[Infowarrior] - Tech: 10 Things Your Blogger Won't Tell You

[Richard Forno]

10 Things Your Blogger Won't Tell You
http://www.smartmoney.com/10things/index.cfm?story=march2007&afl=yahoo&pgnum
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By Daniel Cho
February 22, 2007

1. "Hardly anybody reads me."
If you believe the hype, blogs ‹ those online journals where people write
about everything from politics and sports to their personal lives ‹ will
soon be the only thing most people read. Indeed, the blogging phenom, which
blossomed from modest beginnings almost a decade ago, seems unstoppable:
Three years ago there were two million blogs on the web, according to blog
search engine Technorati; today there are more than 60 million. But the
reality behind the stats is that most blogs get few hits.

The most popular do boast huge followings ‹ tech-news site Engadget, for
one, has more readers than most print newspapers and magazines. But beyond
the elite few, it drops off significantly ‹ the top 25 blogs account for
roughly 10% of blog readership, according to web-traffic measurement firm
ComScore. To be fair, most bloggers aren't seeking a big audience. "The
pleasure of blogging is in forming a sense of intimacy readers and fellow
bloggers can enjoy," says Rachel Bray, whose Babayaga.ca gets a few hundred
hits a day.

So what's the norm? Google CEO Eric Schmidt told a recent gathering of U.K.
politicians that the average blog has just one reader: the blogger.

2. "The more companies pay me, the more I like their stuff."
Companies looking for ways to profit from the blogging phenomenon have tried
everything from buying ad space on blogs to infiltrating discussion forums
with hired PR shills. They've even created fake blogs to hawk their
products. In December, Sony went live with AllIWantforXmasIsaPSP.com, a
"blog" by two fictitious teenagers clamoring to get a PlayStation Portable
for Christmas. The site, which contained videos and strained attempts at
youth slang, was quickly exposed as a fraud. "It was designed to be
humorous," says a Sony spokesperson. "It didn't come across as intended."

When such tactics aren't enough, companies will even pay bloggers to praise
their products. In 2006, Florida outfit PayPerPost sparked controversy by
offering to connect advertisers with bloggers willing to drop a company's
name into their daily scribbles for a fee (between $4 and $40 per mention).
The practice was quickly denounced as online payola, and in December, the
Federal Trade Commission weighed in, ruling that word-of-mouth marketers
must disclose their sponsorship. Says PayPerPost CEO Ted Murphy, "We're
trying to strike a balance that makes everybody happy."

3. "Did I mention I'm not a real reporter?"
With major newspapers including "The Washington Post" routinely hosting
blogs for columnists and reporters, blogging is gaining credibility. But
beware: Even those associated with mainstream news outlets aren't subject to
the same prepublication safeguards ‹ editing, fact-checking, proofreading ‹
that print publications use. With blogs "we're shifting to this world where
we're publishing first and editing later," says Jeff Jarvis, a journalism
professor at the City University of New York and author of the blog
BuzzMachine.

While more than one-third of bloggers consider their work a form of
journalism, their news-gathering consists largely of borrowing content and
posting links to traditional news sources, along with some added commentary.
What's more, bloggers don't face the same consequences as journalists for
getting it wrong: In a recent libel case against a woman who posted a
critical letter about two doctors, the California Supreme Court ruled that
those who post content from other sources aren't liable for defamation. In
other words, bloggers are off the hook so long as they aren't the original
author of the mistake.

4. "I might infect your computer with a virus."
Most web surfers know better than to click on a link promising free money or
a trip to the Bahamas. But blogs can contain malicious code just like any
other site. Social-networking hub MySpace, for example, which hosts about
one in 10 blogs online, suffered several high-profile attacks last year. In
December hackers altered hundreds of thousands of MySpace user profiles; the
doctored pages directed viewers to a scam site that elicited log-in names
and passwords. Another tactic involves targeting innocent blogs and
inserting malicious links into the reader comment section ‹ one click and
your computer could be infected.

Allysa Myers, a virus-research engineer at security-software maker McAfee,
says researchers now see such attacks, which first appeared less than a year
ago, almost daily. Keeping your operating system, browser and security
software updated may help contain the damage, but the responsibility is
partly that of web site operators, who need to put proper filters in place
so rogue users can't upload bad content. The bottom line for readers: "If
you don't know the person doing the linking, don't click on it," Myers says.

5. "I'm revealing company secrets."
When Mark Jen started working at Google in 2005, he was so excited about his
new job that the newly minted associate product manager started a blog about
it, describing orientation meetings, comparing Google's pay and benefits
package with that of his past employer, and recounting a company ski trip.
Though Jen revealed nothing earth-shattering, his blog soon drew an audience
eager for a peek inside the tight-lipped firm. Two weeks later Jen was
fired. He isn't sure just what he wrote that prompted his dismissal, but
"was told somebody at the top wanted me gone," Jen says. (Google had no
comment on the matter.)

Indeed, companies are only now beginning to realize that employee blogs can
be a threat to information security; so far just 7% of firms have policies
on personal blogs, according to a survey from the American Management
Association and ePolicy Institute. But that doesn't mean you can blog with
abandon. "Don't piss off your boss," says Robert Scoble, author of "Naked
Conversations: How Blogs Are Changing the Way Businesses Talk With
Customers." Ask about your employer's stance on blogs and what subject
matter is out of bounds before ever typing a word.

