Whatever your political persuasion — right, left, or center — the blogosphere is a great place for bloggers to share their political views and make plenty of friends and enemies. We try to follow the conservative, liberal, and everything in between of politics and political blogs/blogging — but only when it intersects with business blogging.
Have a read below of our latest entries on politics and political blogging…
Adam Kalsey’s firm specializes in web site development and online marketing. He is also the moderator of Marketing Vox’s Publishing forum.
Marketing Vox (which I co-founded, I mention both for bragging rights and full disclosure) produces this email discussion list / blog about online publishing. Blogging, and particularly business-related blogging, is a major theme of the forum. I used to be the moderator of this forum for a few weeks, anyway, but it got to be too much work, so it is now capably moderated by Adam Kalsey.
I had the pleasure of sharing a car ride with Judith from Boston to NY after BloggerCon II and got to hear a lot about her remarkable professional background: an impressive mix of executive experience at marketing, operations, technology and more (she programs in something like 8 or more languages, after having been sent to programming classes by the IT department of a F500 company when she worked as a marketer constantly pushing the IT department to outdo themselves with special programming requests).
These days, she’s a high-priced (I’d assume) consultant focused on knowlege and social networking, and other corporate collaboration issues. She also blogs at socialsoftware.weblogsinc.com.
Amy Gahran is a writer, editor, trainer and speaker. One of her recent posts (as of this writing) is “More Corporate Blogging Resources,” each of which I’ll be sure to scrape as individual entries in this blog as soon as I have time.
Ross Mayfield is CEO of Socialtext, what I would call knowledge management software, but he’s told me should be called “enterprise social software.” Anyway, Ross is a leading thinker in the space of social software and people-powered publishing (such as wikis, business blogging, social networks). In addition to his personal blog (linked in the headline of this entry), which itself tends to be more about business than his personal life, he also blogs on Social Text’s site as well as part of a great group blog about social software called Many2Many on Corante.
BzzAgent is a really interesting marketing agency that has put together a network of more than 25,000 BzzAgents, orginary people who sign up at the site because they like to be in on the “next big thing” in the world of consumer products. The agency’s clients include Penguin Books, Kellogg’s cereal, Monster.com, Estee Lauder, Lee Jeans and others. When the agency has a campaign, it sends out products to hundreds of its BzzAgents, who are then encouraged to recommend the products to their friends, provided they like the products. The agency provides the agents how to be effective brand evangelists? What’s in it for the agents? Mainly just free product samples and bragging rights to be the first to know of hot new products. But that is apparently motivation enough for thousands of participants.
Anyway, the agency also has a fairly active blog since November, 2003, charting the company’s growth, letting it communicate with its agents and share agent’s ideas with the rest.
Thanks to Todd S. for the link.
A new blog (as of this posting) by British consultants Wayne Robinson and Tim Duckett. The About Us reads:
We run a marketing and technology consulting business that helps smaller companies in the UK. A lot of our work is now centring on using technology to reduce information problems. So this blog is designed to share our knowledge and first hand experience.
A criticism I have of this blog, other than its somewhat clunky layout (e.g., the page is too wide for my laptop screen and I hate blue link borders around images, but whatever [UPDATE: they’ve since fixed that, but the CSS is still acting a bit funky for me]), is that the above About Us statement claims “we run a marketing and technology consulting business,” but there’s no information about that company anywhere on the site that I can see. The consultants link to short profiles of themselves, and I gather that is the “business,” but it’s not even clear what the business is called (the URL is Infosential.com, but the blog seems to be titled “Cutting Through”), but I’m nitpicking. The content seems worthwhile (particularly since they already linked to my blog).
A serious film fan site for independent film lovers, updated daily for nearly a year as of this posting, from GreenCine, “the #1 DVD Rental Site for the Alternative Scene: For People Who Like to Watch.” Written mostly by David Hudson, with some outside contributions
Thanks for the link from Todd S.
Ray Ozzie is a well-respected commentator in the tech space on his blog, while his day job is running Groove Networks, “virtual office software that allows teams of people to work together securely over a network as if they were in the same physical location.”
Microsoft is certainly a bastion of innovation, but over the years it has demonstrated an inclination towards secrecy bordering on paranoia. It is therefore somewhat surprising that Microsoft has been so welcoming of the whole blog phenomenon. Certainly hundreds, if not thousands, of Microsoft employees maintain blogs, among the most high-profile of which are Robert Scoble’s and Channel 9. In addition, however, Microsoft links to more than 100 blogs (see link in the headline above) by employees about products and programming topics.
Macromedia, the software firm that makes a range of web and multimedia authoring tools, has been a pioneer in letting its knowledgable inner circle of product architects communicate directly with customers through a series of weblogs. These blogs, many of which both note that they represent the private opinions of their authors and carry the Macromedia company logo (go figure), touch of a range of topics, including the authors comments on general technology trends, as well as comments specific to Macromedia products. The company’s blogs include these:
Blog from outerspace. No kidding. Expedition 7 NASA ISS Science Officer Ed Lu actually blog from the International Space Station. He has since completed his mission.
A wacky look at the world of taxes from Kerry M. Kerstetter, CPA, who uses his rather irrevent blog (dispelling once and for all the stereotype of uptight, humorless tax consultants) to “help capitalists, investors & small business owners win the tax game.”
Dan Bricklin is currently president of Software Garden, a small software applications developer. Bricklin is best known for codeveloping VisiCalc, the first electronic spreadsheet application. Until early 2004, Mr. Bricklin served as CTO of Interland, Inc., after it acquired his previous company, Trellix Corporation, maker of enterprise publishing software. As a blogger, Bricklin has distinguished himself as one of the leading strategic thinkers in the technology sector.
