks about how removing blog comments
or pruning/editing blog comments might remove from legal protections that you have as a blogger. It is best to seek competent legal
advice when investigating how and when to delete comments. This might also end up being very unpopular with your community.
Most people will not mind if you use askimet or other systems to keep spam from hitting the blog at all.
513
http://stupidfilter.org/main/index.php?n=Main.About is a project that is designed to work out what is "stupid" on the internet and
work out an inbuilt filtering mechanism so that people do not have to see it.
514
http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/04/11/hacker-news-considers-banning-valleywag/ some of the bigger social voting news sites
have considered banning Valleywag because of the way they write and what they write about on their blogs. If you are starting a blog
like this, there is a lot to consider before you get started. Although the other side of this is that the controversy also sells page views,
the more controversial, the more buzz in the blogosphere and bait like this article actually raises the readership of the site for a short
time.
515
http://gawker.com/378965/74-reasons-to-hate-tmz TMZ is a gossip blog/zine that covers celebrities, anything to do with celebrities.
It is also highly popular because its entire focus is on the negative side of celebrity, and the crazy things that celebrities do to
themselves.
516
http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/04/16/valleywag-fires-writer-who-criticized-valleywag/ in one of the more interesting ironies
about Valleywag, they fired a blogger for criticizing the pay structure that was adopted under the now standard pay per view payment
scheme.
Have an issue

The one noticeable key area where top blogs succeed, and even where failed blogs were successful, was that they wrote
in a niche. While niche writing is ok, there is one glaring problem with niche writing. Most people are more multifaceted
than only liking one thing. Some might like movies and music; some might like writing, selling books on Amazon, or a
host of other things. The idea that people are multi-faceted means that sometimes the person changes over time and
the blog will reflect those changes. As we change jobs and situations, rise up the corporate ladder, and have children,
the blog becomes an extension of all those things. We grow, we learn, we develop new talents, and we might find that
the older issues are no longer the issues that we want to write about. People change; sometimes the blog has to change
with them. This is why blogging is so dynamic.

While the blogger changes and finds new things to write about or care about, the issues that we discuss become more
dynamic over time as well. Some will try to manage multiple issues by managing multiple blogs. This is a difficult road to
follow, and not for the timid. If you are already struggling with one blog and getting it going, do not try to open up
multiple blogs because you will abandon them later on. Alternatively, you will not write the number of blog entries you
think you need to write to sustain a blog. You can see this in the blogosphere every day as people change and they
abandon the blog. This is more pointed when new book authors or even novelists work on their book and tie their book
blog into Amazon, only never to update their blog. They move onto other stories, or get out of writing, or find that the
novel they are writing is more work than they expected and do not keep up their blog. Blogs need to be updated to
show that someone is still there and busy doing things, keeping their audience informed as to what is happening.

When getting started in blogging, the best idea is to focus on an issue, an industry, a political viewpoint, or a concern.
The ability to focus on a niche and build your skills there are important when starting out, and important for keeping
readership later on down the road. While some blogs take on multiple issues because of the dynamics of the people that
write for them, even those blogs fall into an identifiable pattern that their readers grow accustomed to reading on your
site. Even group blogs like BoingBoing or Toolbox work within a narrow niche or a series of niches. The issues that they
write about are the reason that people keep on coming back to the blog; they know what to expect when they go there.

Issues are important, and if you believe in something, it comes through in your voice. That authenticity is also something
that people will expect when they visit your blog. There might be things you do not write about because you are aware
of the risks of what you are talking about. While it is important to understand the dynamics and issues within the niche
you are writing in, it is also important to write to the potential audience that the blogger should be developing. The
recruitment of additional readers will also support the change in style and interests that blogs undergo as they grow into
more popular blogs. . The issue will also change over time; if you can write strongly over an issue and follow the changes
that the issues have, you will start to get readership that adapts with you because the issue is adapting to changing
times.

Some writers are strong writers without a particular issue, like Chris Pirillo. They are writing for popularity, page views,
or to keep in touch with their own roots. In addition, other bloggers routinely follow and write about only what is in
Google Hot Trends or writing for a collection site like Techmeme or Memorandum. These people "game the system,"
trying to gain credibility and page views by following the "meme of the day" and not worrying about the actual content
they are writing. If you follow the blogosphere long enough, you will see that these are people with maybe forty words
of their own and a huge blockquote from another site, usually the site that is on the top of a systematic leader board like
Techmeme or Google trends. This is blogging for page views and works best when advertising is heavy on the web site,
like in the Gawker model.
What makes the blogger authentic, but not necessarily the most popular blogger out there, is to follow internal passion,
those things that the blogger strongly believes in. The stronger your passion about an issue, the more that comes
through in your voice and the more possibility you have of building a community around the issue. Some issues are easy
to build a community around, for example, if you have cancer and wish to discuss it online. Some issues are harder, like
soap operas. Either way, if you stay on top of the subject or niche in your blog and consistently deliver quality
information about something, you will build out your audience.

The Huffington Post is one of the best examples of having an issue, politics, and diving in with passion and gusto with the
principle writers, not just with guest bloggers. They hold onto the controversies that can rage on the internet when it
comes down to personality and politics anywhere in the world. The voice is authentic, the advertising on the site is
heavy, but you go back because you know they will be covering information in a manner that while funny is also of great
importance to the writers.

It is the niche that you write in that will help define how popular your blog becomes. It is also the marketability of that
niche, the way you write, the ability to build a large audience around that niche, and working with community. Your
passion around the issue will drive all those factors in helping you make a successful blog. Another good example is
BoingBoing. By being consistent across a number of tightly held beliefs, BoingBoing has been able to build out their
audience based on issues like DRM and censorship. All of the top bloggers have made themselves a vital source of
information within a particular subject, and this would be a good process to emulate.

Do not sweat your "statistics" when getting started

Too often, people worry about the number of readers that they have. What you need to know about readers is that
there are many ways that readers are going to get to your blog. If you only had twelve people show up at the site today,
but your RSS feed has 129, and your inbuilt RSS feed on your blog has hundreds that does not mean that your blog only
had twelve visitors517. People latch onto a blog using multiple systems. This only matters if you are trying to make money
by selling advertising space on your blog, and there are many ways to monetize your blog. If you focus on building an
audience first, the money will come. This is difficult to cope with at times, but it is also very true, if you focus on creating
great content that has a readership, eventually money will come. Sponsorships often are not for bloggers who have a
small readership. Google ads and other advertising networks only pay you a very small amount of money for running ads
on your site based on the number of clicks. When you are small, money is going to be a long way from making you rich
over night. Better to focus on the things you can control: the site, the navigation, what you blog about, how often you
blog, and what your voice brings to the global conversation.

Do not sweat the number of comments you get either, as with most participation in events, the desire to participate
might be there. Nevertheless, for some reason or another, the comment will just never leave the person's mind. That is
something that is a truism in the blogging participatory culture. There might be 120 million blogs on Technorati at last
count, but there are six billion human beings. The number of blogs in comparison to the population is quite small. Your
comments, much like any other feedback, will always be smaller in comparison to the number of entries that you make.
Not everything you write will elicit a comment back, and many of those comments are not going to be good well thought

517
http://www.adesblog.com/2008/07/16/key-to-success-in-blogging-persistence/ is a great article on blogging persistence, and the
influence of numbers on people. Just because you had a drop in readership, this week does not mean your blog is no longer popular, it
might simply mean that many of the readers went on vacation, there is a holiday, or some other event is going on.
out comments either518. It is important to realize that and just keep on writing the things you are writing about on your
blog. The important part is to engage with those comments you do get, to keep the conversation going, and to make
yourself look more approachable. Sometimes, comments can be downright abusive519, and the ability to gather trolls
and other miscreants is an issue. In the long run, you need to decide how much you will engage and how much you will
prune comments.

Are you an expert?

If you are going to blog, then you should know what you are talking about on your blog. When you open yourself up to
the global environment, you also open yourself up to have all your assumptions challenged. If you are offering good
solid advice that links back to the sources, much like academic writing, you stand a much better chance of carrying your
message. If you start with talking about things that you know nothing about and cannot support the things you are
saying, then it quickly becomes obvious that this is not a blog worth reading. If the blog is not worth reading, then you
might get passersby, but you will not be able to build the core audience that you will want to build for your blog.

Being an expert is important, but there are also levels of expertise. If you are learning how to do something and start a
model rocket blog about how to build, care for, and launch model rockets, a discovery learning blog makes sense here.
The blogger will be sharing what they are learning as they go along the process of moving from small rockets to larger
rockets. Guest bloggers can fill in expertise for the larger homemade model rockets. Coverage of model rocket shows
and launches can also add to the blog. This is one of the cases where you do not need to be an expert, as long as you are
willing to share what you are learning.

If you are writing about something that does require a certain level of expertise to remain credible, like writing about
technology, or new gadgets, or celebrities, or anything else that requires a large base of information, then you might
want to consider hiring out or inviting guest bloggers to talk about a subject. The one key thing that all blogs in the case
studies share, including those that failed is that they hired experts in their fields or business organizations to write for
them. Blogs like Ask the Admin520 have core bloggers who understand and know the internals of Windows systems. That
is an expertise that they did not have, and someone else provided quality content to their site, helping them, and
helping the guest blogger. A blogger can quickly be drowned out by blogosphere backlash if they are pushing bad
information.521 Or they will fail to gain readership by not being credible in the subject matter.

