My ICM Weblog

When I read/saw the ratings for this album as ‘her best so far’ I had to check it out. My friend Chris sent me this link over & I heard for myself first hand: http://music.aol.com/songs/new_releases_full_cds

I felt a little shorted from this week’s readings. I was hoping to read more about the future of blogging and predictions of where this will fit in the business world.

One article (the first 4 chapters from “Naked Conversations”) wrote most about the start up of blogging. It was interesting to find out blogging began within the corporation and was actually positive. These men and women have used their blogs as a way of connecting directly with the customers. This actually was a good idea because it allowed interaction and straight feedback about products, service, and anything revolving around any given company. People/customers can relate more to bloggers because they see the human relation, the imperfection that we all have.

Bloggers make spelling and grammatical errors and write in a way that would repulse most college professors or higher degree holding professionals. People feel comfortable in this world, this ‘blogosphere,’ and are able to write freely, openly and honestly. Honesty earns credibility, which earns more readers and a flow of regular readers. The attention the site generates allows the item to rank higher on Google and other search engines and therefore, becomes higher on the list of that certain search keyword. For example, if a tech blog writes about Macintosh computers frequently, they will move up the list on Google when a user types in “Macintosh computers.” Users rely on blogger’s sites for their honesty and opinions on certain items. You could say a blogger’s site may even compare to a ratings site. If I were shopping for a new vacuum, rather than check out the reviews, I might check out a blog to read a viewers first hand experience with the vacuum.

This Josha Allen guy started his blog while working for Microsoft. He single handedly could be thanked for saving the company, who previously had a poor reputation with the public. He allowed readers to see the soft side of the people working within the company, what they prided their work on and in turn, allowed readers to comment back. This free feedback was read and taken into consideration. The company made modifications and everyone was happy. Nice fairy tale huh? You think Disney could pick that up, maybe in a Pixar animation?

Allen’s blog actually attracted fellow Microsoft employees to write and by ‘March 2005, there were more than 1,500 active bloggers at Microsoft.’ (Scoble &Israel, 12) Blogs have changed the relationship between users and employees, in a good way. This open honesty and open connection has allowed much more communication to pass through, which inevitably helps the company. The company then makes the products directly for the customers. Companies get the money, customers get what they want; everyone’s happy.

The article was full of a bunch of statistics and founding father type people…but meh…the message was rather clear and concise.

Clive Thompson’s article on ‘The Blog Establishment’ also got a ‘meh’ reaction from me. The article mentions a bunch of mogul type people who make bank off their blogs. I felt it was one of those articles that told me things I knew…links connect people, making a network, allowing sites to become higher ranked. Links allow users to travel from blog to blog, while continuing to gather information on the same or related…even unrelated subjects. The articles contains some interesting facts, like there’s about a blog created every minute and there’s upwards of 27 million blogs in the world.

This 25-year-old woman, Jessica Coen, is the face behind the Gawker blog. She dropped out of Columbia Journalism school to make pretty big money off a blog. These Boing Boing people, all 5 of them, have the right idea behind their approach. They approach it from three angles: approach it from a record-label “Crank out dozens and dozens of sites and hope one or two will become hits, the boutique approach: a publisher who crafts individual blogs the way Conde Nast crafts magazines—each one carefully aimed at some ineffable, deluxe readership.” (Thompson, 34) …Though I couldn’t find the first…I suppose it’s the quote where he says lets life fuel the blog.

When I think blog, I think diary, personal entry. How can someone make millions a year for essentially just writing their opinion? The idea is still baffling to me.

P.S. if ‘blog’ was word voted word of the year in 2004, then why am I in 2007, still having to ctrl + click to say ‘ignore’ for the spelling of the word?