The Buzz Bin

Another week, and there are new hot posts in the blogosphere to discuss. Let’s get it going!

Todd Vanhoosear writes a great little post on the fake Steve Jobs blog outing by the New York Times. Is Dan Lyons name mud? To continue the discussion, I’d have to say it’s not great. There are some journalistic ethics that got crossed (Jim Horton also had an interesting discussion on whether the fake Jobs blog crossed a line). And I think Forbes and Lyons are facing some tough questions:

• What Apple stories has Dan written or touched during the life of the blog?
• Can future Forbes’s Apple and related technology coverage really be considered objective?
• Was Forbes willingness not only to keep Dan employed but to host the blog an intelligent use of social media befitting of this publication’s stature?
• Will Jobs sue… in spite of the so-called parody label?

A fascinating situation.

Looks like some negative feedback is hitting Facebook within the corporate circles of the blogosphere. The Brand Strategy Blog highlights Vodafone’s Facebook foibles. Wolfstar documents First Direct and Virgin’s Facebook issues. The core issue? Controlling which groups the ads show up on. Remember advertising is placed, so in theory you can call where it goes… Or is that 20th century idea?

Paull Young had a great post on the very subjective value of blog ranking systems, a continuing discussion that began at Communications Overtones. “If you used these lists alone to try to influence the PR blogosphere, they would be practically useless.” Amen. Focus on community, not rankings. Rankings follow great content, and to be frank, some of these rankings reward last year’s work and subsequent RSS subscriptions, and not necessarily cutting edge thinking.

A Little Shameless Promo: Rich Becker (who had some thoughts for Scoble yesterday) and I launched BlogStraightTalk yesterday, an initiative to discuss and share best blogging practices. Our first entry was on contacts versus content, and Rich had very poignant comment, “Yet, we cannot rely exclusively connections, social networks, and bemusements like ‘I?m wondering if the Plain White Ts are a one hit wonder?’ on Twitter as the kind of stuff that will form a meaningful relationship.” Check it out.