Blogs Influence Availability of News, But Not Quality

Blogs Influence Availability of News, But Not Quality

According to a survey of US journalists by Brodeur, a unit of Omnicom Group, blogs are not only having an impact on the speed and availability of news but also influencing the tone and editorial direction of reporting. The biggest impact of blogs, says the study, is in the speed and availability of news, while 61.8% of the respondents said that blogs were having a significant impact on the "tone" of news reporting, and 51.1% said they influenced "editorial direction.

The majority of journalists said blogs were having a significant impact on news reporting in all areas tested, except news quality. The biggest impact has been in speed and availability of news, and secondarily to tone and editorial direction.

Impact of Social Media and Blogs on News Reporting (% of respondents)
Aspect	Very Significant	Somewhat Significant	Not Significant
Speed of news	32.0%	42.1%	24.8%
Availability of news	32.6	36.0	30.9
Tone of discussion	10.7	51.1	37.0
Editorial direction	8.4	42.7	49.4
Quality of news	12.4	30.9	55.6
Source: Brodeur, January 2008

Jerry Johnson, head of strategic planning at Brodeur, said "While only a small percentage of journalists feel that blogs are helpful in generating sources or exclusives, they do see blogs as particularly useful in helping them better understand the context of a story, a new story angle, or a new story idea."

Blogs are a regular source for journalists: Over three-quarters of reporters see blogs as helpful in giving them story ideas, story angles and insight into the tone of an issue.

Helpfulness of Certain Aspects of Blogs (% of respondents)
Insight	Very Helpful	Somewhat Helpful	Not Helpful
Getting story ideas and new anlges	23.4%	54.9%	21.7%
Gaining insight into the tone of a debate or discussion	27.3	48.9	23/9
Getting information on breaking news	10.7	36.2	53.1
Identifying and validating news sources	7.3	24.3	68.2
Finding quotes and soundbites	3.4	24.3	72.3
Source: Brodeur, January 2008

Nearly 70% of all reporters check a blog list on a regular basis:

• Over one in five (20.9%) reporters said they spend over an hour per day reading blogs
• Nearly three in five (57.1%) reporters said they read blogs at least two to three times a week
• 71% of journalists have a list of blogs that they check on a regular basis
• 47.7% have five or fewer blogs
• 23.3% have a regular blog list of six or more
• 29.9% of journalists have no regular list

One in five reporters spend over an hour a day reading blogs, and nearly three in five read blogs at least 2 to 3 times a week.

Time Spent Reading Blogs by Reporters (% of respondents)
Hours Reading	Percent Reading
>4 hours a day	2.3%
1-2 hours a day	18.6
2-3 times a week	36.2
2-3 times a month	33.3
Never	9.6
Source: Brodeur, January 2008

Journalists are increasingly active participants in the blogosphere:

• One in four reporters (27.7%) have their own blogs
• Nearly one in five (16.3%) have their own social networking page
• About half of reporters (47.5%) say they are "lurkers" - reading blogs but rarely commenting.

Johnson said, "…reporters are still creating their stories by going out and developing their own ideas and talking to their sources… The blogosphere's tail is not wagging the media body - at least not yet."

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Link to MediaPost Article

Synovate: 8% of Americans Pen Blogs

Readers' loyalty to specific blogs is relatively high, with 46 percent of blog readers saying they visit the same blogs regularly, according to a survey from Synovate (via WebProNews). Eight percent of Americans now have their own blog, a surprisingly large number considering the fact that just a few years ago, most didn't even know what a blog was.

Today, nearly 90 percent of people ages 25-34 know what a blog is, while 65 percent of people 65 and over do. There are more women bloggers than men.

Forty-three percent of blog visitors have noticed advertising on blog sites; of those 18-24, 61 percent of readers have noticed advertising. About a third of readers have clicked on an ad.

Blogs don't seem to be replacing other media. Just 13 percent of blog readers said they spend less time with newspapers, TV or radio since they began reading blogs.

See MarketingChart's coverage for more findings from the study.

Link to MediaBuyerPlanner Article

TwitKu: Single Interface For Twitter And Jaiku

TwitKu is a new site that is sort of a Meebo (web instant messaging) for the Twitter and Jaiku “presence blogging” services.

