Archive for the ‘Web 2.0’ Category

A recent Wall Street Journal story by Yukari Iwatani Kane suggests that blogs are a bigger cultural phenomenon in in Japan than the US:

Blogs, in particular, are contributing to the vast reservoir of online content. Stories that incorporate the Internet and that unfold in its anonymous, abbreviated writing style are proving to be especially popular — perhaps because they represent real, spontaneous conversation, not an author’s massaged prose.

Blogs are even more popular in Japan than in the U.S. It may be that they represent an appealing outlet in a culture that discourages public self-expression. Japan produced 8.7 million blogs at the end of March, and the U.S. an estimated 12 million blogs — making blogging far more popular in Japan, taking the countries’ relative populations into account. An estimated 25 million Japanese — more than a fifth of the population — are believed to read blogs.

Books based on blogs — which some people have dubbed “blooks” — appeal to Japanese who rarely go online as well as to heavy Internet users. “Even people that are on the Internet regularly buy books to read on trains,” says Taichi Kogure, a marketing specialist for Ameba Books Ltd., which published “Demon Wife Diaries.”

Thanks to Stowe for the pointer.

Well yeah!

For many Americans seeking news during important events, blogs are just about the last place they look, relying instead on traditional outlets, a survey says.

Fifty percent said they turn to traditional media like television, radio and newspapers as their primary source for information during major events such as hurricanes over “emerging media,” according to a survey of 333 business professionals and 1,167 consumers between the ages of 25 and 64. The survey was sponsored by LexisNexis.

Link to Survey: For big news, consumers bypass blogs | CNET News.com

Searching the blogosphere isn’t of that much interest to me. Neither is what was last written. What is of interest is searching my circle of trusted commentators, pundits and friends for topics of interest – I want to know what they have collectively found interesting. I want to tap into “the wisdom of my crowd”. Extend this and you get to an interesting notion for corporations.

Who would you recommend to your customers as the “trust circle” they should turn to when considering a purchase or something tangential to a purchase – say a travel destination, or mountain biking routes? This is a serious opportunity for someone to go tackle. How, when joining a new community can you plug into a new trust circle.

Ross Mayfield also wants a version of Techmeme focused on his trusted circle. He hits on the point well: Cue up not what is popular, or what the people I subscribed to produced. Cue up what my social network has found interesting.

Apparently there is a personal meme tracker buried in Feedburner that I am going to hunt out.

Like Rod, I’m enjoying the Telsa blog. Has really got me thinking about electric vehicles. Some of the things that make it work:

• well written by a variety of people
• well integrated within existing corporate site
• informal tone (got them in trouble a bit on battery safety…)
• plenty of visuals
• plenty of comments

What needs to be improved?

• design is ugly, unlike the car
• navigation sucks – hard to swing through the articles
• comments – there are lots of them, but I don’t need them presented this way
• when you find RSS you find it, but it could be easier

Saying that, who cares, the car looks hot and the content is really interesting. I want one!

I find Google news pretty frustrating, primarily because when searching on topics like MSSP, it is generally out of date and doesn’t touch many of the sites I really care about. On this little search I was surprised to see Gartner appear as a news source and for a number of those news sources to actually be event announcements and the like on vendor sites.