Israel-based flower wholeseller. The business owner is cousin to Dan Bricklin, a well-known blogger and CEO of Software Garden, a software applications developer. He tells me, as we sat next to each other at the BloggerCon II conference, that the blog is really helping drive business for this company.
Infrequently updated blog for an education association:
Working towards the revitalization of American education in the 21st century by reorganizing educators in a professional and entrepreneurial association.
Frequently updated blog that’s been around for more than a year as of this post. Here’s from the organization’s about Us page:
The mission of the International Association for Learning Alternatives is to lead, promote and support learning alternatives and choice options.
This mission signals our interest in seeing that parents and students have choices of educational programs to meet their needs, interests, learning styles and intelligences. We believe that one-size education program does not fit everyone and that education is best served by having choices for all.
Curiously, the blog publishing company Gawker Media does not have its own web site, so we link here to the personal blog of its CEO and founder, Nick Denton, who blogs there mostly about his business, anymore. A former staff reporter for the Financial Times and later founder of headline syndication service Moreover and co-founder of the social networking service First Tuesday, Denton was a pioneer in gambling that blogs could become a viable commercial publishing medium. To date, he has contracted freelance writers to write four successful blogs:
UPDATE: Since this original post, Gawker Media has released Defamer, an LA gossip blog.
Denton has announced plans for more blogs on various topics including interior design and travel. He says he draws his inspiration for topics for the companys’ blogs according to popularity of search topics on Google.
I have counseled Gawker Media periodically, primarily about advertising revenue strategies.
In March this year, Denton’s strongest rival among commercial blog publishers, Weblogs, Inc‘s Jason Calacanis, poached the original writer of Gizmodo, Pete Rojas, and launched a knock-off site, Engadget. After a month (as of this posting), a review of both sites on Alexa, suggests that Gizmodo has maintained its audience’s loyalty and Engadget has some catching up to do.
In April, Denton also launched Kinja, a kind of blog portal designed to make blog surfing easier for the masses.
Weblogs, Inc., is a blog publishing venture founded in 2003 by Jason Calacanis, founder of Silicon Alley Reporter, a popular newsletter in the NY technology venture capital market. Calacanis also maintains his own blog on the system.
Presently, Weblog Inc’s blogs are mostly focused on business sectors, including the following titles:
Weblogs, Inc. partners with bloggers to create advertising-supported nano-publishing sites. The business posts a Corporate Philosphy which reads in part:
Weblogs, Inc. is dedicated to creating trade Weblogs (a.k.a. “blogs”) across niche industries in which user participation is an essential component of the resulting product.
. . .
Traditional journalism is, in a word, broken.
The jury is out on whether or not Weblogs, Inc. will turn blogs into a real media business, but we’re eager to find out. Rumor has it that multimillionaire entrepreneur and NBA Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban has recently invested in Weblogs, Inc. Cuban also has a blog on Weblogs, Inc.
(UPDATE: Since first writing this, I spoke with Calacanis and asked him about the investment, and he was deliberately vague in answering, in one breath denying it and then suggesting might be true. I honestly don’t know what to think.)
Nick Denton’s Gawker Media is Weblogs, Inc’s closest competition as an out-and-out weblog publishing company.
Mark Cuban, multi-millionaire entrepreneur and colorful owner of the Dallas Mavericks NBA team, has taken to blogging quite enthusiastically with this site that launched in March, 2004. From his “About Mark Cuban” page:
Prior to his purchase of the Mavericks, Cuban co-founded Broadcast.com, the leading provider of multimedia and streaming on the Internet, in 1995, selling it to Yahoo! in July of 1999. Before Broadcast.com, Cuban co-founded MicroSolutions, a leading National Systems Integrator, in 1983, and later sold it to CompuServe.
So far, a month into the blog’s life, he’s writing mostly about NBA issues and matters concerning his upcoming ABC reality show, “The Benefactor,” in which he is to give away $1,000,000 to some lucky contestant.
This blog is a member of Jason Calacanis’s Weblogs, Inc. commercial blog publishing company. Rumor on the street is that Cuban may have put some serious funding into Weblogs, Inc. — a rumor we’ll follow up on here to see whether or not it pans out.
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Business Blog Consulting is a site devoted to demonstrating how effective weblogs can be for communicating with customers and marketing to new customer prospects. You will find here lots of examples of business and corporate blogs, as well as resources to help you learn more about the topic.
Looking for a company that offers consulting on corporate and business blogging, including design, development and strategy? Consider Netconcepts.
Other stuff? Email us.
Toby Bloomberg of Diva Marketing
Andy Bourland of Bourland.com
Rich Brooks of Flyte
Paul Chaney of Blogging Systems Group
Sally Falkow of Expansion Plus
Josh Hallett of Hyku
Tris Hussey of Larix Consulting
Lee Odden of TopRank
Stephan Spencer of Netconcepts
Dave Taylor of Intuitive Life for Business
Jim Turner of One by One Media
Dana VanDen Heuvel of BlogSavant
Des Walsh of Thinking Home Business
Debbie Weil of WordBiz and BlogWrite
Jeremy Wright of Ensight
Rick E. Bruner is co-author and principal analyst on this report
Our own contributor Jeremy Wright is the author of this book
"The Corporate Blogging Book: Absolutely Everything You Need to Know to Get It Right" with a foreword by GM's Bob Lutz..and the rest by Debbie Weil.
Produced by contributor to this site Debbie Weil. Rick E. Bruner is one of the featured experts in this report
This report is written by contributor to this site BL Ochman
I guess this was inevitable
