Recent Trends in the Global Blogosphere Prague, July11, 2007

Evolution of blogging

Blogs and Google Trends

The Blog Belt

Some Famous Bloggers Carl Bildt, ex Swedish PM, current FM Margo Wallstrom, EU Commissioner Gary Becker, Nobel Prize Winner Jamie Oliver, chef Moby, musician Nicholas Kristof, NYT columnist

Case-studies: bloggers vs MSM Trent Lott (2002) Rathergate (2004) Eason Jordan, Chief News Executive, CNN/Davos (“blog-mob”) (2005) Ben Domenech/WP/plagiarism (2006) 2006 Israel-Lebanon conflict photographs controversies (2006)

Тематика блогов

Better than MSM or not?

ТОП10

BUT the majority of blogs are devoted to other topics!

Is it only the echo that we hear?

Case study: the Chinese blogosphere and MSM

Things to Consider Before Starting Objectives & Intended audience Anonymous or not? Group or individual? Any advanced features planned (podcasting, photo blogging)? Budget? How techno-savvy are you? Ambitious about becoming a thought leader?

Four Options Social-networks with blogging (LiveJournal, MySpace, Yahoo’s 360 Degrees) Hosted blog-only platforms (i.e. Blogger) Self-installed blogging (Moveable Type, Wordpress, etc) Web-hosts with pre-installed blogging (most of the professional blogs)

Getting noticed Tagging your posts  appearing on Technorati Automatically adding your posts to del.icio.us and digg Linking to other blogs and articles  Trackbacks Writing comments on other people’s blogs Write, write, write—most of traffic on all blogs is generated by Google searches! Let others take your content—set up a Creative Commons license; specify your terms!

Wider Applications Hard to make money yet; but can be a good complementary tool Intended and unintended consequences on your career Increased visibility: good for some things, bad for others Can easily turn into an important pundit whose opinion is sought Can be a very easy break into mainstream media—a great career in journalism Can eventually write a book, like most famous bloggers do!