518
http://many.corante.com/archives/2007/07/20/spolsky_on_blog_comments_scale_matters.php
519
http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2004/03/19/ sums up the issues that many bloggers face in one simple graphic. While
unfortunate, it is also very true; that people will do amazingly poor taste things when they think, there is no way to attribute a
comment back to them.
520
http://asktheadmin.com is a windows support blog, where people can ask questions about how to do something specific with
windows, and they answer it. This is a site that is driven by user submissions or questions and is one of the better smaller technology
oriented blogs.
521
http://techwag.com/index.php/2008/10/03/steve-jobs-did-not-have-a-heart-attack/ covers what was a fake news story on CNN
Ireport about Steve Jobs having a heart attack. The stock price of apple dropped on the news, and the story was fake. There is an
ongoing FBI and SEC investigation into who posted the news article to make sure that it was not part of a criminal act or a stock
manipulation scheme against Apple shares.
There are things you are an expert at, and you might not even realize it or understand the nature of your expertise. If
you do something either as a hobby or as a profession, you have an interest in it, and you will have some expertise in it.
As we discussed earlier, starting a blog with a hobby in mind you quickly become a learner, and as you learn, you
become an expert in the subject. Blogs can cover different kinds of expertise; expertise does not mean that you have to
have a Ph.D. in a subject either. If you are an avid amateur photographer, you can use a blog to highlight your growing
expertise in leaning to use your camera. You have something to offer to other people who are also learning how to use
their camera. If you build models, play guitar, listen to music, watch movies, love technology, and continually use or
shop for those kinds of products, your expertise grows in those areas. These are all things you can blog and share with
your readers on your blog. Blogging can help you grow your expertise in a subject, and people might read your blog
because they are also learning how to do a thing. You gather a number of people with the same level of expertise who
are sharing what they have learned, and you have a community, one that is going to help create readership for the blog.

The biggest thing to remember is that your readers' expectations of your blog will require that you remain consistently
excellent in the information that you are giving out. It is ok to make mistakes, but you also have to acknowledge that you
made a mistake and print an error or omission page or entry. As an expert in a topic or market niche, you have to know
what you are talking about because people who are experts in your niche will be reading your blog. If you fail to deliver
consistently good information, it becomes harder to establish your expertise and harder to retain an audience. There are
styles of blogging though where it is easy to demonstrate your expertise in a subject; there are some where it will be
difficult to prove expertise unless you have the academic or other credentials to prove your expertise. You would not set
up a blog on how to store and use anti-matter if you only have a high school diploma.

One of the more interesting niche style of blogs is to write about is "DIY" or Do It Yourself style of writing. This is where
you cover how to do something, like make a blog entry using Microsoft Work 2008 and post to your blog using XML-RPC.
You will find that people who want to do the same thing will read your blog on how to do this. DIY entries can help you
gain creditability within your niche because you are demonstrating that you can do something. If you want to take it
step further, you can make a video of you doing a task, post it on YouTube or other system, and then post that video to
your blog with commentary on what was needed to do that project. Expertise does not need to be formal, but it has to
be verifiable and accurate to help create the community of readers that you will need to have your blog be successful.

Is your subject matter Safe for Work?

Blogs are international; they know no borders, unless the state or corporation tries to restrict access to that blog. There
are many things we like to talk about, and there are blogs that focus on drugs, sex, booze, porn, and a host of other
industries. Even Gawker has a porn blog called Fleshbot, but that does not mean that the blog is always going to be safe
for work. A safe for work blog is a blog that people can go to when they are at work or read in the living room at home. If
your blog does not meet the safe for work criteria, then you might lose audience and find yourself blocked by corporate
and nation/state level firewalls or information control systems. This is an important process to know about because
what you are writing about and how safe for work it is will help determine if you can carry advertising, or even if your
audience will show up. If your business model is primarily advertising driven and you discuss pornography, then systems
like Google's Adsense will not be available to you. There are advertising systems that are geared toward the
pornography trade or sites that feature anyone naked. You need to be aware of these distinctions, and if you point to
something that is not safe for work, you should clearly label the link NSFW (Not Safe For Work) so that readers know not
to go there during normal business or family hours.
One of the issues that tripped up BoingBoing and got the blog flagged as a porn site in an internet filter was a naked
picture of the statue of David. While that might sound silly to a majority of people, for the company that was making the
filter that labeled BoingBoing as a porn site, they were very serious. Corporate and countrywide filtering of content is
something to realize and understand as something that might happen to you. Depending on what your subject matter is,
you might find yourself at some point being filtered, meaning you will get almost no traffic while people are at work and
a ton of traffic at night. You also need to understand that there are things that are legal where you are and illegal where
someone else is. You might find yourself caught up in countrywide firewall systems, like in China522 or in many countries
in the Middle East and forty countries worldwide523. Depending on the audience you want to attract, understanding
filtering of content and what you can and cannot write about depending on your audience can help open up a number
of doors about understanding your readers, and how to serve them best with your blog.

This is not meant to discourage you, but as countries, governments, and industries attempt to learn how to deal with the
new social media of blogs and how flexible blogs can be, it is important that your audience knows what they can expect.
The random acts of government interference in censorship is also nothing new but something you need to be aware of
when you blog. If you do a blog on women's rights in the Middle East, odds are highly likely that you will be blocked in
the Middle East. If you do a blog on Sharia law, where countries disagree with your interpretations of Sharia law you
might be blocked. If you try to do a blog on freedom in Tibet, expect to be blocked for Chinese users. If you are writing
about Nazi memorabilia, expect to be blocked in France and Germany, as any reference to Nazism or information about
Nazism is strictly controlled. These are the realities of the global internet platform and the ways of internet blocking of
subjects both at work and within the context of the countries norms for society. What might be normal for you could be
illegal in another country.

Can you write well?

This is one of the more important issues. Can you write? Can you write well, use grammar and proper spelling? Can you
read your file aloud to make sure none of it sounds choppy or that you missed something when you wrote it? Are there
incomplete thoughts in the blog entry? Can you make your writing populist and approachable for the vast majority of
readers? If you cannot, then it might be worth taking a few creative writing courses at your local community college just
to learn how to write better.

When you blog, you are communicating using writing, pictures, video, or audio, as in a podcast. These formats for
information can be used in any blogging system out there. However, search engines are geared toward text. They do not
understand the content in a video a podcast, or in many cases what is in the picture without "tags." A tag is a word that
is used to describe what the file is about so that a search engine can understand it. Your writing and your ability to write
well will help set you apart from the thousands of blogs that people start every day. Most of the top bloggers all come

522
http://www.greatfirewallofchina.org/ is a great site to test and see if your web site or blog is being actively blocked in china. If it is
being blocked, there is no recourse, but you can alter your blog, your subject matter, or other information if having a Chinese audience
is important to you.
523
http://lawprofessors.typepad.com/law_librarian_blog/2008/04/access-denied-d.html is a great book/report to obtain if you are
interested in the global phenomena of site filtering. If you walk away from this thinking, this is bad, and then this might be the blog for
you to start. There are many places, including in the USA where information is controlled at some point, depending on how strongly
you feel, how well you write, and what expertise you carry in this field, there are simply not enough blogs to cover this topic.
Moreover, as shown with BoingBoing and the distributed BoingBoing project, filters can be defeated.
from a journalism, novelist, or other background, where writing was something they did on a daily basis. They have
learned how to write well through formal education or just classes that they have taken to learn to write better.

The time to learn what the spell-checker on your word processing program looks like is the day you start writing your
first blog entry. You should check for common errors in grammar and other writing concerns, like split infinitives, which
can be fixed. When you set up your spell-checker, make sure it checks for every kind of error possible. As you run the
spell-checker for both spelling and grammar and as you progress in your writing, you will stop making those "green
underlined mistakes" that can set a professional writer apart from an amateur writer. When your voice is based on
writing, then writing becomes your main communication tool. How well you catch simple mistakes is important in
ensuring that you are using the tools you have to tell your story coherently. Many of the bloggers who have made it
large are those that have learned to write well.

One of the other things that good writers do is read their entry aloud to make sure that it makes sense. If you can read it
aloud, it sounds right, and you do not stumble over something, then that is a good sentence or paragraph. If you
stumbled or noticed that an idea was not fully formed, you can go back and fix those as you read them aloud. Reading
your entry aloud is a neat and important trick to know if you are fully forming your ideas or conveying the idea in the
way that you wanted to talk about it. If you cannot write in the language of your blog, then it is time to go back to school
and take some classes on how to write better. This is not an admission of failure but something you can do to improve
your writing skills and make your blog more readable, more understandable, and more approachable for your readers.

Do you have passion about something?

There is a lot of research524 in how the work and social environments increase our cynicism toward others or toward
issues. The best bloggers all approach their subject matter in the same way that a three-year-old with a bucket and a
shovel approaches the beach: it is theirs, they own it, and they are going to dig deeply into the sand. As adults, we
accrete layers of responses based on where we have been, who we are with, and what kind of life we have lived. We
have developed survival mechanisms525, and in some ways, we become embittered.526 Bloggers cannot afford to have
that kind of baggage and still keep the sense of wonder in their blog entries. Most of the causes that bloggers deal with,
from Digital Rights Management, to Law, Politics, and Cancer all require that a person expose their own beliefs, because
they are taking a stand for or against an issue. The best bloggers expose their stand, explain why, and then simply leave
it for people to agree or disagree with the stand.

When we show passion, we expose ourselves, so we start small with things that we have not necessarily told someone,
or we take a risk that we would like to take but have not yet done. Blogging is one of the more risky things you can do;
you expose something you believe in. Yet, when you are passionate about something, it shows. It makes your articles

524
http://hum.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/60/5/683 some of the more interesting research is in academic circles on how the work
environment or home environment colors our world views, leading to conformity rather than robust innovation or willing to take risks
in either environment in an attempt to improve them.
525
http://www.copingskills4kids.net/node/55 covers some of the ideas between childhood and adult hood coping skills and how we
manage them over time
526

http://books.google.com/books?id=PKRjzU2DSEYC&pg=PA128&lpg=PA128&dq=adult+cynicism+work&source=web&ots=pvKW
Gf50EE&sig=C3qMrWf4x3YZL18HZfMg5ITta7Y&hl=en&sa=X&oi=book_
result&resnum=9&ct=result covers some of Erikson‟s beliefs and academic writing in adult learning and adult behavior.
genuine. You write in your own voice and want to share the good news. While this is risky, it is also rewarding, because
you are building out a community. You are contributing to the social fabric about the issues you are writing. You are
contributing to the common good, the common knowledge, or in the case of some blogs, the common angst and anger
that many may feel about a subject. Popular bloggers have built their reputations about the passion that they have on a
subject, and this is a good idea to follow. Your passion helps your natural blogging voice, and both of them help build a
better blog entry.

