Doc's discussion of Printwash is currently #2 on Blogdex. It deserves to be #1. After all, #1 is that truly mindless tale in the Times of blogs and privacy. (Go find it yrself if you care.)
Here's Doc:
Okay, now consider your local library. Look at the periodicals section, the periodicals stacks, all those nearly unsearchable microfiches, and all those Readers Guides to Periodical Literature. You're looking at a system that deeply respects not only the printed word, but the requirement that everything be both sourced, and find-able.
On the whole, blogs are highly compliant with the ethics of the periodicals section, the ethics of the stacks, the ethics of sourcing and archiving, the ethics of giving credit where due.
The bottom line: In the age of the Web, the practice of charging for access to digital archives is a collossal anachronism. It's time for The New York Times and the other papers to step forward, join the real world and correct the problem. Expose the archives. Give them permanent URLs. Let in the bots. Let their writers, and their reputations, accept the credit they are constantly given and truly deserve.
Google is a public space in which a mob is milling that will tear down the walls, and sack the archives, returning to the public domain what was stolen. As prisoners were once released in Paris from the Bastille, so the Reporters for the Times will be released from the Times Business Model, in short, from Wealth Bondage.
Google is the Wheel on which we break the Old Business Model, until it confesses its Sins and gives up the ghost, as the milling mob cheers itself hoarse, and reaches for bits of hair, flesh, and bone as souvenirs of this Glorious Day -- Freedom! Freedom from Spiritual Bondage to Brands! More...
Google is getting a lot of pressure from its advertisers to "devalue" webloggers and push them down. The fact that when you search for "NEC Tablet" and you find me, for instance, might really piss off NEC. Since NEC advertises on Google, Google has more reason to listen to them than it does to listen to me.
This will be important to follow - there is always this pressure. It has ruined public communication in the realm of book publishing, newspapers, magazines, radio, and TV. Will it undo Google?
Hey Jeneane - I think the meeting you describe is being replicated in a lot of places all over the place. For the moment, blogging is the phenom, and lots of people who like to think they can make money out of anything that's "hot" are wondering how they missed this and what they can do with it. They should listen to you. More on this to come. Just wanted to say hey.
In a business meeting today, I went through my shpeel on who I am... "Hi, I'm Jeneane Sessum. I worked at Ketchum as the Senior Technology Writer for the last five years, was the voice behind communications at big brands like IBM, Cingular, Nokia, and AMS, and helped launch more companies that I can count during the tech boom. Over the past 20 years in marketing and technology, I've written every type of deliverable for every type of company in ever industry. Before Ketchum blah blah blah. Blah blah blah blah blah blah..... I also have a passion for the place called the Internet and the people gathered there. I'm a well-known weblogger who started blogging in 2001, blah bl---"
"OOOh. Weblogs" (one voice)
"What's a weblog?" (another voice)
"It's an online diary (first voice to second voice)
"It's kind of where people write what goes on during their day. (third voice)
Me: "Well, not really. Kind of. Sort of. But not just."
"Tell us." (all voices)
"oh fuck." (my voice in my head)
Me: "It's a diary in the sense that it's regularly updated and is date and time stamped, and some bloggers treat weblogs as personal diaries, but they're much more than that. We are people who live out there, connecting with one another through our weblogs, writing not just about technology or marketing or gardening, or porn, or whatever our interests happen to be, but about our life, or loves, our kids, our hurts, our hate, our joy. We connect there. At the bottom. And we talk, not just on our blogs, but many of us talk by phone, meet other bloggers we care about, we know each other, we care about what happens to one another."
I keep going.
"And guess what: Bloggers do other things to earn a living. Get it? So most of us (well, not me) work someplace. And so, you see, I trust Michael O'Connor Clarke who happens to work at Weber Shandwick. I know him through his tremendous writing, I've bounced his ideas inside my head and back out to him over the last six months on many occasions. More than that, I trust him as my blog friend, because I was there when he germinated Blog Sprogs, and I was there when he and Sausage had Ruairi, and we were praying when Ruairi got sick. So who do you think comes to mind when someone asks me for a PR firm, or what I know about Weber? Do you think Ketchum comes to mind? My contacts there? No. Because those are fleeting relationships--one dimensional--even when I was there. These are human connections that exist outside of, and yet among, the construct of corporations. SEE? We are people who happen to live both on and off the net. Some of our lives are connecting both places now. Not up here (me pointing high), down here (me pointing low). That's where it starts."
I keep going.
"That's just one example. Now with Google buying Blogger, and with Google striking a deal with Amazon, do you know what that means?"
heads shake no.
"That means that one day when you're looking on Amazon for a book on kids and strep, or maybe even marketing writing, I think you'll find my blog (or a blogger like me) listed as a resource in some way shape or form along with the results returned for that book/cd/whatever. That's what I think."
Or I said something like that.
And my pal at the meeting says, "I know what it does. When I search up my own name on Google, Jeneane's blog is the second reference because she wrote something for me and uses my name on one of her blog pages."
Yes, there's that too.
I tell them about bottom up versus top down, explain it's not about getting product mentioned on people's blogs (though that sometimes helps, but most usually serves to spark discussion both good and bad, which is what you want ultimately, in other words, don't look for glowing reviews because this isn't mainstream media, it's real). It's about you guys starting to write, to blog, about what interests you--not just about marketing or technology or sales, but about you--you start blogging and you'll connect and you'll see the power of these connections, what it does for your head and heart first.
I tell them why blogs don't work like mainstream media and touch a little bit on sponsorship, but eyes have begun to glaze over and some are wondering why we're talking about this blogging thing at all.
I feel like I said some useful things. I also felt excited that real live adults cared to hear why I care about blogging.
Google is to create a search tool specifically for weblogs, most likely giving material generated by the self-publishing tools its own tab.
CEO Eric Schmidt made the announcement on Monday, at the JP Morgan Technology and Telecom conference. 'Soon the company will also offer a service for searching Web logs, known as "blogs,"' reported Reuters.
Joi Ito: One amazing phenomenon of blogs is that because of all of the linking going on they end up with fairly high google rankings. At Supernova, Cory of Boing Boing talked about how people email him asking about things he blogs because his blog entries show up on the top of Google results. Also at Supernova, Sergey Brin co-founder of Google talked about how important the ranking and results algorithms were for Google. For instance, first result for "suicide" can have a life or death impact on someone depending on whether it is a page to help you decide not to commit suicide or a page about how to commit suicide. I am the second entry for "Japan + Dayton Ohio" and #3 for "Takenaka media" for instance. At Davos, I talked to Larry Page, co-founder of Google about the phenomenon. I explained that I was very excited that my entry about how the media failed to report the public support of Takenaka showed up before the media reports. I mentioned that maybe it was the way blogs created a lot of pages and linked to each other a lot and how this was giving them unfair juice. Larry said he thought that blogs were getting higher rankings because they were becoming a more important part of the Internet and implied that he felt the high rankings were fair. Cool. I was beginning to feel a bit guilty about the high rankings and worried that Google would "figure it out" and start lowering the rankings for blogs. If Larry says they're fair, I'm assuming they're fair and I don't have to worry about a "correction" in my page ranking.