The site brings your Twitter and Jaiku accounts onto one screen and adds a posting interface that allows you to post just to one of the services, or to both. The benefit for many people that use both services religiously is obvious. Very simple and very useful for some people.

Both Twitter and Jaiku have APIs, making this possible (or at least manageable). Clones/similar products like Pownce and the new Yappd don’t have APIs. When and if those services release them, I’d expect TwitKu to quickly add those services as well. And that would save those of us who want to use all of the services but refuse to choose a lot of time.

And since Twitter and Jaiku are all about presence and status updates of friends, there’s no reason not to add Facebook status right away, too.

Link to TechCrunch Article

Cashing in on blog bling

San Francisco startup Slide has a plan to make big money off tiny free software programs now populating the Web, writes Fortune's Jessi Hempel.

(Fortune Magazine) -- Spend any time online these days and you'll see and hear a lot about widgets. On the web, these are tiny free software programs that can be dragged, dropped, and embedded into web pages, offering everything from weather reports to sports scores.

Call them bling for your blog. They're all over the Internet -- some 220 million people used widgets in May alone, according to ComScore -- and their viral-like success has set off a frenzy over how to make money from them.

Max Levchin, who at 23 co-founded online pay-processing firm PayPal, which was sold to eBayCharts, Fortune 500) in 2002 for $1.5 billion, thinks he's found a way. (

Now 32, Levchin has a new startup, Slide.com, a site that lets users post snapshots of friends, say, or vacations in slide-show format. Slide has fast become the most trafficked widget maker on the web; Levchin's plan to embed advertising around slide shows could help transform widgets from a web gimmick into a profitable business.

25 hot startups to watch

What's so special about these software snippets? Consider basketball fans, who spend game time toggling between the NBA website and their work.

They can now embed the scoreboard in their Google home page. It's a page-within-a-page, a small piece of the NBA site that lives inside a larger site. The tools are particularly popular with bloggers and MySpace users, but as Facebook and other social networks open their platforms to developers, their popularity is mushrooming.

More important, widgets are shifting the dynamics of the web. Once, people surfed from site to site to do virtual errands. With widgets, they can bring those sites to one central landing page, exercising more control.

This has grand implications for the $20 billion online-advertising industry, which doesn't work very well. Web surfers don't really pay much attention to banner ads from, say, car brands or liquor companies, and they block disruptive pop-ups.

Levchin's pitch? Do-it-yourself product placement -- let users embed ads inside their widgets. Slide users have always been able to jazz up their slide shows with flowers, stars, and the like. But Levchin's newly signed deals with several big companies -- including Paramount PicturesCharts), AT&T Wireless (Charts, Fortune 500), and Discovery Channel -- let Slide users decorate their slide shows with logos, props, and other branded elements. (

A fan of Discovery's new survival show, for example, could add a sword with the show's logo to his photos. Discovery pays only if the Slide user opts to use the bling.

It's a Web, Web, Web 2.0 world

Will the strategy work? There's no proof Slide users will choose to brand their photos, though Levchin insists they will. "There are definitely brands that have proven to be extremely successful at connecting with their users," he says.

Another challenge: The bigger websites that host widgets will probably demand a cut of advertising revenue. Right now Facebook lets widget developers keep any revenue they generate. At some point, however, it is likely to request a percentage of the take.

Then there's competition. Levchin has the biggest widget site, but close on his heels is RockYou.com, a startup testing its own ad strategy.

But Levchin has massive aspirations. He thinks Slide's model could ultimately be as significant as PayPal's. "Our valuation will be comparable to hosts [like Facebook] themselves," he says.

One way or another, all that bling has to be worth some cash.

Link to Fortune Article

The Case of the Incredible Shrinking Blogosphere

Three Reasons Why Micro-media Sites Mirror a Cultural Shift

By Steve Rubel

Published: August 06, 2007

Bloggers and the media have some common ground: Both like to incessantly navel gaze.

Recently, the conversation has focused on the rising popularity of micro-blogging platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Jaiku and the invite-only Pownce. All of these enable people to broadcast brief bursts of text (usually around 150 characters) to their circle of friends via the web or a mobile device. It's akin to ye olde telegram. Dave Winer, one of the blogosphere's founding fathers, took it a step further by creating Twittergram -- a service that pumps 30-second MP3s into Twitter via a special dial-in line.