Who are your favorite Writers

Asking yourself who your favorite writers are is also a good way to get started. When you read books, you usually
gravitate toward an author because the way they construct story lines, how they write, and because their writing style
appeals to you. The same holds true for blogging. You follow certain writers because you like their style or the way that
they construct words to convey meaning. If the way that they write is worth emulating, then it might be a good thing to
emulate their style. While this does not mean that you copy them directly, because you will always have your own style,
it does mean that if someone you follow uses tricks of the writing trade, you should learn them so that you can use
them. While no colleges directly teach how to blog, there are so many blogs in the blogosphere that there has to be
someone whom you like to read. Once you have people you like, you can follow them and deconstruct their entries: how
they tell the story, how many words, how they use rhetoric and style to convey their story to the public.

While people develop their own voice, they usually follow some of the writing styles of their favorite authors. For people
who have been trained in the education system, like getting a Master's or a Doctorate, they are taught a certain writing
style that carries through much of what they do when they write. Journalists are also taught their own style, and their
own code of ethics. For every style of writing there is a standard, 527 and in some cases, a code of ethics to follow. For
people who are creative writers528 or writers of genre books or blogs like crime drama, true life, reality, or other styles,
those are worthy of copying if they work for you. To create a well-formed blog entry529, you should focus on telling the
story in the fewest words possible to convey the meaning of what you want to say.

When you look at blogs that have been successful, even blogs that have failed, the individual writers have their own
style. Those styles fall into various categories of writing: satire, parody, or general snarkiness. Readers build an
expectation of the blog or blogging network that is difficult to overcome or change when the audience expects the same
kind of content or style even though the blogger changes their style or attitude. Style is part of your voice, and that is
influenced by your passion. In many ways, the new media of blogging has changed the rules of how information is
transmitted and consumed. However, this does not mean that over time educational opportunities will not be
developed.

The only real examples are to use the ones online, from ProBlogger to Louis Gray, Robert Scoble, and ReadWriteWeb. All
these authors have their own style. Many of their styles are journalistic because that is where they have come from in

527
http://www.essortment.com/all/howtowritesho_rynt.htm
528
http://www.korepetycje.com/writing-resources/creativewrite-guidelines.html is a very good guideline on how to be a creative
writer. Bloggers are generally not bound by a word limit, but there is also the understanding that the longer the article, the harder it
will be for people to read their way through the whole piece. If you can say what you have to say in 600 words or less, then you have a
good blog entry.
529
http://www.intertwingly.net/blog/1472.html
terms of education or experience. You can take journalism classes at a local college to learn more about how to write as
a journalist, then take those lessons and apply them to writing in the blogosphere.

Treat your Blog like a Business

The biggest thing that professional bloggers do is treat their blogging like a business. That means they make decisions as
if their blog is a business. It does not matter if it is an individual blogger who is taking jobs from the Problog job board or
if they are writing for a blog network. They are expecting to be paid for constructing words into something interesting.
There has to be a reason why you do something. For many of us blogging is a job as well as a hobby. While the
Technorati 2008 state of the blogosphere report530 indicates that most of us write because we can or we want to, there
is always a motive for why we blog. There has to be a pay-off somewhere to make this profitable to us as a blogger. The
Technorati report indicates that 79 percent of bloggers blog because they can and because they want to use their voice.
Some bloggers are simply blogging for dollars and will take any writing assignment, even if it does not make logical sense
for the overall tone of the blog itself. We write to earn money off advertising or to collect a paycheck based on the
number of people who view our blog entries. Blogging is about page views, when it comes down to being paid. If you
understand the blogging for dollars model, then you will start treating it like a business. If you treat it like a business, you
will make better decisions and you will be able to know when to cut back on the business expenditures when times get
tough.

Blogs that have failed and succeeded all had business plans, good or bad plans. If you are starting a blog network and
want to emulate Techcrunch or Gawker that means you make hard decisions when it comes to how the business is going
to operate531. How do you pay people? Some blog networks like Toolbox only start paying when the blogger gets more
popular. All they provide is a platform, and it is up to the blogger to hit the magic number of visitors per day to start
earning money. Gawker pays bloggers right from the start of their blogging career, but has had to adjust their model
twice in light of economic conditions. You can love the people who write for you, but you cannot let that influence the
decisions you make, depending on what is happening with your blog. If you are running your blog as a business, with
hired bloggers, they have to produce or be let go. You have to be able to scale your blogging business to go along with
the economic times. The better you are able to scale from the start, the easier it will be to expand and contract your
business and keep parity with the number of bloggers that you hire. The hardest part of running any company is when
you have to draw down the number of bloggers who work for you.

One way to get around this is use the guest blogging model, where you pay for each entry that you accept from guest
bloggers. You can put out a request for blogger entries and then pay whatever you think is a fair value. Articles can range
from five dollars to fifty dollars, depending on the article length, depth of technical knowledge, and how hard those
articles were to write for the writer. For two hundred words, roughly a paragraph, companies will pay about five to ten
dollars. For fifteen hundred words, you are going to pay at least fifty dollars for the work. Companies like Izea or Social
Spark are part of the Pay per Post model, and will arrange for you to connect with other bloggers for a price. There are
many differing viewpoints on either hiring Izea bloggers or accepting posts from them. That is an individual decision
because the consensus is mixed. Some love532 the pay per post model; others loath533 it. For most bloggers, where you

530
http://technorati.com/blogging/state-of-the-blogosphere/the-what-and-why-of-blogging/
531
http://valleywag.com/5058760/valleywag-cuts-60-percent-of-staff
532
http://nancyotr.blogspot.com/2007/07/i-love-pay-per-post.html is a sample love pay per post, with a full disclosure that this is a
sponsored message. Overall interesting in the way that buzz can be bought and sold using blogging business models like this on the
make money is just as important as how you make money. If you are making money off the ProBlogger job board, that is
one way of getting writing gigs that pay well and are well-respected.

Part of "Go big or go home" when it comes to startups is to work out exactly how you want to go big. The failed blog
networks all understood that to keep on growing, they had to generate a mass readership quickly enough to capture the
attention of sponsors. The reason for the failure for Know More Media, Messy Media and Blog Nation was that they
underestimated the problems of attracting enough readers to fully support the advertising model they had adopted. The
Toolbox model, where bloggers first have to build up an audience of at least 150 visitors or page views a day before they
get paid might be a better model for a troubled economic time than the Gawker model that pays bloggers from the
start. Bloggers do need to prove that they can gather an audience, and while there are many who think they can, with a
crowded market getting any reader to a blog is difficult. The blogger has to have a differentiator, something that makes
them different or unique in the blogging world additionally bloggers have to prove that they deliver the traffic534. There
is room in the blogosphere for more blog networks. Competition is always good, as Gawker and other blog networks like
B5Media show that there is always room to grow into new niches to test them out. . Your business has to scale to meet
demand. Bloggers have to stay active drawing traffic, and money has to be rolling in from the advertising model.
Without those, the blogging network will eventually fail because it will be unable to meet its financial goals or
obligations.

There is much advice on how to blog successfully, how to be a better blogger, how make money from blogging, and all
the other ways that blogging can pay off for the blogger. From the increased attention from the internet, from being
able to prove your credibility when it comes to technology, to building a loyal following of people who want to be part of
your experience, blogging can do many things for the individual. Blogging can also do many things for companies535, as
companies learn the value of blogs, using them to reach out to customers536. The goal is to tap into those companies
that need the quick or in-depth blog article and are willing to pay for the work. Most blog entries will go from six dollars,
at sites like Izea537 or Social Spark.538 The more professional entries grab upwards of fifty dollars per entry, as seen in the
ProBlogger job boards. There is money to be made blogging for small companies, bigger companies, and other
companies, but as economic conditions tighten, these kinds of positions will become harder to get. The independent
blogger will have to stretch themselves to find enough sites that pay enough to continue doing this as a business.
Thinking like a business and be willing to expand and contract according to other business conditions will help the
blogger plan better.

Bloggers should be working on getting other writing gigs while building your own blog network is a viable option to use
when the advertising model breaks down. This will help keep you float while building out the blogging network. With

internet. With many ways that bloggers can make money, where you make money is as important as how much money you make
blogging.
533
http://babblative.com/article/pay-per-post-and-why-its-such-a-tragic-failure-and-scam
534
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/04_50/b3912115_mz016.htm
535
http://www.usnews.com/articles/business/small-business-entrepreneurs/2008/09/26/how-to-blog-your-way-to-small-business-
success.html
536
http://www.prweekus.com/Survey-finds-15-of-Fortune-500s-are-blogging/article/112584/
537
http://izea.com
538
http://socialspark.com
Izea or Social Spark, you need to disclose that these are paid reviews539 and not just something you are doing. That is
part of the model as well. If you are writing a review for money, then you need to disclose that you are writing that
review for money. This does not mean through that you cannot do this; just make sure that if pay per post blog articles
is in your revenue model that you disclose and otherwise do this right.

Risks and Rewards to Blogging

There are risks and rewards to anything that someone does when they enter the public realm. As you build your brand
over the internet and become internet famous, you will deal with people who love you and hate you. There are some
people who will support you, and you will make some deeply personal and warm internet friends, while you will also
make some interesting internet enemies along the way. It is how you manage the relationships that will help set you
apart in the blogging world. It is also how you build and use a social fabric of networks, people, technologies, and
systems that can help you manage your internet reputation. Your internet reputation is different from your reputation
that you have in the real world. Your internet reputation is based on how much you participate and what you say on
line. Your real world reputation is how well you relate to people and what your friends and family think of you. Your real
world reputation is built upon those people that know you; your internet reputation is built on the things that people
say about you and your blog.

This is an important distinction to make. The common problems with being busted doing something by posting to
Facebook540 or MySpace541 have caused epic discussions in the blogosphere. You can directly manage your internet
reputation by remaining professional. That concept is also predicated on what kind of blog you want to run. If you want
to run a blog that is centered on celebrity gossip, even if you do not have any connections, it will probably do well. If you
want to run a porn blog, it will do well. If you want to run a blog that centers on issues or concerns outside of the
cultural norm that you live in, then odds are likely that if you publish your name in conjunction with that blog, you will
be censured by society. While many people consume porn, it in general is held in disregard in the USA. (Even though
porn is a multi-billion dollar business, few want to be publicly associated with porn.)

