In a very interesting post today by The Blog Herald they posit the case for another reason why Yahoo!, Microsoft and others will come to dominate the blogosphere. The snapshot to your right (from The Blog Herald via The Software Journal) is of the new Yahoo! Messenger 7 Beta tool which integrates into Yahoo services including Yahoo's new blogging service Yahoo! 360.

It stands to reason, according to the Blog Herald, that given the millions of users of Instant Messaging (IM) tools like MSN Messenger, AOL Messenger and of course Yahoo! Messenger that these services have a tremendous opportunity to gain significant traction in the blogosphere. How so? By allowing these already free messenging tools to hook into free blogging tools they are seamlessly tapping into a huge installed user base literally on the fly. This represents a significant ...   more »

Seems that George Simpson at MediaPost heard a cosmic crash last week. Hmmmm...I didn't hear anything. Obviously we can expect more anti-blog rhetoric to emerge and rightfully so. With all of the media attention and claims to the effectiveness of blog publishing there needs to an examination of those claims. There needs to be a continued discussion of what works and what doesn't work with blogs. That is to be expected. (similarly discussed here at Desconstructing the Blog). As with everything else, critics and cynics will spin the facts, test cases and whatever else they have at their disposal to make their arguments. I'm okay with that.

Ah...nothing like lively debate. At any rate...

I can't help but sense that George hasn't fully explored the many ways that blogs are proving to be effective publishing and communications tools for ...   more »

Amy Gahran publishes a very good article on blogging stereotypes designed to help you initiate intelligent and informative discussions about blogging while avoiding the spread of misinformation. In other words, she presents a discussion on how not to discuss "blogging".

Amy starts out with a definition of what a blog is and follows her definition with a list unique characteristics and features that are common among blogs and serve to differentiate blogs from other online publishing tools. There is some overlap and blurring of capabilities or uses between blog publishing and other means of online publishing so Amy defines other types of online publishing that aren't considered to be weblog publishing. This is a great post that closes with blog myths and stereotypes to avoid when discussing blogs.

Again, great post. Read more...   more »

NameThisCompany.Com: Help my friend Michael and I name our new company and win cool stuff from Amazon.com...or a rubber nose. :-)   more »

I published my blog and ping rant back on April 24th talking about the clog of nonsense I ran into why doing some research in no less than 3 major blog and RSS search directories. Darren Rowse follow up with his thoughts on blog and ping, adding to my rant on this subject.

Priya Shah adds to the growing blogger backlash against blog and ping in here post on the rise of the blog spam empire as she picks up on Andy Wibbels' post on blog and ping entitled What is Blog Power.

Taking Names and Kickin' Butt
Now names are being taken and marketers are being called out. Here's the deal. First of all blog and ping spam is real issue here. Smart marketing (internet marketing and search engine marketing) requires that you avoid this technique and ...   more »

Okay, so there has been discussion about what's wrong with blogs. Cool. Good discussion. According to Darren's rules from this post, the discussion should only mention what is wrong with blogging. I've been out of the loop for a few days taking some "time off". A discussion on what is not so good about blogging is a good exercise in objectivity. This is especially useful for the blogging community because of the continued visibility and good news blogging gets from online media (especially other blogs).

Get a business blog! Blog for profit! Blogs rule! Web sites are dead! Blogs will make you rich! Blogs are hold the secrets of life! There are a lot of superlatives tossed around in both the descriptions of what a blog is, what blogs do and how blogs are changing the way the web works. ...   more »