by: Andrew Wroblewski
Even people who don't own a computer know what blogging is.
Everyone is talking about it. Heck, even the Doonesbury comic
strip ran a few panels on the subject. Anna Kournikova even has
a blog for crying out loud!
But did you know that there is a secret benefit to blogging
that has NOTHING to do with the subject matter? In fact, you
could blog on about the sex life of the Tasmanian fruit fly and
still reap big rewards.
Yep, just like nearly everything else on the Internet, there's
money to be made with blogging IF you know the secret...
OK, OK. I'll tell you, but first let's take a quick ride in the
wayback machine and see how blogging came to be as popular as
it is today.
Back at the dawn of the World Wide Web, new web sites were a
rarity. Geekie guys and girls struggled with the new technology
and the launch of a new page, A new web site was practically a
media event. In the early days of the Internet, each new page
was a cause for celebration.
In 1992, Tim Berners-Lee, the scientist generally credit with
inventing the World Wide Web (and you thought it was Al Gore,
I'll bet), created the first What's New page. Later, another
Internet legend, Marc Andreesen, put up his own page. Both of
these men created hot links to all of the new pages springing
up on the net.
As the World Wide Web came into its own, a new breed of
programmer, called a Web Master (because they had mastered the
World Wide Web) created their own pages that contained
suggestions on cool web sites to visit. Because they didn't
list every single new web site, just the ones that they thought
were interesting, they were said to have filtered the net. In
1998, Jorn Barger, a bit of an odd duck, even by Internet
pioneer standards, first used the term 'weblog' to describe his
blog called 'Robot Wisdom'.
As bloggers banded together to form communities, people sought
easier and faster ways to create blogs. As a result, automated
and easy to use blogging programs such as Blog-In-A-Box were
developed so that even a half-dazed wallabie can put up a blog
in between munching on stalks of grass.
But why in the world would you WANT to run a blog if you have
an income-generating site?
Surely your customer isn't interested in reading about your
trials and tribulations of the daily business grind, right?
Probably not. However, if you can build a blog that catches
their attention, such as where the fish are biting if you sell
fishing supplies, they WILL come. And so will the surprise that
I mentioned earlier.
You see, among your visitors to your blog will be a software
program known as a spider. Not just any spider, mind you, but
the granddaddy of all search engine spiders -- the Google
spider. You see, Google LOVES to index blogs. Yep, it's true.
And that, as soon-to-be inmate Martha would say, is a good
thing.
In a nutshell, Google loves pages that have links to other
pages. Blogs link to all kinds of stuff. Google loves pages
that are linked FROM other pages. A good blog gets lots of
links to it as loyal readers tell everyone they know to put
links to their favorite blog on their web site.
Finally, Google loves fresh content. An active blog's content
can change minute by minute, but at least it's almost guaranteed
to change daily.
So, if you can find a decent subject to blog about, and you can
get a blog up and running quickly and easily, you just might be
amazed at what happens to your site's page rank in a few weeks
or more.
Listen, with tools like Blog-In-A-Box available to get you
going, there really is no reason NOT to get blogging!
Good luck from a couple of fellow bloggers.
About the author:
Steve Robichaud and Andrew Wroblewski have been involved in
online sales and marketing since 1996. To get help on starting
your own blog, visit: http://blogging.help-for-me.com
email: admin@blogging.help-for-me.com
Friday, June 6, 2008
Communal Blogging - Who Will Win?
by: Jon Watson
My recent quest to understand and implement trackback on my blog has left me with more questions than answers. It seems that in an attempt to bring relevant blog entries together, there are (surprise, surprise) competing technologies.
First there is the issue of bringing relevant blog entries together. What's the point and should we bother?
I believe that although blogging is primarily a sole pursuit, the ability for people to comment, refute, correct, or admire a blog entry more deeply than a simple commenting system allows is the next step in making blogging more meaningful, and possibly more accountable.
So how do we do it?
The three main players (it seems, feel free to add someone if I've missed them) seem to be Technorati (http://www.technorati.com), Haloscan (http://www.haloscan.com), and native blog commenting systems.
Technorati seems to be popular amongst the established blogging community - the users who understand the Technorati 'Cosmos' and what it means. I think that Technorati is deliberately vague about what their system does and how it does it as there is no documentation that I can find on the Technorati site (other than an 'About' page obviously written by a marketer). I assume that the name Technorati is a play on the word Illiminati which perhaps gives us a hint to Technorati's lack of explanation on how they work. Maybe we're just supposed to 'get it'. While Technorati seems solid and has a large subscriber base, I think (again, no documentation) that only Technorati subscribers are considered part of the 'Cosmos'. There are millions of blogs out there that aren't participating in, and therefore not accounted for by, Technorati.
I just ran across Haloscan yesterday and implemented their trackback system into my blog. Haloscan offers a central commenting and trackback facility for any type of web page, not just blogs. The idea is that the comments and trackbacks of a page are kept in one central repository rather than scattered all over the blogsphere on each individual blog. When considering blogs specificially, I don't see the logic in this. Since all comments must reside somewhere - what's the difference between having them reside on my blog or on some other server? Unlike trackback, I think all blogware supports comments.
The trackback part is interesting because it actually provides a service to people (like me) who don't have trackback available natively on their blogware. It works well, has some features such as moderation, and generally provides what it promises. The only change I would like to see is the ability to implement the trackback code right into my page rather than having it in a pop up window. I really like the commenting/trackback ping layout of Blizza Blizza (http://www.chrislawson.net/blog).