If you are writing a technical blog or a blog about pets, soap operas, or something else, then those activities fall well
within the norms for the society in the USA. Odds are likely that as you write more about your favorite subjects that
people will begin to know you and develop an affinity for your blog. Few will suffer a penalty for talking about what is on
TV, pets, animals, raising children, or other activities that are supported by the culture you write in. The blogger also
needs to be aware that there is censorship of the internet networks in many countries, and this can influence the
number of people who can visit your site. If you are planning to start a blog about Tibet, expect to be blocked in China,
unless you are discussing tourism and stay well away from politics. Even then, odds are highly likely that your blog will
be censored in China and you might lose your Chinese audience. While that will not influence your internet reputation, it
might make it harder for an audience to reach you.

Each of the case studies above show what makes a good blog: it is the ability to write, expertise in a field, passion about
something, the ability to understand business, the ability to develop blog entries like a product, the ability to handle
controversy, and a host of other things. The reasons why blogs fail is loss of interest in the blog, leading to

539
http://www.techcrunch.com/tag/payperpost/
540
http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,22756398-401,00.html?from=mostpop
541
http://grownupgeek.com/government-employee-myspace
abandonment, failed business plans, too narrow a niche, or lack of solid leadership. By knowing these things, you can
avoid the pitfalls and become a person who is successful at blogging.

Rewards to Blogging

There are many rewards to being internet famous542, and that is exactly what you are doing when you set out to blog 543.
While some people have found great fame on the internet, many have found it difficult to translate that internet fame
to real world fame544. As a blogger though, as you make it from relative obscurity and over the years grow out your
writing style, and your ability to crank out information there are some opportunities that will come your way. You might
find yourself being asked to guest blog. You might find yourself as part of a syndication deal, where you are read
globally. As others link to you, you gain credibility for your viewpoint. You might be able to get a pro blogger job via any
one of the companies that are looking for pro bloggers. Pro bloggers who are hired usually highlight their best work, by
pointing to their blogs and the other things they have written online or in the real world, like a book.

Blogging fame is much like making it big as a rock star. We are often unprepared for the actual arrival of fame based on
all the hard work we have done545. Fame is also elusive. Sometimes it happens; sometimes it does not. Only the random
desires of a fickle readership will determine your fame. While you can write great content and you can copy the snarky
style of Gawker or the educated ethos of Robert Scoble, fame comes and fame goes. It takes as much work to maintain
fame as it does to get there. Sometimes, internet fame also has its dark side for people. There are health implications,
social implications, and hiring implications that could lead to an increase in stress in your life546. However, internet fame
can also be fun once you learn how to manage it and how not to let it go to your head.

The friends you make on the internet, while you may never meet them, are part of the social fabric that you have built.
While you have people you follow, there will be people that follow you as well. Then there are those that you share the
same level with, and some of them are going to be very cool when you deal with them over e-mail. Some of these
friends come out of surprising corners and can have an immediate impact on what you are doing. One blogger who has
had a major influence on me is Louis Gray547, who has been supportive of the site and generally said things that are
thoughtful and insightful. He was there when one of my blogs was hacked and has been responsible for driving a
significant chunk of traffic to the blog when Google banned it after it had been hacked 548. It is those kinds of
relationships where the members of the blogosphere can help each other. Other bloggers develop these kinds of roles
with each other and form a close orbit around each other for a long or short time. Bloggers will change over time, and

542
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=internet%20famous using definition three for the idea of what being internet
famous is all about. This can be both positive and derogatory, depending on its use.
543
http://www.wikihow.com/Become-Famous-on-the-Internet
544
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/07/07/AR2006070700950.html she was internet famous, and rightly
so, her inability to translate that fame to the real world is a major cause of her slide into obscurity both on and off the internet.
545
http://www.blog-republic.com/2006/07/08/blogging-fame-do-you-want-it-could-you-handle-it/
546
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/07/technology/07blogger.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
547
http://www.louisgray.com/live/
548
http://www.louisgray.com/live/2008/04/banning-by-computer-repairing-by-hand.html
sometimes they move on, drop their blogs, or change the subjects of their blogs to reflect what is going on in their lives.
While you have these kinds of friends, they are invaluable not just for traffic, but for the ways that they may influence
your thinking or what you are writing about.

Another additional benefit to blogging are the contacts you will make if you go into doing interviews. You will meet
business people, entrepreneurs, idealists, thought leaders, and other people in your niche and learn more about your
niche than you ever thought you would know. Contacts are the invaluable by product of writing and covering your topic
or niche area. By working with the community, you can become a leader in that community, where your ideas are read
and commented on because you come from an authority that is recognized in the field. When you meet these people
who comment on your blog, cross-link to you, or follow what you are doing online, you have in-built people who have an
interest in what you have an interest in. Another interesting side effect is that as you get more popular or become more
of a community leader, you might get physical job offers from companies. Some of these offers might be to write for
them; some of them might be to work for them. The contacts you make can eventually help you have more of an
opportunity to write or more of an opportunity to find employment in a field you love549. In technology savvy circles, the
blog is quickly becoming the new resume.550 This has many rewards but also some risks. Managers might not want to
hire you because of what you stay on your blog551.

While you can blog at Google, Microsoft and others, by being open about your blog and what you are blogging about,
you can help yourself become a more valued employee if you can publicly disclose the relationship. Many companies
will let you blog within parameters but do not want there to be an association between you and the company on your
privately hosted blog. This not unusual situation is something that happens frequently. If you are blogging about your
industry, the things you do within the industry, and how you are helping your industry, it might just be the thing that
helps you get the job. The reverse of that holds true as well. If you blog is intensely personal, talks about addition,
drinking, drug or medial issues that you are personally experiencing, make sure your employer can not associate that
blog with you. Always remember that people have been fired for blogging.

Showing up on leader boards is also a sign that you have arrived to at least the "C-Level" of blogging. Showing up on
Techmeme or the Technorati front page is something that says you have arrived. The first time you are there is
something to celebrate, knowing that your knowledge or your style of writing has gotten you there. This is a major step
when you have hit the aggregation systems on the internet, as they only choose blogs that have a certain number of
links, and have a good page rank. This is a milestone, but also can help you renew your commitment to blogging. Once
you hit the leader boards, then you also start building more links, as people will notice the leader board and might start
linking back to you. Having your blog show up on a leader board does not necessarily lead to more traffic, but it does
lead to more credibility in the blogosphere. The cross-links and the credibility will help drive more traffic, although you
should not write your articles552 just to show up on the aggregation systems.

549
http://innovationcreators.com/wp/?p=287 there are a number of people who have used their blog as the key to finding their next
job. Employers are always looking for people on the internet, and depending on how well your blog is written, or how well you stay in
your niche, might make you look very attractive to an employer because of your readership, and your community leadership. Robert
Scoble was able to use this path from NEC to Microsoft, and there is a good record of accomplishment here on how this works.
550
http://bokardo.com/archives/the-blog-is-the-new-resume/
551
http://unemployedblogger.blogspot.com/ this is one of those perfect blogs that serves as an example of how not to walk away or
handle being fired from your employer.
552
http://www.deepjiveinterests.com/2007/11/24/the-power-of-techmeme-over-bloggers-is-pretty-astounding/ this is one of those
controversial issues. It is possible to game the leader board systems, and it is also possible to game Google for a while, but eventually
all these bad practices will catch up with the blogger. Being banned by a system like Digg, Techmeme, Stumbled upon, and others
means you have abused the social networking systems, but does not mean you write any better or any worst than you have before.
You will learn a lot about technology, Search Engine Optimization, Hosting, Domain registration, and a host of other
technologies that you will use to make your blog work better. These are all skills that are needed on the internet.
Companies specialize in these skills and charge a lot of money to perform these services for companies. As you learn
with your blog, you become knowledgeable in the field, meaning you can help your friends, family, or others in helping
them set up their blogs and getting into the social fabric. You will learn about RSS, Twitter, friend feed, Facebook, and a
host of other systems that you can tie your blog into to gain more back-links, and more readers.

If you are a small business and blog about your business, you also start to build a community around your product 553.
The small business blog or the small group blog can also become a way to share ideas, thoughts, or just the interesting
things that are happening that might also interest customers. As people try to find out more about your product, the
benefits far outweigh any risks you might be taking554. The blog can become the voice of the company, much as Robert
Scoble was the voice of Microsoft or Matt Cutts is the voice of Google today. People will ask you questions about the
product or service. You can highlight the cool things your company is doing, and all with a minimal investment in time
and money. If you already have a web site for your company, setting up a blog for the company can take less than an
hour.

Then finally, there is the sense of discovery and fun that you will have as you discover others who become part of the
community that you participate in on the blogosphere. There are some wonderful people on the internet, and many of
them have blogs. You develop friendships with some people, which sometimes develop into real world relationships 555.
Yet you can still be friends and members of a community with people all over the world. The internet does not have
geographic boundaries, and people all over the world will read you. That is the power and the equalizing factor of the
internet. You can use your voice for positive or negative gain, and it depends on what you want to write about and how
you want to be viewed on the internet. When you add your voice to the blogosphere, you are adding to the global
village. The other reward to this is if you try to cover issues of the day, in a meaningful manner, you start to build respect
from the internet, and as a result, start to develop a better self-image. Often when things go wrong, or you become the
person who people love to hate, it is because of the way you say things on the internet, not necessarily what you say.
Gawker Media is the perfect example of this style, and while it has its value in emulating, Nick Denton is someone we
love to hate. On the internet and within the blogosphere, you can control your image through what you write, how you
write, and what stories you have to tell.

Risks of RSS Scrapers and people republishing your content

This is a risk depending on how attached you get to your content. Within the blogosphere, content is read using your
RSS feed and gets used in many different ways. Some of the ways it can be used is with something you did, like adding
your feed to friend feed or to your Facebook account, or using another system like Zimbio for republishing purposes.
Some of it might be syndicated in a deal that you have made with people who routinely publish things across the
internet. Other times it might be without your permission or even your knowledge. These people are called RSS

Writing specifically to be featured in one of the leader systems or aggregators is generally not a good thing, as your voice and what
you have to say gets drowned out while you chase internet fame.
553
http://www.website-development-training.com/benefits-of-blogging/
554
http://sbinformation.about.com/od/businessblogfaq/f/businessblogs8.htm
555
http://it.toolbox.com/blogs/elsua/10-great-strategic-benefits-of-blogging-9233
Scrapers, in that they use your RSS feed to publish your stuff on their site556, sometimes trying to make money off it and
sometimes republishing stuff in hopes that people will link to them rather than linking to you.

