Lifecycle of a Blog

Wired details the Life Cycle of a Blog Post, From Servers to Spiders to Suits — to You

The Power of WE: Observations on the Worldwide Skype Outage

I'm sure most of you are familiar with the internet phone app Skype. Earlier this week the service went down worldwide, and the estimated +200 million users world wide were left Skype-less, myself included.


While I was initially incredibly irritated (still am actually, as I still cannot connect), what I thought was interesting was watching how the blogosphere reacted as the company responded to the problem- which apparently, for many, was just not fast or efficiently enough, which pushed some to start an online petition protesting what they feel is just the latest in poor service (see: users unleashing some fury on a previous incident).

Yet another reminder of how powerful blogs and web 2.0 technology at our fingertips truly is. The level of transparency and accountability we can demand from the companies we choose to do biz with- and how instantaneously they allow us to act- is truly incredible. It took minutes, not hours, after the service went down before the blogs were on fire, lambasting Skype service and pointing out that this was no isolated incident.

It wasn't too long ago that companies got away with telling us what they wanted us to know, when they wanted us to know it. Now they themselves feel the heat of us watching the watchers so much that they keep us updated almost hourly with what they are doing to address the situation. Though I'd say that it's still lacking, as there have been few details released, nor a clear time line as to when all systems will be a go.

But at this point, "updates" are becoming "irritation" as I am still Skype-less...

Live Blogging the AAAA Conference

Check my livestreamed Twittr feeds @ http://twitter.com/akispicer

*Check other Tweets from the AAAA Planner Conference, too:
http://twitter.com/elgaffney
http://twitter.com/mmilan
http://twitter.com/mrgingold

Blog DNA

WEB2DNA converts your website into a DNA graphic image. It was inspired by DNA 11 - a company that turns your real DNA into works of art, and, Marcel Salathe's Websites as Graphs - another system that visualizes your website structure.

Ad Agency Deathwatch: Microsoft's Got a Blog (And a Movie!)

Microsoft's Digital Advertising Solutions department, with its ad agency Openhere, is on a mission to talk about itself differently. They set up a blog (bringtheloveback.com) to update progress on their big project: shooting a movie. The intent is to distribute this film to advertisers to force a reevaluation of how they communicate with their audiences (and imply the awesome benefits of working with the department, of course).

The movie's elevator pitch:

"She is a consumer.

He is an advertiser.

All she wants is genuine affection.

All she gets is loyalty reduction.

The Break-Up. A story of love gone wrong.

Coming soon."

I've got mixed feelings about the whole thing. In honesty, Mac vs PC ads have tainted me, and Microsoft is now personified as a button-up sweater, taped glasses nerd in my mind. So I have a hard time believing it's not just a ploy. They have no problem planting the seed of real danger and risk, on the blog, though,

"A quite risky project if you know that the commercial explicitly challenges the advertisers - our clients - to question themselves and the way they communicate with their target groups. In this blog, I will keep you posted about the making of the campaign. I have also given the agency access to this blog, so that they can vent their ideas as well. As should be in this format, there is only one rule: “their are no rules!”

Also, by the end of the month, I’ll be able to tell you whether I still work as a Marketing Manager at Microsoft, or whether this project finally turned itself against me ;-) "

On the flip side, I am all about stirring the pot at the right time, so I am curious to see what the outcome is. Like when someone at the Mothership stumbles upon the blog that is written by a Microsoft employee and "includes information about Microsoft, the information available on this blog is not representative of Microsoft’s views or opinions."

But they pulled off the end goal, here's the movie below. (which started out as a "commercial" but was recategorized as "movie" later)

The Break Up
Uploaded by geertdesager

State of the Blogosphere/Live Web:Maps

Nielsen's Matthew Hurts recently drafted a graphic map showing the blogosphere in links. This picture is based on an examination of six weeks of blogosphere data.

Each little white dot represents a blog. The bigger white dots represent blogs with more incoming and outgoing links, while the smaller dots are blogs with fewer links.

The green lines represent one-way links from one blog to another, and the blue lines show reciprocal links, or blogs that link back and forth to one another regularly.

-The biggest white dots are popular blogs like Boing Boing and the Daily Koz.
-That isolated streak of green in the upper right hand (by the number three) shows LiveJournal blogs. LiveJournal users tend to link heavily to other LiveJournal blogs, but don't communicate as frequently with the outside world.
-The blue spots show bloggers who frequently link back and forth, possibly writing responses on their own blogs to items they've read on other sites and vice versa.
-Number 5 shows the fringe community of bloggers who share pornographic images and write about adult industry news and gossip.
-Number 6 sports enthusiasts who are a bit more linked into the rest of the mainstream blogosphere than the pornography enthusiasts or LiveJournal bloggers. But it's still a distinct community with users communicating primarily amongst themselves.

