Livingston

May
24
2007

Goodness Gracious, Great Blogs of Fire!

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If you haven’t noticed Technorati revamped everything yesterday, and that means something. What? I am not sure. I do not like the lack of rankings with the “authority” system being the sole barometer of where a blog stands. Personally, that broke one of my corporate benchmarking goals for 2007. In fact, the new search function is much more difficult, but the blog-only s.technorati.com search function works well, so we’ll see. I may become a Google Blog Searcher.

I’m not the only one. Read Kami Huyse’s breakdown of the change. I like Kami’s writing a lot, and find myself sourcing her quite a bit in my new book. She’s got PR savoire faire, my friends, and should be mandatory reading for anyone in the biz.

There’s a great blog called ProBlogger. Kami actually turned me onto one of Darren Rowse’s posts from last year, which gives bloggers tips on how to leverage Digg events (or Stumble Upon or Twitter or ….) to build a larger community within your blog. A very insightful posting, which makes sense for anyone considering a larger blog strategy.

Search Media Gurus remind us that social media is more than Digg and Stumble Upon. The take home boys and girls? “Before you apply [Digg optimization techniques] - know your target audience. If your targeting Digg, then [implementing] suggestions make sense, but if you understand social media goes well beyond those news type sites, approach the suggestions with caution. In the end, it’s all about knowing your audience.” Well said.

Vocus apparently stepped on itself with a well-intended, value-building white paper for its clients, five keys to good blogger relations. Unfortunately the five keys were great ways to anger every blogger out there. Marketing Roadmaps reports this misstep by the PRWeb owner. To me, this is yet another indicator that our business — PR pros — just don’t get new media. Period. And we have a long way to go, too.

Locally, I’ve had the privilege of discovering D-Ring, a great blog that bridges new media and the military. Currently being discussed, the DoD’s decision to block YouTube and MySpace. Supposedly this is a proactive measure to stop bandwidth drains… Uh yeah, like getting people not to think at all. Writer Steve Field does a nice job debating the whys and hows of the military decision.

3 Responses to “Goodness Gracious, Great Blogs of Fire!”

  • Jonathan Mervis Says:

    Aside from Technorati’s changes in terminology, what do you think of WTF? I think it’s a good idea theoretically, but its setup doesn’t make sense to me. Why should the writer have to designate something as a WTF from the onset, instead of the system just picking up organically which pages are HOT. It’s a built-in inefficiency, prone to spamming.

    And FYI, I created a WTF for the term, “washington dc,” and it so far hasn’t generated much traffic.

  • Andrea Morris Says:

    Not a fan of how Technorati removed the option to search by language and authority. I might join you over at Google.

  • Geoff Livingston Says:

    WTF (Where’s the Fire) is a competitive service from Technorati that is meant to compete with more popular WTF bulletin boards (which stand for What the F*#k). I’m not that impressed with this, and have to ask WTF, Technorati?

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