I also ran across a somewhat related technology called Gravatar (http://www.gravatar.com) which stands for Globally Recognized Avatar. As near as I can tell, the idea is that you upload a small 80x80 avatar and then Gravatar supplies you with the link to that image. You can then use that image anywhere on the web that you wish. It's a neat idea: creating a sense of continuity for users between blogs and websites, but in the end - it's just a small bit of webspace. Anyone with a blog can probably upload an avatar and use it in the same fashion.
Finally, the last little bit of magic is Google. Google has many 'operators' and one of them is the 'link' operator. Typing 'link: www.somesite.com' into Google will reveal all the sites on the Internet that link to somesite.com. The data returned by Google for my site is much more extensive than Technorati, but it is also very out of date. I know I am linked to (by using Technorati and by discovering it through surfing) yet many of these links do not show up on Google.
So which technology will win, if one does at all? I'm in favour of trackback. It's easy, all the big blog platforms support it, and it has a good format. By that I mean that a typical trackback entry contains a 200-ish word summary of the entry so a visitor can decide whether they want to bother reading the whole entry before clicking on it. As well it breeds inter-linking between blogs of a like nature, or at least between blog entries of a like nature.
Just because I like it doesn't mean trackback is going to win, there are problems with it. Roy - the administrator of a large blogging site called Tabulas (http://www.tabulas.com) - for example, feels that even if he were to implement it natively on Tabulas that very few users would have the technical savvy to figure out how to use it properly, and most users wouldn't bother with it at all. Roy knows his stuff when it comes to blogging, so perhaps he's not only correct - but also echoing the sentiments of many blogware authors.
I guess only time will tell, but for now I'm hoping for trackback as the victor in this little skirmish.
About The Author
Jon is an Internet observer and technology enthusiast. He holds a diploma in Computer Information Systems, has spent time sailing the world in the Canadian Navy, and has been actively web developing and blogging for several years.
My recent quest to understand and implement trackback on my blog has left me with more questions than answers. It seems that in an attempt to bring relevant blog entries together, there are (surprise, surprise) competing technologies.
First there is the issue of bringing relevant blog entries together. What's the point and should we bother?
I believe that although blogging is primarily a sole pursuit, the ability for people to comment, refute, correct, or admire a blog entry more deeply than a simple commenting system allows is the next step in making blogging more meaningful, and possibly more accountable.
So how do we do it?
The three main players (it seems, feel free to add someone if I've missed them) seem to be Technorati (http://www.technorati.com), Haloscan (http://www.haloscan.com), and native blog commenting systems.
Technorati seems to be popular amongst the established blogging community - the users who understand the Technorati 'Cosmos' and what it means. I think that Technorati is deliberately vague about what their system does and how it does it as there is no documentation that I can find on the Technorati site (other than an 'About' page obviously written by a marketer). I assume that the name Technorati is a play on the word Illiminati which perhaps gives us a hint to Technorati's lack of explanation on how they work. Maybe we're just supposed to 'get it'. While Technorati seems solid and has a large subscriber base, I think (again, no documentation) that only Technorati subscribers are considered part of the 'Cosmos'. There are millions of blogs out there that aren't participating in, and therefore not accounted for by, Technorati.
I just ran across Haloscan yesterday and implemented their trackback system into my blog. Haloscan offers a central commenting and trackback facility for any type of web page, not just blogs. The idea is that the comments and trackbacks of a page are kept in one central repository rather than scattered all over the blogsphere on each individual blog. When considering blogs specificially, I don't see the logic in this. Since all comments must reside somewhere - what's the difference between having them reside on my blog or on some other server? Unlike trackback, I think all blogware supports comments.
The trackback part is interesting because it actually provides a service to people (like me) who don't have trackback available natively on their blogware. It works well, has some features such as moderation, and generally provides what it promises. The only change I would like to see is the ability to implement the trackback code right into my page rather than having it in a pop up window. I really like the commenting/trackback ping layout of Blizza Blizza (http://www.chrislawson.net/blog).
I also ran across a somewhat related technology called Gravatar (http://www.gravatar.com) which stands for Globally Recognized Avatar. As near as I can tell, the idea is that you upload a small 80x80 avatar and then Gravatar supplies you with the link to that image. You can then use that image anywhere on the web that you wish. It's a neat idea: creating a sense of continuity for users between blogs and websites, but in the end - it's just a small bit of webspace. Anyone with a blog can probably upload an avatar and use it in the same fashion.
Finally, the last little bit of magic is Google. Google has many 'operators' and one of them is the 'link' operator. Typing 'link: www.somesite.com' into Google will reveal all the sites on the Internet that link to somesite.com. The data returned by Google for my site is much more extensive than Technorati, but it is also very out of date. I know I am linked to (by using Technorati and by discovering it through surfing) yet many of these links do not show up on Google.
So which technology will win, if one does at all? I'm in favour of trackback. It's easy, all the big blog platforms support it, and it has a good format. By that I mean that a typical trackback entry contains a 200-ish word summary of the entry so a visitor can decide whether they want to bother reading the whole entry before clicking on it. As well it breeds inter-linking between blogs of a like nature, or at least between blog entries of a like nature.
Just because I like it doesn't mean trackback is going to win, there are problems with it. Roy - the administrator of a large blogging site called Tabulas (http://www.tabulas.com) - for example, feels that even if he were to implement it natively on Tabulas that very few users would have the technical savvy to figure out how to use it properly, and most users wouldn't bother with it at all. Roy knows his stuff when it comes to blogging, so perhaps he's not only correct - but also echoing the sentiments of many blogware authors.
I guess only time will tell, but for now I'm hoping for trackback as the victor in this little skirmish.
About The Author
Jon is an Internet observer and technology enthusiast. He holds a diploma in Computer Information Systems, has spent time sailing the world in the Canadian Navy, and has been actively web developing and blogging for several years.
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