Similarly, here is Brian Shaler's Map of the Digg Universe


And Opte Project's massive Map of the Internet and animation.

State of the Blogosphere/Live Web

Technorati posts the latest State of the Blogosphere :

-70 million weblogs
-About 120,000 new weblogs each day, or...
-1.4 new blogs every second
-3000-7000 new splogs (fake, or spam blogs) created every day
-Peak of 11,000 splogs per day last December
-1.5 million posts per day, or...
-17 posts per second
-Growing from 35 to 75 million blogs took 320 days
-22 blogs among the top 100 blogs among the top 100 sources linked to in Q4 2006 - up from 12 in the prior quarter
-Japanese the #1 blogging language at 37%
-English second at 33%
-Chinese third at 8%
-Italian fourth at 3%
-Farsi a newcomer in the top 10 at 1%
-English the most even in postings around-the-clock
-Tracking 230 million posts with tags or categories
-35% of all February 2007 posts used tags
-2.5 million blogs posted at least one tagged post in February

Slowing in the doubling of the size of the blogosphere. This shouldn't be surprising, as we're dealing with the law of large numbers - it takes a lot more growth to double from 35 million blogs to 70 million (which took about 320 days) than when it doubled from 5 million to 10 million blogs (which took about 180 days).

Slowing in growth in the rate of posts created per day; while there are spikes in blog posts during times of significant world crisis -- for instance, last summer's conflict between Israel and Hezbollah -- the overall trend is that posting volume is growing more slowly, at about 1.5 million postings per day. That's about 17 posts per second. In October 2006, Technorati was tracking about 1.3 million postings per day, about 15 posts per second.



Get more here

ROI of Blogging: Part One-Buzz Metrics

I've been thinking on the sidelines about the ROI OF BLOGGING (nobody asked, but I recall one of our declared missions is to be more accountable about RESULTS), so here goes.

Part 1: I took a 5 minute BlogPulse review (short attention spanners can skip to conclusions at bottom):

Fallon Planning Blog vs Fallon.com
Our Planner blog is getting buzz volume on par with the main website (we work largely outside the margins with no PR flack "promoting", just planners talking and people talking about what we talk about). We take the hit in being cited among traditional (ie mass audience) press sites (though we have scored a mass media mention or two throughout last year).


Fallon Planning Blog vs Fallon Worldwide
What's more interesting to people: Fallon Thinking or Fallon Accomplishments (new spots, new book)? Kinda neck and neck (I remind you, planners have no PR team flacking daily). Interestingly, most of the Agency buzz is fueled by Pat+Fred's "Juicing the Orange" book promotions.


Fallon Planning Blog vs Juicing the Orange - 6 months
"Juicing the Orange" takes it! But planners ain't no slouches in this race...do note, that Agency Buzz verbatims reveal a tendency to be mostly Book buzz with the agency buzz basking in that association, so those could be considered duplication of the same buzz. And that note only shows that Agency Thinking is the bigger draw, add JuiceBook buzz and PlannerBlog buzz and we easily trump Agency Accomplishments buzz.


Fallon Planning Blog vs Juicing the Orange - 2 months
The Book is the gift that keeps on giving - buzz that is.


Fallon Planning Blog vs Fallon.com vs Juicingtheorange.com - 2months
Eh, the JuiceBook Dotcom ain't really pulling them in to the extents that the AgencyBrochure Dotcom or even PlannerBlog Dotcom is...interestingly, the JuiceBook Dotcom was intended (I think) to be an ongoing conversation continued beyond the book...a blog format could have been a better reworking of that thesis (compared to a promo microsite that may not work as effectively at fueling revisitation). Note too, I don't have the JuiceBook Dotcom metrics since day one, so there was likely a big flurry of buzz back in the day that trumped all of us (I would have to check Alexa for that measure). Needless to say, today, the JuiceBook Dotcom is not quite up there.

- but JuiceBook ain't doing so horribly when you take the 6 month view.


CONCLUSION: The F* I knows.