Some have chalked up the micro-blogging boom to what a friend of mine calls "shiny object syndrome" -- our fascination with all things new. However, I believe that the rise of these emerging micro-media sites mirrors three significant cultural shifts.

First, there's the Attention Crash. The demands on our time -- be they work, family, passions -- are growing. Brevity rules.

Second, there's the proliferation of mobile devices, which, through text messaging, encourage people to publish more often but in a far shorter format.

Last but not least we have social networking, which makes it easier for us to tune into "signals," i.e., people and topics we care about, and block out noise. Content you truly care about finds you.

So what does this all mean for blogging? Blogs certainly remain extremely powerful, and I don't expect them to go away. Still, blogging is hard. It takes a lot of work to put out high-quality content. I know. I did so every single day for three years, including weekends and holidays. However, recently I have been blogging far less often and filling in the gap with daily bursts on Twitter. When I do blog, I use it to go into more depth than I used to and expand on ideas I've formed through conversations on Twitter. I am not alone.

If Web 2.0 is like golf, then a blog is a nine iron, while a micro-blog is a putter. It's all still golf, but bloggers are starting to mix it up, and the course is changing. Therefore, marketers need to adapt. More on that in my next column.

Link to AdAge Article

Marketing Bloggers Publish 'The Age Of Conversation'

by Nina M. Lentini, Monday, Jul 16, 2007 5:00 AM ET

IN WHAT IS BILLED AS a unique publication--a book by bloggers--The Age of Conversation offers marketers advice on ways to engage consumers through conversation, although it makes a strong case for less talking and more listening on marketers' part. The "blook" is out today. More than 100 400-word essays, many focused on brand management, have been compiled by two stalwart marketing bloggers, Drew McLellan, who heads McLellan Marketing Group in Des Moines, Iowa, and Gavin Heaton, interactive director at marketing agency Creata, in Sidney, Australia. Both their blogs are among the Top 25 most-read. "The marketing industry is abuzz about how the citizen marketers are changing the landscape," says McLellan. "This book captures that new phenomenon." "We've been amazed at the variety of approaches that have been taken, and with hardly any duplication or overlap," says Heaton. "This book explores the art of conversation and how it is changing the face of marketing from virtually every angle possible." In "Visualizing the Threads," blogger Julie Fleischer notes: "In the beginning, advertising was a conversation. Betty Crocker was ... invented so that women could relate to and interact with the brand. Her radio show was the highest rated in the land. Betty spoke to consumers and they spoke to her. They asked questions, she answered them. Together, these threads invented the brand." True, as Ed Cotton points out in "Seven Ways to Start a Conversation," much of Madison Avenue "spent the last century using one-way communication to push products at people." Cotton counsels advertisers to "grab some humility and learn the art of conversation." He offers a seven-step method. Fleischer and Cotton and the other 101 marketing bloggers were invited by McLellan and Heaton to commit to writing essays about conversation. The latter had set what they thought would be an impossible goal--100 bloggers. Within seven days, they had commitments from 103 in 24 U.S. states and eight other nations. The book is available in a downloadable e-version and in hardcover and softcover. All proceeds will be donated to Variety, the international children's charity. Orders are being taken at http://stores.lulu.com/ageofconversation. Link to MediaPost Article

Executives Get the Blogging Bug

Although the Internet can be a dangerous place for CEOs with opinions, more top executives are venturing online--mostly with signed blogs, or personal Web pages. Top-level corporate bloggers include J.W. "Bill" Marriott Jr., chairman and CEO of Marriott International, Michael Critelli, executive chairman of Pitney Bowes, and Robert Lutz, a vice chairman of General Motors.

Blogs offer CEOs a way to communicate with investors, employees and customers, and to defend themselves when under fire. Done well, "a blog is an extremely effective way of articulating a vision," says Debbie Weil, a corporate-blogging consultant and author of "The Corporate Blogging Book." But blogs, chat rooms and stock-message boards also pose pitfalls, particularly for executives unaccustomed to unfiltered dialogue.

Some CEOs deliberately stay away from newsy or controversial subjects in their posts, and many companies now review executive writings before they are posted. Forty of the country's biggest 500 companies now publish corporate blogs, according to the Fortune 500 Blogging Wiki, a collaborative tracking site.

Link to WSJ Article (sub req.)