Rusings on Blogmania
Good
things come in threes, so it’s fitting that I have 3 things to say about
blogs.
Are
We Experiencing Blog Burnout?
Despite
of, or perhaps in spite of, the trend
of paying bloggers to post reviews of products through sites like PayPerPost and ReviewMe, there seems to be some blog
burnout going on. Maybe we should have paid attention to that clever gal who wrote about the Gartner prediction that
the number of active blogs would peak in 2007. We’ve noticed some advertising blogs have been slowing down. AdJab has full-on retired to Mexico.
And where did Adbumb run off to? And what about the general population and
those naughty big corporations? Emarketer
says that "despite being the hot marketing term of the
moment, blogs are read by fewer only 14% of US Internet users. Not
surprisingly, over 90% of both SMBs and large enterprises still do not blog." Hmm.
Political
Travesties
When
I got started on this whole blogging business, I was duly warned that once you
write something on the Internet, it is there for-eh-ver. Unlike print publications,
that get at least a sideways glance from a somewhat-discerning eye, blogs are
just thrown out there (two sheets?) to the wind and open to anyone who can read
and has Internet access, which last time I checked, was quite a number of
people. Usually, you can get away with saying anything you want, but as Amanda
Marcotte and Melissa McEwan found
out this past week, that’s not necessarily true. Should Edwards have fired them? Is the
campaign botched for good? As
McEwan says in her resignation letter, “This is a win for no one.”
But
there’s no stopping the Democrats. Next on the political bandwagon:
user-generated politics. Donna Bogatin of ZDNet tells us that both
Barack and Hillary have incorporated the ever-popular “You” into their
presidential campaigns through Web 2.0 participatory media like online chats,
video, political networks, and, our favorite – blogs.
Flog it, Baby
No whipping; fake bloggers are the new lime green. Though, in a day and age where Kraft can call
something guacamole dip that is only 2% real avocado – the rest being modified
corn starch, food coloring, and coconut and soybean oils -
we probably shouldn’t be so sure about what is fake and what is real. But the
U.K, which is technologically ahead of us in many ways, has
gone ahead and made it a crime to “falsely represent oneself as a consumer”, The
Times reports. All those who do will be named
and shamed, which in British culture means they rip off your curly white
wig and hurl soggy Earl Grey teabags on you in the town square. All while
shouting indignantly, “Fake-ah! Fake-ah!”
We wish.