RSS scrapers do not necessarily provide a back link to you; many times they do not. Their goal is to take a lot of content
off the web, encircle it with Google or other advertising, and try to make money off the content you write. There is a
pragmatic view point here in that once your content ends up on the internet you can try to do one of two things:

1. Exert your copyright over what you write and go after everyone who has used your RSS feed and put your
content on their site without your permission or knowledge.

2. Forget it and move on, not worrying about it, and have some fun with it 557.

If you choose to exert your copyright and pursue people who use what you publish in ways you did not specifically
authorize, that is your right. However, this is a costly thing to do, and often you end up with the Streisand effect as well,
depending on who they are and how far you take the process. The other problem is finding out exactly who owns the
site. Usually, these are blogs that are running three or four owners deep if they are free standing. At other times, they
are a shell account on any one of the free blog account systems out there. The only real way to track them is through
their advertising account, meaning you will need to have a lawyer subpoena the people who are providing the ads to
work out who really owns the account or where the money ends up. That is if they are using a real person and not a shell
person. Then you will need to serve the people who are doing this with legal papers and start your own cease and desist
process for the person who owns the blog that is scraping content. This can often be costly, and the odds of you getting
back money for this are slim. Usually, all the person has to do is take down the content. If you try to go after money, you
might need to show damages, and that will also be a problem. You will not have access to their statistics, and the actual
damage done to your site might be minimal.

Pragmatically, you can ignore it and move on. While it is great that someone considers your blog cool enough to use
your content on their blog, if they provide attribution and/or a back-link that helps you out. If they do not provide either
or they do not use ads on their own site, then there is no money involved, and it might be a web site that only they want
to know about. Sometimes people build up a web site for their own uses, not thinking that the world might come there
as well. If your friends build a web site that scrapes data from RSS feeds on sites they find interesting, and you are one of
them, this might not be a bad thing. Many content scrapers are now providing back-links or attribution to the original
site, and not using the entire article either. This makes it harder to prove damages, as they are doing what is commonly
accepted practice on the internet: take a little bit with a back-link and leave it alone.

There can also be fun you can have with RSS Scrapers and their web sites to make this more of an opportunity for you as
a blogger and building out your blogging brand558. You can even embarrass or cost the RSS scraper their advertising by
playing around with the images559 that are in your posts. (Just make sure that the RSS image is different from the one on
your post.) You can also silently embed a link back to your site that Google and other search engines will see. You can

556
http://www.hung-truong.com/blog/2006/06/22/how-to-stop-rss-
scrapers-from-stealing-your-content-plus-revenge/
557
http://www.potpiegirl.com/2008/08/learn-to-love-rss-scrapers-i-do/
558
http://www.christopherspenn.com/2008/06/29/stupid-simple-marketing-tip-hijack-rss-scrapers/ covers some of the very cool things
you can do to defeat or abuse abusive content scrapers on the internet.
559
http://www.bhatt.id.au/blog/how-to-embarrass-rss-scrapers-who-hotlink-to-your-images/
benefit from the higher page rank without getting into much trouble with Google or the other search engines560.
Because RSS scraping is an automated process, most of the blogs that are using your RSS feed to supply content for their
web sites will not see these things or notice these kinds of tricks until it is too late. Some of the more advanced tricks
require that you have access to your servers' configuration. Most of the blogging platforms like Word Press and Type
Pad come with plug-ins that allows you to do most of this stuff without having to know how the web server works.

Risks of being fired or not hired because of your blog

Unfortunately, blogging can lead you to being fired. Part of this was discussed in the section "Fired for Blogging." The
common mistake for those who were fired for blogging was doing something against the blogging policy of the
company. Even if there was no policy at the time, the reason for being fired was that the company was very aware of
their brand and believed that the blogger somehow or in some way disrupted or brought discredit to the brand in
question. In one case, the company believed that there might be a security issue with a picture that was posted online.
Early on in blogging, when the technology and the phenomena was new, many companies did not have a blogging policy
and did not know what to do about bloggers. The easiest route to take was to fire the employee who was blogging when
the blog was discovered. Many employees also did not believe that they needed to tell their employer about their blog.

Many companies now have corporate blogging policies, and it is important that you understand the risks and rewards
for following or not following the corporate blogging policy. Depending on what industry you are in, blogging is either
accepted or not. The idea of acceptance of the blog is important. Some companies might insist that you stop blogging
while you work there561, and you will have to weigh that against what your blogging goals are. If you can demonstrate to
your employer that you are a professional blogger, even if you do not always say things that your employer will agree
with, it might help in finding some middle ground so that you can continue to blog professionally. There are even ways
to show that this will help raise awareness of products or of the company, in general, if you are allowed to blog and
mention that you work there (even if you put a disclaimer on your blog entries that your thoughts are your own).

If you work for a Cisco, a Microsoft, or a Google, then blogging about what cool things you are doing or about the
products you are working on is generally accepted. You can do this on or off the company web sites, depending on what
you are writing about on your blog. While some bloggers like Mini-Microsoft have been able to remain anonymous, they
do their blogging at great risk to their own careers. Bloggers like Robert Scoble were able to take on Microsoft directly
over an issue, though even he left (voluntarily) within a year of the problem.

There are some topics you simply want to stay away from if you blog. A blogger should never blog about co-workers,
confidential or proprietary company information including financials.562 Bloggers should keep their association with their
company to a minimum on their blog. Never blog on company time, unless the blog is company sponsored like in the
case of Microsoft or Google. If you can get away with it, never mention your company on your blog without their express
written permission. You should be intimately aware of what is in the company blogging policy, and if they do not have

560
http://zedomax.net/tag/scrapers/
561
http://awaitingtenure.wordpress.com/2008/06/14/why-my-blog-probably-will-get-me-booted-out/ this person was asked to stop
blogging because he was talking about his students. While he believed that he had a leg to stand on, and his students could talk about
him on their own blog, because the person was in a position of authority over the students, the blog became an issue very quickly.
562
http://www.cnn.com/2005/US/Careers/04/05/blogging/ has some great information about things that will get you fired for blogging.
Even though it is over three years old, the data is still valuable.
one, help them write one, or work with your managers and HR to develop a policy based on what other companies have
done. Many companies post their blogging policies, and there are a few template policies that a company can use and
build upon for their own purposes.

The other thing to do is consider what you have written before you hit the post button on your blog. While we all have
something to say about the people we work with, the idea is to never cross those boundaries 563. With a number of
clients I have advised, when a blogger is talking about the people that they work with, the damage to the team,
organizational trust, and the ability of the organization to carry on the day-to-day tasks becomes very difficult. In one
case, the unit was so badly damaged in terms of trust that very little was able to be accomplished until the team turned
over. The good part of all this was that the team turned over completely within a year of the event. This cost the
company some of their best employees, who had deep corporate knowledge of systems, which would have been
difficult if not impossible to replace.

What is particularly distressing to co-workers when you blog about them is the "water cooler effect 564." While rumors
are always found in a company and office gossip is always discussed, when it is taken outside of the company and put on
a blog, people believe that their reputations before the whole world have been tarnished. The blog, much like a book,
takes the gossip to a completely new level of invasiveness565. Understanding the concepts of "in the public interest" and
the difference between a private person and a public person566 will help you understand many of the liabilities you have
when you blog about your co-workers. In many cases, it might not just be your job that you lose. You may also face a
charge of slander or reputational damage, if you cannot prove that what you were discussing was worthy of being in the
public interest567. As a publisher, you can be held responsible for the comments and entries that you post on your blog,
or on other blogs, if you can be identified.

The content of your blog carries a certain weight, and the more popular you are within the blogosphere, the harder it is
to erase any bad behavior on the writer's part. Employers might use what you write about to see if you really are ready
to work for the company568. The other issue about being open with your blog is not that you will be fired but that if you
write about your co-workers, personal problems, and other issues that might be best left in private, you might not get
the job you are looking for569. When we bring our personal lives into the interview by using a blog to discuss the intimate
details of our lives, this can compromise the eligibility for employment. This is from the viewpoint of not just what has
been written on the blog but also by the general pattern of behavior that your blog shows towards others 570. If you have
a snarky blog and want to work for a button down company, the styles will clash, and you might not be hired because of
what you write and how you write. If you have talked about your co-workers, your employers, your bosses, you can
guarantee unemployment for a very long time.

563
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/5195714.stm
564
http://southflorida.jobing.com/blog_post.asp?post=12175
565
http://www.aish.com/societyWork/work/Blogging_Ethics_II.asp
566
http://technologyexpert.blogspot.com/2008/07/steve-jobs-when-does-private-become.html
567
http://www.citmedialaw.org/legal-guide/proving-fault-actual-malice-and-negligence
568
http://www.firstcoastnews.com/tech/news/news-article.aspx?storyid=64453
569
http://chronicle.com/jobs/news/2005/07/2005070801c.htm covers candidates that applied for jobs, but were not hired because of
the content of their blogs.
570
http://www.inter-actions.biz/blog/2006/07/how_long_before_a_blogger_sues.html
Employers increasingly use your e-mail address to find you on the internet571 to see what other people say about you.
This includes your MySpace pages572, blogs, Facebook, Linked-In, and the many other social things that we participate in
online. The idea of privacy or blogging anonymously can be compromised by how you associate yourself to the things
you do. This is also a very fine line that you have to walk. In some cases, your blog might help you get the job. In other
cases, your blog might keep you from being hired. Even if you take down the blog and erase its contents, the blog will
always live on in systems like Archive.org, Google, MSN Cache systems, or other systems.

One other aspect of blogging is that, at times, people who read your blog might try to contact your employer over
something you wrote. This is a unique aspect of blogging where people believe that in order to keep your job you will
remove something from your blog, or otherwise change what you wrote about a product or a company 573. This happens
at all levels of blogging, from the famous to the not so famous. When someone contacts your employer about your blog
or something you wrote about on your blog, then things can get interesting. Your employer suddenly is involved in your
personal life, and that can cause many problems for a blogger who still wants to or needs to keep their day job. Not
everyone wants to be accountable to their employer for the things they do outside of work574, but when you blog, things
can get very difficult very fast. One way around this is the disclaimer that your blog is your thoughts and does not reflect
the opinion of your employer. While this is not always failsafe575, it might be a good thing to have on your blog if you are
worried about it, or your employer asks you to use such a disclaimer.