6. "Just because my name's on it doesn't mean I wrote it."
In 2005 New York City mayoral candidate Fernando Ferrer's web log mentioned
he'd attended public schools; in fact, Ferrer received most of his education
in private Catholic schools. When confronted with the error, his campaign
admitted the blog was written by a staffer. Ferrer's predicament was hardly
unusual: Politicians, business leaders and other public figures routinely
employ ghostwriters to produce books, speeches and, more recently, blogs.
One survey conducted by PR consultant David Davis found that only 17% of
CEOs who blog do all their own writing.

However common it is, "ghost blogging" remains controversial. "It's a
perversion of the real meaning of blogging, which is to put yourself out
there," says Debbie Weil, author of "The Corporate Blogging Book." But not
everybody agrees the practice is tantamount to lying. Ed Poll, a law firm
management consultant and author of LawBiz Blog, thinks ghost blogging is
fine. "I don't think anyone who reads a post should care whether the name on
it belongs to the writer," Poll says. "If you believe everything you read,
then shame on you."

7. "My blog is just a stepping stone to bigger and better things."
In some blogging circles, scorn for the mainstream media, or "MSM," is a
virtual religion. Nonetheless, many bloggers have proven eager to join it
when the opportunity arises. Melissa Lafsky, author of the popular
Opinionistas blog, was stressed and unhappy as a young lawyer in New York
City. As a kind of therapy, she began chronicling daily life at her firm,
relating tales of tyrannical partners and sleepless, embittered young
associates, being careful not to reveal her identity. Her blog soon built a
following, gaining mentions in The New York Times and Slate.com. Eventually,
a literary agent came calling, and Lafsky quit her job to write
professionally. "I'd be getting coffee in some newsroom if not for the
Internet," she says.

Indeed, bloggers are using their medium to pursue jobs in all sorts of
industries. Seeking a spot at Provo Labs, Utah resident Carolynn Duncan
created "Why Provo Labs Wants to Hire Carolynn Duncan," a blog detailing her
qualifications to work for the startup incubator. "It was kind of a flippant
idea," Duncan admits, but it worked ‹ after approaching a company exec at a
community dinner and handing him her business card listing her blog's
address, Duncan scored an interview and got the job.

8. "I can control what you see on the Internet."
When search engines like Google calculate their search results ‹ the list
you get when you type in specific words ‹ one of the biggest factors in
determining order is the number of other sites that link to a given web
page. The reasoning goes that it's a good measure of how useful the content
of a web site is to readers ‹ and it often works in favor of blogs. "There's
no special boost in our algorithm for blogs," according to a Google
spokesperson, "but as part of their nature [for example, routinely providing
fresh content], people may link to and from blogs more often."

Knowing how to game the system, some bloggers will use the power of links to
get ahead on search-result lists. Kansas lawyer Grant Griffiths started the
Kansas Family Law Blog in 2005 to promote his practice. By posting two or
three times a day, he says, he soon brought his blog near the top of the
list for search terms like "Kansas law" and "divorce lawyers." Within 30
days Griffiths started attracting new business and now gets two to three new
cases per week because of his high-visibility blog.

Bloggers don't just use links to promote themselves; they can also
manipulate search results to make their enemies look bad. In a practice
known as "Google bombing," a coordinated group of bloggers can boost a
site's ranking using negative key words. Such was the case in 2003, when
enough bloggers linked to George W. Bush's official White House biography
page using the words "miserable failure" to make it No. 1 on the list for a
Google search of those words.

9. "Blogging just about ruined my life."
In 2004 Oregon resident Curt Hopkins was getting ready to fly to Minnesota
for a job interview at a radio station. But before he got on the plane, the
station canceled the meeting. The reason? His blog, Morpheme Tales. Hopkins
had made some harsh remarks in it about the Catholic Church a few weeks
before the scheduled interview, remarks he suspects sank his chances of
getting hired.

Hopkins says he stands by his words, but plenty of people end up regretting
a rash posting they didn't expect anyone to read. In a notorious 2006
incident, the entire Northwestern University women's soccer team was
suspended for a month after photos of their drinking and risqué hazing
rituals were discovered online and publicized by the sports blog
BadJocks.com.

If you want to blog but still value some measure of privacy, try using one
of several blog-hosting services ‹ including Vox, WordPress or Google's
Blogger ‹ that allow you to limit your audience to a select group of your
choosing.

10. "I'm already obsolete."
How long can the blog bonanza last? There are already signs of a slowdown:
The growth rate of blogs let up for the first time in third-quarter 2006,
and overall daily postings fell to 1.3 million in September from 1.6 million
in June, according to Technorati. "There's a certain faddish quality to
what's going on," says technology writer Nicholas Carr. "We're probably at
or near the peak of popularity of writing blogs."

But that's only a part of the story; indeed, blogs have begun evolving into
a multimedia phenomenon. It's now fairly cheap and easy to record video and
post it as a video blog, or "vlog." And together with podcasts ‹ audio
recordings posted online ‹ the number of video blogs has surged, from 4,000
just a year ago to more than 22,000 today, according to vlog directory
Mefeedia.

At its core blogging has always been about showing oneself to the world;
with the advent of user-friendly voice and video technology, that idea is
becoming more literal every day.

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