OK, so I'll try a few:

1) Metrics are fun!
2) Planners rule. Fallon Planners rule the mostest.
3) Blogs can definitely reinforce (even take the lead) building the overall experience of the brand...note that Agency and Book Buzz is propaganda. Hey, I got nothing against corporate propaganda at all, but it is a different POV than our blog which (allegedly) is our thinking (on a good day). And technically, GOOD THINKING IS THE FALLON PRODUCT IN TRADE (NOT JUST ADS)...but that is a different debate for a different day.
4) I could also conclude that the blog reaches pretty damn far (comparatively) with half the resources (did I mention we got no PR team flackin' us daily?). PlannerBlog buzz is produced from simply harnessing the thinking we do everyday - recorded in posts in real time and opening our thinking process up for people to see. For us, thinking is easy, it is the merchandising of our thinking that is the hard part (the important part?).
5) Fallon Planning Blog is "Juicing the Orange" in action...mmm, tasty. We're putting in action, daily, the corporate ideal of being outsmart in lieu of outspending.
6) Buzz about the book and buzz about the work (ie New Ads and Clients) is prob getting the bigger mass audiences, though. Do we like that? To be honest, Planner thinking ain't landing in Fast Company and BusinessWeek everyday...but that is a matter of time, and prolific content, and striking the timing on a hot topic and the responsive discussion and insight from us.
7) Blogpulse metrics depict a snapshot of levels of buzz, but admittedly it lacks a bit in defining the audience whose buzzing. Planner Blog was always intended to speak primarily to Planners (we told you that at the title)...and secondarily to internal Fallon teammates, then tertiarily (that a word?) to whoever cares to peek inside our heads and contribute or gawk (whatever's your pleasure). Number 1 and 3 are our biggest viewers. We should boost internal Hive Mind around our blog (get your AEs and Creatives on the same page with you - this webpage - and stop complaining that they never "get it"). So much of our chatter may be amongst other elite thinkers (discounting the occasional blog cite in CNN.com and CBS News et al). Is high buzz amongst elite thinkers good or bad (I pretend to speak rhetorically, but I certainly have a POV)? We can change any and all of these, blogs are flexible like that. JuiceBook buzz is targeted squarely to prospective clientele. Technically, PlannerBlog can just as effectively (perhaps more effectively) target prospective clientele, too. That is up to us to get it in the clientele channels (perhaps starting with our own clientele). **We may have an offline conversation about who actually reads Planner blog, but you'd be surprised what domain names I see checking us out, consistently - and it ain't just planner geeks at other agencies I'll have you know.
8) Time matters. Blog buzz and readership (currently at almost 300 readers a day) didn't just blast off at day one, so don't expect to light fireworks with your blog - it's a Long Nose strategy that builds up. The traditional buzz tactics (press release about new work debuts, a new book debut) spikes and drops, spikes and drops, spikes and drops - like a crackhead scrambling for the next hit. Buzz tactics such as the book provides a long tail that at least keeps it going a bit longer - like a slow baked weedhead coming down from a good high (Like these colorful metaphors? "This is your blog on drugs"). But without doubt, the Plannerblog keeps our brand buzz steady, steady, ongoing, like a heartbeat - as long as we commit and continue to contribute and stimulate and surprise. Blog demands that we deliver the goods (good thinking) with each and every post.

So while I hardly want to make a better than/worse than inference, the money shot could be that BOTH BLOG AND TRADITIONAL APPROACHES ARE VALID, BOTH MAY INTEGRATE NICELY, BOTH MAY COMMUNICATE THE BRAND VISION IN BROAD(ER) DIMENSIONS TO COMMUNICATE WHAT AND WHO WE ARE. WE ARE FALLON.

Open to discussion. Oddly enough, I don't hear too much talking about ROI of blogging...some good ones I have found are here and here.

I will soon post further thoughts and analysis on ROI OF BLOGGING throughout coming weeks and conclude a magic formula for easy success.

New Media Ethics: Wikipedia Warns P/R Professionals

New technology, mo' problems...Another of those pesky ethical issues to contend with...According to the front page of UK PR Week, the founder of Wikipedia warns PR agencies against writing about companies they represent in the popular online encyclopedia. "If it persists they will be banned".

Associated Press asks: "What's to say contributors who get paid have a harder time sticking to the golden path of neutrality? And doesn't Wikipedia have a built-in defense mechanism - the volunteer editors and moderators who can quickly obliterate public relations fluff, vanity pages and junk?"

Yeah, that's what I'm sayin'! I don't see a big issue with advertisers and marketers submitting Wikipedia entries...as long as it's factual and not salesy and disruptive. Ok, so salesy and disruptive is prob what we do...but still.

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When I have ethical quandries, I look to the Simpsons for guidance...