Risks of Trolls, Griefers, Critics and Others Miscreants

Part of being a blogger is not just the ability to understand what happened when blogs hit it big or when they fail. There
is also the understanding that the dark side of the internet blogging industry often goes under reported and is rarely
discussed. While the Kathy Sierra article touched on some of the issues around writers being abused on the internet, the
issues with facing critics576, trolls577, and stalkers578 on the internet is something that all bloggers at one time or another
have had to deal with. The unfortunate part of this is even if you are Michael Arrington; you will still have odd things
happen. While you might not have three people break into your apartment, the nature of the internet and the relative
anonymity of the internet means that at some point you will have to deal with someone who is not your friend and has
no intention of being your friend.

There are people out there whose entire mission in life is to try to make people unhappy or miserable. How you handle
that, how you handle trolls, miscreants, or even simple criticism will help set you apart from the amateur blogger. Too

571
http://www.firstcoastnews.com/tech/news/news-article.aspx?storyid=64453
572
http://it.toolbox.com/blogs/managing-infosec/myspace-and-privacy-there-is-none-11218
573
http://scobleizer.com/2006/09/23/will-apple-sue-podtechnet-my-employer/
574
http://www.wikinomics.com/blog/index.php/2008/07/21/does-always-on-mean-always-accountable-to-your-employer/
575
http://hintofdisaster.blogspot.com/2006/03/since-my-employer-hates-my-other-blog.html
576
http://www.brandchannel.com/features_effect.asp?pf_id=348
577
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Blog+Troll
578
http://www.problogger.net/archives/2006/02/07/blog-stalkers-personal-safety-for-bloggers/
many voices from Kathy Sierra to smaller bloggers have been shut down by people who have no better thing to do than
try to make someone else as miserable as they are. They are also an unpleasant fact, and if you know how to manage
them before they start managing you579, then you will win the argument. Some will write a blog entry about their stalker
and hope that shaming them will be the end of the story580. However, you also need to be mindful of your safety; there
are people out there who are simply not going to get the idea that they are doing anything bad or wrong581. Many
bloggers will simply moderate or censor out their stalkers comments, report them as spam, and generally do not rise to
the bait582. Some people will turn around and seek legal advice, although trying to find out where the stalker is coming
from can be problematic, as they could be using any number of tricks or technologies to hide where they really live, and
who they really are. Sometimes you need to prune whole trees of negative comments to keep the spirit of your blog
alive. There are any number of things you can do to keep yourself safe, if you want to be a top blogger and living in the
public light583.

Blog Trolls want to make you angry, that is their entire goal: get you to come unglued and lose your perspective in a
public manner. Many of them have an uncanny ability to find everything they can about you to make you angry and
respond back to them. They want you to lose your cool, and they want to show their "power" by keeping you from
blogging. Trolls are a drive by process and seek to gain fame and notoriety at your blogs expense584. You do not have to
approve their comments, and as you delete their comments, they will go away to find some softer target, or they will
write their own blog and become a blogger troll. Trolls take all forms and all styles, across just about every platform
where they think they can be anonymous. Blog trolls are so common that there is even a Facebook support group for
people so that they can learn from each other on how to manage the problem585. The idea is that the troll is going to say
something or do something that will incite or inflame the community 586. While this works best in a forum, when the blog
is popular and there are many comments, expect that trolls will come out to try to steer the conversation. You will find
these kinds of people everywhere on the internet, in just about every group that is on the internet.

Critics, one the other hand, are something different, as they are pointing out a flaw in the argument or trying to force
their argument on you so that you will change your mind. Blog critics are people who are unhappy with something that
you wrote and want to let you know clearly that they are unhappy with what you wrote. It is best to have a thick skin to

579
http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9017938 covers a lot of very good
information and background information on how to manage blog trolls and others that inhabit the internet.
580
http://www.pauldavidson.net/2004/12/27/how-to-be-a-blog-stalker-or-blokker/
581
http://www.straight.com/article-88461/stalkers-and-their-prey
582
http://blogs.msdn.com/heatherleigh/archive/2008/07/08/i-silently-pity-the-blog-trolls.aspx this is one of the funniest anti-troll
comments out there, while the richness of the comment back would be lost on many trolls, the idea is to turn the tables, and see if you
can get them upset. Trolls are already riding the edge of minimal acceptable behavior, so if making comments like this, always be
careful and make sure you have support of friends and family, if not the law when dealing with a troll.
583
http://www.problogger.net/archives/2006/01/26/what-to-do-when-your-blog-is-attacked/
584
http://www.writingworld.org/2008/07/blog-trolls-whe.html is an interesting case where the troll was trying to tell the popular
blogger how to blog better and change things, things that might not have made any of the other readers on the blog happy with the
changes.
585
http://www.new.facebook.com/group.php?gid=7067572949
586
http://www.bloggersblog.com/cgi-bin/bloggersblog.pl?bblog=1210052
work through those issues and comments587. While angry people are out there everywhere, they will at times see to
share their anger with others on blogs, including the bloggers blog. Even if the issue was never blogged about by the
blogger, these kinds of misdirected comments are something that bloggers will have to learn to work with, or mark as
spam and delete them. If you have been in blogging for any amount of time, you will get negative comments. You will
see that many of these comments are in many ways humorous588.

One of my best negative comments went into how my parents raised me wrongly, how my mother did not love me
enough, and that is why some thirty years later I was writing about a subject that the person thought I was wrong about.
The comment was a series of conjectures from the person who wrote the response, and my reaction was to start
laughing about the randomness of the reader’s response. My parents have very little to do with what I was writing
about, nor do they know much if anything about the subject, when the blogger gets misguided responses back from the
public the best reaction is to laugh about it. The critic was more concerned about my upbringing than anything was I
wrote about the subject, making whatever they were saying completely off base from what they really thought about
the article. This kind of behavior can be seen on almost every blog on the planet, from blog networks to simple single
person blogs, there are some very strange responses to blog entries that make no contextual sense. Critics work that
way; they often go off on tangents that have no bearing on the article that you wrote about in your blog entry. The
critic's comments that are on your blog end up being nonsense, and loosely if at all connected to the blog entry. This is
where you win in the longer run. If they look like they are writing a long rambling dissertation on something that has
little to no relevance to what you were writing about, they end up looking foolish. If you remain the adult in the room,
your regular commenter's will love you for it, and in many ways, the community will also take care of the critic.

There is not a standard to tell when a troll becomes a stalker, but there are many new laws589 on the books since Kathy
Sierra covered internet bullying. While cases like the MySpace Suicide of Megan Meyer590 attract more and more
attention to the cases of cyber bullying and stalking on the internet, the thing to remember is:

As a blogger, you are accepting a public role.

When you assume a public role, there will be people who want to know who you are and want to put the blog to the
actual person running it591. While there are reasons to blog anonymously, there are also reasons to be in the public. As a
blogger, you are building out your own personal brand; you are associating your name with a product, your blog592. If

587
http://labnol.blogspot.com/2006/05/develop-thick-skin-to-handle-blog.html
588
http://www.livingstonbuzz.com/2007/05/24/how-to-handle-negative-blog-comments/
589
http://www.ibls.com/internet_law_news_portal_view.aspx?s=latestnews&id=2109 is one such law in Florida, and there are many
more on the books now than there were three years ago. Internet bullying is seen as a real issue, and something you will need to learn
to manage, as you get more popular in the blogging world. How you handle these issues is important, because the end goal of a bully
is to silence you not help you.
590
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megan_Meier
591
http://www.cadenhead.org/workbench/news/3140/newspaper-asks-public-identify-local
592
http://onecoolsite.wordpress.com/2008/08/27/how-to-become-a-better-blogger-5-your-online-presence/
you must blog anonymously, then you have to do it safely. Following the process developed by the EFF 593 (Electronic
Frontier Foundation) will help you learn to blog safely. You will also learn to blog anonymously, like people who have
been successful at this like Mini-Microsoft594.

The bottom line about trolls, critics, stalkers, and bullies is that these kinds of people want to silence you, and if you are
silent, they will win. There are many things you can do to help solve the problems that you face when you run into any
one of these people on your blog. What can be done is to make them and the issues more public. You have logs or know
where people are coming from, and you can monitor your blog enough to know the IP Address of the offender. There
are hundreds of ways of working out who the person is and getting a cease and desist (although that will not work with
all people all the time, there are some people who will never get it595) or taking other technological and legal controls to
keep them out of the blog, and out of your life. You will be amazed at how many people in your social fabric will come to
your support. You do not want your blog to become a battleground between the troll and your supporters, and at some
time, everyone will have to move on. If you do not "feed the troll," then eventually they move on to an easier target.
Nevertheless, this does not mean that these kinds of people will always go away. Moreover, in some cases, they might
not be what you would expect them to be. One of the biggest cases of internet troll behavior to come out in this decade
covers not what happened in a blog but how bloggers responded to an outrageous act of internet trollish behavior.

