Recently in weblogs Category

I had a chat with Andy Seidl of MyST Technology Partners today. Andy has a web service called blogsite. This is a package deal for marketers that allows them to tap into syndicated searches and blog content, blog themselves, and syndicate their own content. Further, Andy provides read-outs on technical quality (broken links, etc.) and whether you are blogging frequently enough. All of the syndication features are available for the do-it-yourselfer in various web services such as technorati, pubsub, feedster, and findory. They can be tied together using feedreaders and blog posting software. A lot of work for the neophyte. Further, neophytes have a hard time maintaining blog frequency.

The nearest competitor I can find to this type of service is the new sponsored content blogging service recently announced by Paul Short. He wants to blog for marketers to the tune of $20–25K per month. Is this a blogging replay of “Mike Mulligan and the Steam Shovel” (the children's classic of man vs. machine)?

I read an interesting post by Steve Rubel who was attending the Blog Business Summit over the past couple of days. He was reporting on a presentation about using blogs for emergency PR (his profession). Reading the post, I wondered what it really had to do with blogs. It seemed to me that he was really just talking about a web communications channel, of which blogging is one example. So, what's so special about blogging?

Just thought I'd drop a quick note about progress with The Community Engine. We have a few exciting developments over the next few weeks:

• We will be getting out a white paper on the BIT320 Blogosphere. That should be quite an effort, with lots of PR.
• We may very well get a podcast going on the site. Podcasts are just a new way of distributing MP3 files using xml syndication. The main point being that you can subscribe to the podcast and have it delivered to you. A very nascent technology, but potentially big.
• The full web site should be complete sometime next week. The trick will be getting it paired down appropriately, so that it gets completed.
• The Community Engine should soon start work with Menlo. More on this one later.

I completed the first phase of designing del.icio.us WebCites yesterday. I think of it as a sort of information service. In that regard, there are a few questions to ask:

• Who's the audience?
• How does it make money or contribute to the business?
• How do I decide on next steps?

Let me give a brief treatment of each: