The sound of bloggers blogging

Just listened to David Sifry (Technorati) being interviewed by Andreas Kluth, from the Economist, on blogs. If you’d like to listen to it as well: Blogs as leading indicators.

My notes of the conversation:

Blogs as a symptom of the way things are fundamentally changing with the way we use the Internet.

Not a technological phenomenon but a social phenomenon.

It’s all in the links – your blogroll lets you decide what genre you belong to, what clique.

Blog becomes in effect, a shard of your identity – you are the only person who can write to your blog.

Blogs keep us honest because what we say (about anything!) can be found.

For businesses: you aren’t in control of your brand anymore. People out there are talking about the things they love about you, and the things they hate about you.

The people formerly known as consumers are now participants.

Listening is very very important even if you are not a technologist, even if you are not into computers.

Google page ranks – counts of how many documents are linking to a particular document, are in effect votes.

Number of people are listening to you as a measure of your authority in a particular area…

Redefining the idea of a brand, from the traditional eg Coke and the New York Times, to the bloggers who are their own brands, new personas, you are the brand for yourself, the product is me.

We are exiting the era of the collective brand. Each collective brand may have had “a small posse of individuals” behind it, but the individual was suppressed. Now the individual is coming to the fore with bloggers in niche areas.

It’s all about participation, eg the CEO of GM blogs, executives speaking for their companies via their blogs personifying their brands. The blog allows the corporation, the executive, the ordinary worker to speak direct to their users.

While the New York Times continues to be the top site being linked to, other traditional sites and media organisations (eg Forbes, the Economist) are eclipsed by sites such as Boing Boing.

The hyperlink as a new form of currency, and a new social gesture: “Hey I’m paying you a certain amount of respect by linking to you”.

David Sifry’s recommendations for those considering blogging:

1. be honest – speak in a human voice rather than a corporate voice (people can identify the corporate voice and will reject it)
2. be prolific – write often, have enough to write about the topics you care about and are passionate about
3. link prolifically – sounds counter-intuitive but by linking, both to those you respect and those you disagree with, you are engaging in the conversation

Segue: comment on the lack of links to the Wall Street Journal, Economist – these traditional media outlets are not being linked to because they have put up too many barriers to people linking to their stuff. Need for subscriptions, log-ins might be good for business on one level but it also means they have taken themselves out of the spontaneous human conversations, a sin in the new media world. They need to adjust to the new media world if they want to be leading the conversations!

Finally, David Sifry, are people fundamentally good?
Yes they are, and they are fundamentally interesting as well!
The human need to be social, the need to communicate and connect with each other has been further enabled by blogging. We can express our social need to be of service to one another. We no longer need to just yell at the tv, we can connect ourselves to others with similar interests.

Interesting conversation. The points he makes about blogging being about conversation and participation are the points I’m trying to make in my paper. The more the merrier. The point about linking, too – this is what people who don’t blog or who don’t understand blogging don’t realise – it is not a solo endeavour. The links, well, they link you in with others out there. I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to get over the visceral reaction some people have to computer-mediated interaction of any kind, though – that it’s not real or that you need to get a life.

I also like the idea of being my own brand – this must be the reason why I’ve always rejected clothing with prominent brands or labels.

The notes are my attempt at taking notes to report on – I think I need to practice some more if I’m going to be blogging Click 06 effectively. (Is anyone else going to be, I wonder?) Took these notes with a pencil and scraps of paper – for next interview/talk I note I might practise using the Tablet. Using the stylus might be more effective than typing.

I don’t touch type – I can type without looking at the keyboard, but the ability has been honed from years of gaming and online communication (IRC, IM) rather than any formal training, so my typing ability seems to more about getting into some sort of groove – I do stumble easily.

Categories: blogging, Internet, interview, experiment