One of the more famous internet griefers596 is Jason Fortuny. As an internet troll, he posted an advertisement in the
local Craigslist posing as a woman seeking a dominate male. He posed this as a "social experiment" to see who would
respond to those kinds of ads597. He then proceeded to post all the information that he got, pictures, e-mail addresses,
and contact information at Encyclopedia Dramatica598. This release of personal information did not bother Jason, and
indeed, on his own Live Journal blog, he was following the news on how fast the information was spreading on the
internet599. What was interesting was the reaction to this on the internet with various degrees of amusement600,
disbelief601, or horror602 that something like this could happen at all. While he published many of the results of the

593
http://w2.eff.org/Privacy/Anonymity/blog-anonymously.php these are guidelines you want to follow if you must blog
anonymously, there are very good reasons to be anonymous on the internet, there are also equally good reasons to want to build out
your name and your blog as a brand. Depending on what you want to write about, this is a decision that you need to make. If your blog
is all about whistle blowers or inside government secrets, then being anonymous is important, if you are talking about DIY gardening,
then building out your name as brand is more important.
594
http://www.makeyougohmm.com/20050923/2411/ by remaining anonymous Mini Microsoft has opened himself up to attacks
against his credibility; mostly these attacks have been ignored because of the quality of the data that he presents on a regular basis on
his blog.
595
http://www.10zenmonkeys.com/2006/09/12/the-secret-life-of-jason-Fortuny/ Jason Fortuny is the dictionary case of an internet griefer.
His entire goal was to run a „social experiment‟ on Craig‟s list seeking people who had alternative views of sex, and then post all their
information, pictures, e-mail addresses, and phone numbers on the internet. While he is an extreme example of this kind of behavior, the
internet is a reflection of society, and a reflection of culture on a global basis. You never know what you will find, or who will find you. You
should always be cautious on line, even with your blog, and never let too much out about you.
596
http://www.wired.com/gaming/virtualworlds/magazine/16-02/mf_goons?currentPage=all
597
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jason_Fortuny
598
http://encyclopediadramatica.com/RFJason_CL_Experiment
599
http://rfjason.livejournal.com/414284.html
600
http://www.toytowngermany.com/lofi/index.php/t49128.html
601
http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2006/09/craigslist.html
experiment on his blog, the blog community rallied around the people who had their lives exposed by Jason. Amidst the
death threats that Jason got, people started being "internet vigilantes, and hunted down where he lived, where he
worked, and some of friends as well. This goes to the point where it was so bad that eventually he had to leave where he
lived and effectively go into hiding603).

Not all griefers and trolls can remain anonymous for very long; eventually they are reported and their identities become
known. Alternatively, they eventually simply go away, but that does not lessen the impact or influence that that they will
have on you. If you run into a person on the internet that is not going to go away, you have many options available to
you. The most important thing is to make sure that you have a good support system to make sure you have all the things
you need to keep blogging and keep on building out your brand name. The other thing you want to think about is how
you will handle people who are just outside the norms of society. It does not matter what you decide to do, as long as
you decide to do something. Being on the wrong end of an internet troll or bully can be difficult, but how you handle it
will determine just how far you will let that bully go and what influence you will let that have in your life.

DMCA Take downs, copyright, fair use

One other thing you will learn on the internet is copyright, fair use, and how you can use pictures, quote text, link to
articles, use old media as a source, and a ton of other things that can cause issues with you and your blog. Two resources
that can help you understand the issues around copyright, linking, blogging, and staying safe in a dangerous intellectual
property environment are the EFF and the Chilling Effects Clearing House.

The first resource is the EFF, the Electronic Frontier Foundation604. Their section on blogging rights, responsibilities will
help you understand the issues that bloggers face in the USA when dealing with external parties. If you are writing a blog
that covers anything on the internet, at some point, you will get a takedown notice or a cease and desist notice. This is
an unpleasant fact of blogging or doing near anything on the internet. The EFF viewpoint is more about knowing your
rights online and knowing your rights around free speech. For example, when they describe section 230 of the DMCA,
they point out that you are responsible for what you write, but you are not responsible for how people comment on
your blog. Even so, you have the option of what you want to do about those comments. If someone wants something
removed that is materially incorrect, that is one thing, but if the allegations are true then you do not have to remove a
comment that could be potentially damaging to a person605.

The EFF also has information about how the state or people can unmask an anonymous blogger who is covering or
writing about state officials606 or companies607 involved in potentially illegal activities. Companies, ISPs, and others all

602
http://www.10zenmonkeys.com/2006/09/12/the-secret-life-of-jason-fortuny/
603
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/03/magazine/03trolls-t.html?_r=1&pagewanted=2&oref=slogin
604
http://w2.eff.org/bloggers/ this is a necessary to read web site if not when you get started blogging, but as you work out what you
want to blog about.
605
http://w2.eff.org/bloggers/lg/faq-230.php
606
http://www.eff.org/cases/manalapan-v-moskovitz
607
http://w2.eff.org/Privacy/Anonymity/cyberslapp.php
have rules they need to follow when requesting the identity of a blogger or an internet user via the courts 608. One very
good example of this is the Consumerist, who published "22 Confessions of a Former Dell Sales Manager,609" which
promptly got a Cease and Desist take down notice from Dell. Due to blogger outrage and the increasingly vocal calls on
the internet for Dell to stop, within days, Dell admitted they were wrong and tried to let the matter drop. The
Consumerist posted the Dell response, "Dell Admits Error in Asking Consumerist to Remove Post610," and the matter
went away. However, this was not done without damaging Dell's reputation611, as they had to expend resources to help
clean up the issue and respond to everyone who commented about it on the internet. Other big chain stores have tried
to do the same thing, like Wal-Mart612, which won the legal issue with the Consumerist and the material was
removed613.

The Chilling Effects Clearing House614 is another excellent source of information about what you can do about a
takedown. It gives you samples of what a takedown looks like, what you can do, and how to manage the entire
takedown or cease and desist process that people will send to you. One of the best examples about how this works is
when someone sends you something that falls under fair use. Fair use is a loose and nebulous issue, and many people
who post things for educational purposes 615 or for satire, parody, or to talk about a company 616 can at times conflict with
what is happening. Understanding fair use and how fair use works617 is an important part of understanding your rights
and obligations as a blogger. One of the more interesting issues around fair use is the "Dancing Baby Video." A mom
posted a video on YouTube of a baby-dancing while in the background the "Let's Go Crazy" song from Prince was
playing618. The music company complained, and had it taken down from YouTube. The mother sued stating that the
video was "fair use,619" which the courts agreed with. While most simply take down the file, video, or picture in
question, sometimes you can win a court case and seek damages for material that falls under fair use. Even professional

608
http://www.law.com/jsp/ihc/PubArticleIHC.jsp?id=1144067964387
609
http://consumerist.com/consumer/insiders/22-confessions-of-a-former-dell-sales-manager-268831.php
610
http://consumerist.com/consumer/takedowns/dell-admits-error-in-asking-consumerist-to-remove-post-269653.php
611
http://www.itbusiness.ca/it/client/en/home/News.asp?id=49211
612
http://consumerist.com/consumer/walmart/walmart-sends-us-dmca-takedown-letter-for-slideshow-243645.php
613
http://consumerist.com/consumer/walmart/walmart-wins-243848.php
614
http://www.chillingeffects.org/ this is also a necessary to read web site, although you can wait until you get a Cease and Desist or
take down notice, if you know what your rights are and how to handle them from the start, it will help you formulate your action plan
before you get one.
615
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20070214/154327.shtml falls directly into the fair use category; this is an interesting story
especially if you are writing a sports blog about your favorite team. Logo‟s, video, audio, commentary and other content you make
might be controlled by or owned by others. Understanding fair use is important to understanding what you can use on line.
616
http://fairusenetwork.org/reference/td-4.php
617
http://fairusenetwork.org/index.php is one of the best resources for understanding what is and what is not fair use. While this is not
necessary read web site, it does contain a wealth of information to help you understand what is and what is not considered fair use.
618
http://www.alleyinsider.com/2008/7/mom-vs-prince-the-dancing-baby-video-putting-big-media-on-trial
619
http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2008/08/judge-copyright.html
journalists as bloggers can be involved in these kinds of issues, as one journalist learned when he was ejected from a
NCAA game for blogging live from the game620.

The biggest thing to remember about takedowns is that you do have rights, and it is well worth your time to know what
they are. You should know about your rights and your responsibilities. If you are ever in doubt, it is always wise to
contact a lawyer and have them advise you on the issue.

Summary

Boom and Bust in the Blogosphere is an outside view of many things that can lead to success and failure of a blog. There
are many reasons for success, like passion and expertise, and with many reasons for failure, including abandonment of
the blog and people moving on to something else. Failure can be as simple as a failed business models, trust issues, and
a generally poor choice of niche. The successes that people have with blogs are focused on the things that people feel
passionate about. Successful bloggers have learned to write about those passions and convey meaning using the written
word. Many of the successful bloggers come from a background in journalism that helps them write to a mass audience.
That core focus on quality, quantity, passion, and professionalism all support blogs that are successful and make money.
All of these bloggers or blogging systems have also developed a community around the blog or the topic. That
community helps drive repeat customers, people who want to follow along with what people are writing about on their
blogs. This means that the solid keys to success—writing, quality, quantity, and connections—are well understood and
used by bloggers.

The Technorati 2008 State of the Blogosphere621 covers many of the issues that this book covers. Who are we as a group,
and why do we blog? There are many reasons why we blog and do what we do. Many of the blogs that people write, no
matter the niche they exist in, in some way reflect the complex issues that make us people.. Depending on what the
blogger wants from their blog, it will be their own expression. They will write what they want to write about and do it in
their own voice. Blogs are also a way to make your own name and your own viewpoint known to the rest of the world.
The majority of bloggers labor on in relative obscurity, happy with ten to fifteen people a day, while others are more
ambitious, read everything they can about being a successful blogger, and approach it as a business, a way to make their
own money in their own way, with their own viewpoints. Blogging is work, work that you have to be willing to do to
build up an audience, strengthen your writing skills, and otherwise develop your community.

For many individualized blogs that simply fade away, they have not found their own voice or an audience. Blogs fail for
various reasons, such as realizing the overhead of maintaining the blog or that it was not a quick road to riches. For the
shutdown of large group blogging systems, blogging is a hard business to be in involved in, from the business viewpoint,
and hard to be in from a consistency and content generation viewpoint. Few of the bigger blogging systems have as
varied a writing pool as Toolbox. Many blogging systems have a core cadre of bloggers who make their living from their
web sites. On the other hand, in many cases, bloggers are paid according to the audience that they can generate.
Blogging professionally is a business, meaning the site, the owners, and the bloggers have to work on the business as a
business, and have a business model and a viable way to make money.

620
http://www.lostremote.com/2007/06/12/ncaa-ejects-reporter-for-blogging-the-game/
621
http://technorati.com/blogging/state-of-the-blogosphere/the-what-and-why-of-blogging/
While advertising revenue is one way to approach the business model as a way to make money, sponsorships are a
different class of money that is harder to get. Sponsorships want sites with high numbers of readers to make the
investment worthwhile. As a core revenue model, the sponsorship model of the blogging business goes both ways. Low
readership equates to problems with getting enough advertising to keep the business afloat while increasing readership
can lead to better sponsors. The problem for the sponsorship business model is getting enough people to write well
enough to get the attention of both the audience and the sponsors to make the model work. If there is a core group of
people, like Gawker and B5 media uses or a rotating pool of bloggers like Toolbox uses, there is always a steady stream
of new content daily on the sites. It does not matter how it gets there; what matters is that the information gets there
and a community starts forming around the blog.

While there are some excellent examples of individuals and groups making it big in the blogging world, there are more
examples of companies that have flamed out, or of individuals who have shut down because their business model did
not fit in with the reality of advertising based revenue model. Blogging puts the person on dangerous ground, especially
those that are shutdown for governmental reasons, like in China622 or Egypt623, or loss of jobs because someone blogged
about something confidential or the company thought was private information. Blogging can lead to better name
recognition and the opportunity to pursue writing as a career. Blogging can enhance a career, bringing you closer to
people who you would not otherwise meet. Blogging can show a potential employer that you really do know your stuff
and are a worthwhile hire for the company.

Blogging can also ruin your career, as in those who were fired from their corporate positions because they were
blogging624. Usually, when someone is fired from his or her job for blogging, they are doing something or saying
something that might cause a loss of reputation for the corporate brand. Alternatively, companies might believe that the
blogger is giving out inside information or compromising the physical facilities. When someone is thrown in jail for
blogging, it is because they are saying something that the government does not like or fears. There are many good sides
to blogging and many negative sides to blogging. For many, it can be rewarding; for some it can be very devastating.

Blogging, depending on your ambition, is a business or just something, you do. If you link to another blog, they will know
about it and often see what you wrote about the reason why you linked. Blogging is phenomenally rewarding as a
business, as well as frustrating in the longer run. Readers will come and go, friends on the internet will come and go, and
there is no consistency month to month because people change. The niche that worked a year ago might not work
today. People grow out of the ideas they used to have and move on to something else. These are all good traits, as this
means that the blogger is growing. The audience might not grow with the blogger, meaning they will start to lose
audience, while completely new readers discover them. The road to blogging professionally can be very difficult and very
rewarding. If you take a pro blogger job, make sure that you and the editor agree as to what you will write about and
that you can get along with them personally as well as professionally625. Pro blogging is not for everyone626, as the

622
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7456357.stm china has engaged in a number of arrests of bloggers for pro democracy
blogs, or free Tibet blogs, or any other issue/concern that the Chinese government believes should not be blogged about.
623
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/02/22/egyptian_blogger_jailed/ covers the story of an Egyptian blogger, Abdel Karim Suleiman
who was arrested and jailed for four years because of eight articles on his blog.
624
http://committeetoprotectbloggers.org/2008/05/06/malaysian-blogger-in-jail-for-sedition/ a Malaysian blogger was arrested and
jailed for sedition by covering events in that country rather than pay a fine to the government over a murder investigation of the
deputy premier and a Mongolian woman.
625
http://jobs.problogger.net/ is one source for finding professional blogging jobs. Some jobs are better than others are, but the real
thing to remember is to make sure you get along with your editor. If your editor and you are not compatible, and cannot work as a
team, it is time to move on and find another pro blogging job.
626
http://www.heritage-tech.net/423/four-reasons-why-you-shouldnt-be-a-problogger/ covers four reasons why you should not
thousands of abandoned blogs attest to on the internet. In the end though, these kinds of issues and concerns can be
overcome. It all depends on who you know, what your ambition looks like, and what kind of time you have to devote to
blogging.

Why some blogs were not picked

Some blogs and some bloggers were not discussed in this book even though they are in the Top 100 blogs worldwide.
There are many similarities between blogs that have been successful and blogs that have failed. Those that were not
covered repeat the same winning success stories of other blogs that have gone before them. There are many great blogs
in the blogosphere, and they are all using the same basic formula for success. Their writers have been able to leave their
day jobs and move strictly to blogging as their own business. These personal success stories are rare, but when someone
finally makes enough money to go pro, the whole community celebrates. Where the blogging model was unique or
where there was more than one model, with slight variances in details, those were covered. However, the Robert Scoble
model or the Techcrunch model, in general, works for a great many bloggers. While the models of blogging failure are
also similar across the board, they all failed for a limited set of reasons, and while their individual stories might be
interesting, the end result was that they failed due to lawsuit, business model failure, loss of trust, or any combination of
factors that lead to the shutdown of the blog.

Blog abandonment is another issue, but with so many people abandoning blogs, the reasons are as varied as the people
who have abandoned them. Some were abandoned because they wanted to move on and do something different. The
blog might have been developed to help them cope with a certain issue or problem. The blog might have been there to
write about life, and they learned that living that life was better than the commentary about it. They might have hurt
someone in their family with something they wrote about them; there are many reasons to abandon a blog. Blogs are a
very powerful tool, but all have many similarities on why they succeed or fail. Where those were common across many
of the stories, they were not written about in this book.

Resources

There are many resources out on the internet for you to learn about how to be a better blogger, this is a list of some of
the best resources out there to learn how to be a better blogger, and use the internet and social fabrics as a blogger, and
as a voice in the new media. There are both online and book resources. Many of these books are also Kindle books that
you can download and read using Amazon's Kindle gadget.

Resources on Line

There are a number of excellent resources on line to help you be a better blogger. While there are obvious things to
know about, some of the more arcane tricks to better blogging are hard to come by. The blogs about blogs and better

become a pro blogger when you are just starting out.

blogging below will help the author learn how to be a better blogger, and how to use social networking to develop a
community around your blog.

ProBlogger is at http://www.problogger.net/ and is the best resource for new bloggers. Information includes: how to
start a blog, what to expect from blogging, and many helpful tips and hints on how to build a blog that will gather
attention from the public. They also have a book that is in the book resources section.

Copy Blogger is at http://www.copyblogger.com/ and is another excellent resource with practical tips, tricks, and ideas
on how to build a better blog. This web site covers many of the things you need to do in relationship to building a better
blog and improving your writing.

Better Blog Community at Ning is at http://betterblog.ning.com/ and is a community dedicated to helping bloggers help
themselves. The community is open so that anyone can join in and participate with other bloggers who want to build a
better blog.

Shoemoney is at http://www.shoemoney.com/ and covers how to make money from your blog. They also discuss SEO
(Search Engine Optimization) and other things you need to know to help bring an audience to your blog.

Getting Attention is at http://www.gettingattention.org/ and covers information for non-profits, but many of the blog
entries on this site can also help the regular blogger learn how to identify an audience and work with a community.

Better Blogging for Bloggers is at http://betterbloggingforbloggers.blogspot.com/ and is an excellent plain English

resource for people who are just starting out and do not understand the internal blogging speak that many bloggers use.

The Blog Herald is at http://www.blogherald.com/ and is another excellent site on how to be a better blogger. It
includes many helpful tips and hints on how to write better, market better, and how to use a social fabric to develop
your audience.

Daily Blog Tips is at http://www.dailyblogtips.com/ and covers a wide range of better blogging tips for all types of
writers. The web site covers everything that a new blogger or even an established blogger might find interesting and
useful.

Book resources

While you might be surprised to find that in the Web 2.0 age we live in that books make a viable resource, all of these
books cover topics and ideas that at their base are timeless. These are basic good business practices for blogging that
have been learned since blogging took off in 2002. All of these books can be purchased on Amazon.

The Gawker Guide to Conquering All Media by Gawker Media ISBN-10: 1416532994

Evolve! : Succeeding in the Digital Culture of Tomorrow by Rosabeth Moss Kanter ISBN-10: 1578514398

People to People Fundraising: Social Networking and Web 2.0 for Charities by Ted Hart, James M. Greenfield and,
Sheeraz D. Haji, ISBN-10: 0470120770

The Weblog Handbook: Practical Advice on Creating and Maintaining Your Blog by Rebecca Blood. ISBN-10: 073820756X

Web 2.0: New Tools, New Schools by Gwen Solomon and Lynne Schrum. ISBN-10: 1564842347
The Cluetrain Manifesto: The End of Business as Usual by Christopher Locke, Rick Levine, Doc Searls and David
Weinberger. ISBN-10: 0738204315

We the Media by Dan Gillmor ISBN-10: 0596007337

Homo sarcasmus - The Best of the Blog Volume 1.0 by Heath L. Buckmaster ISBN-10: 0615204198

The New Influencers: A Marketer's Guide to the New Social Media by Paul Gillin with a forward by Geoffrey A. Moore.
ISBN-10: 1884956653

The Corporate Blogging Book: Absolutely Everything You Need to Know to Get It Right by Debbie Weil. ISBN-10:
1591841259

The IT Girl's Guide to Blogging with Moxie by Joelle Reeder and Katherine Scoleri. ISBN-10: 0470168005

Naked Conversations: How Blogs are Changing the Way Businesses Talk with Customers by Robert Scoble and Shel Israel.
ISBN-10: 047174719X

Blog Schmog: The Truth About What Blogs Can (and Can't) Do for Your Business by Robert W. Bly. ISBN-10: 078521576X

Blogging Quick & Easy: A Planned Approach to Blogging Success by Tom Masters. ISBN-10: 0979461405

What No One Ever Tells You About Blogging and Podcasting: Real-Life Advice from 101 People Who Successfully
Leverage the Power of the Blogosphere (What No One Ever Tells You About...) by Ted Demopoulos. ISBN-10:
1419584359

Clear Blogging: How People Blogging Are Changing the World and How You Can Join Them by Bob Walsh. ISBN-10:
1590596919

Schooling the Digital Generation: New Media, Popular Culture and the Future of Education (Professorial Lectures) by
David Buckingham. ISBN-10: 085473726X

Social Networks Around The World: How is Web 2.0 Changing Your Daily Life? by An De Jonghe. ISBN-10: 1419683659

Start Your Own Blogging Business by Entrepreneur Press and J.S. McDougall. ISBN-10: 1599180472

Blogging Heroes: Interviews with 30 of the World's Top Bloggers by Michael A. Banks. ISBN-10: 0470197390

Web 2.0 Heroes: Interviews with 20 Web 2.0 Influencers by Bradley L. Jones. ISBN-10: 0470241993