Years and years ago I worked with the team that produced a very slick little downloadable application called Gator. Gator would watch what Web sites you visited and pop up contextually relevant adverts and coupons in its own window, along with easy form auto-fill and a digital “wallet” for payment information. Gator was vilified by the online community and paraded about as the ultimate triumph of commerce over information, of the evils of capitalism crushing the eager egalitarianism of the mythical “open network”.

Gator, the company, still exists today, and still garners controversy, albeit under its new moniker of Claria Corporation and Gator, the application, has spawned two progeny, Gator Wallet and Dash Bar.

Today my colleagues at LinkedIn told me about a new system, LinkedIn JobsInsider, and rather to my surprise it’s another standalone app that keeps track of where you surf and pops up useful information based on what you’re viewing in your Web browser.

At this point in the evolution of the Web, though, we don’t even think about these tracking applications. The Alexa toolbar, the Google toolbar, the Yahoo toolbar, etc. etc., all dutifully track where you go and report back that information to a central server, and far from people being upset by that violation of privacy, most are eager to download and install one or more of these toolbars on their computer.

LinkedIn JobsInsider is actually quite brilliant and worth a quick explanation, before I go back to the main theme here of software that tracks your surfing. I asked Konstantin Guericke about this new system and here’s his explanation, a day in advance of their demo at Web 2.0 in New York:

“The LinkedIn JobsInsider works with Monster, CareerBuilder, HotJobs, Craigslist and Dice. We noticed that those of our users who are currently looking for a position (between 5-10% of our membership) tended to flip back and forth between LinkedIn and these job boards. They would look for jobs on the major jobs destination sites, but then didn’t bother to apply there since the chances of landing a job without a referral are about as high as a chimp writing the next great American novel. Well, maybe a bit better, but the reality is that it’s really helpful to speak with people at the companies where you are applying, and you are unlikely to find people willing to help you if you just Google them.

“However, when you have the LinkedIn JobsInsider installed (and it takes no screen real estate unless you are on a job board) and look at a job, then it automatically fires off a search to find out if any of your contacts know people at the company that is posting the job.

“Even better, it narrows the results down to those people working at the location where the job is posted and who have indicated they are willing to help people land jobs at their company. With any luck, the person you contact will not only provide you with some good insights into the company’s culture, prospects and hiring process, but also pass on your resume to the hiring manager.”

I think that’s a brilliant intersection of professional online networking and the ingredients that produce a sucessful job search and would like to congratulate LinkedIn on this innovation.

But isn’t it doing the same basic thing that Gator did all those years ago? Isn’t it yet another application that watches what we’re doing, keeps track of the sites we visit and what we view on those sites, then does “something useful” on our behalf?

If I visit a site with the Google toolbar installed, I can instantly see its Google PageRank, a rough but interesting indicator of the relative importance of the site on the Internet. Another toolbar includes Alexa ranking numbers, offering a similar insight and letting me distinguish popular sites from new, unpopular sites.

So what exactly is still upsetting to the people who don’t like Claria’s tracking application? What differentiates a useful, valuable application like LinkedIn JobsInsider from a heinous piece of malware like a spyware application?

Perhaps it’s all in the definition of “something useful” in my earlier comment, after all. Surely something useful is measured on a continuum that inevitably varies for different people. Some are happy to report back information in return for discount codes, coupons, and highly targeted advertising that helps them find the best bargains possible, while others hate the very idea and wouldn’t install and enable a third-party toolbar if you paid them.

Yet in a lot of ways, it was the “reporting back to the mother ship” nature of Gator that caused so much controversy when it first appeared on the scene, a characteristic that is so pervasive now that we are blasé about it and don’t even worry that various companies have the (theoretical, at least) ability to track our every mouse click.

After all these years of Web evolution, after the breathless hype about combining existing technologies in new ways that goes by the moniker of “Web 2.0”, everyone’s just starting to get what I believe the Gator folk figured out a long time ago: tracking what sites I visit and utilizing that data in real time enhances my experience.

LinkedIn had another announcement at the Web 2.0 conference too, focused on a new partnership with America Online. Please read Alex de Carvalho’s cogent analysis for more details.

When is a blog not a blog?

When it’s a faux blog. Recently, two (or more) marketing hacks from Hollywood decided to cash in on the buzz on blogs to manufacture blogs around new releases. Perhaps they created these blogs to add "authenticity" to the campaign.

In other words, if you can’t be sincere, perhaps you can fake it.

Exhibit A: A History of Violence Blog by David Cronenberg
As my friend Josh Hallett describes it, this is more of a journal than a blog. There’s no comments, no RSS, no trackback, no posting dates.

And
even though it purports to be from the mind of Cronenberg, the writing
is in the third person. Only the video clips are "from his mind." (And
he comes across as surprising mundane for someone who has directed The Fly, Scanners, and Crash. But I digress.)

Is it interesting? If you find David Cronenberg interesting, perhaps. If you like watching videos of him getting into a Porsche, perhaps. But I don’t think it’s a real blog.

The communication here is all one-way; there’s no interactivity, no way for a community to grow around this "blog." This is not a blog, but rather a photo of a blog. It also seems to me to be a missed opportunity.

Exhibit B: Miles’ Blog (Surface)
This
is a "blog" for a new show on NBC called "Surface" that I have to admit
I haven’t seen. It’s written from the perspective of Miles, apparently
a pre-pubescent character who–from what I can tell–is documenting the
care and feeding of Nim, a sea creature he’s raising.

I’m torn
on this. On one hand I see an interesting way to market a show by
having material about the show available outside the confines of a TV
set or a program schedule. It would be great to see updates during the
week that document things that haven’t been on the show, but affect or
are referenced by later events within the show. It would make this blog
(and marketing campaign) truly viral.

On the other hand, this
"blog" is completely lacking in authenticity. (No comments, trackbacks,
or RSS, either.) The writing comes across as a Harvard grad trying to
write like a over-educated 15-year old, not like the character from the
picture. (Again, having not watched the show, perhaps this character
has graduated from Harvard with classmate Doogie Howser, M.D.)

If you are going to do a character blog, why not allow at least moderated comments and trackbacks?
Maybe you could include comments from fans who are also "in character."
It would give an opportunity for a community to build around this
fledgling show, and to develop a passionate, core audience.

Ultimately, the question becomes "what is a blog?"
Is it posts that include trackbacks, comments, and RSS? Does it include
linking to other blogs? Can it be written by a character, or does it
have to be written by a real person, by that person?

Hollywood
appears to be searching for ways to leverage the popularity of blogs
into their marketing campaign. As a "business blogger" myself, I can’t
fault them for that. However, can the people who bring you sound
stages, CGI and canned laughter create an authentic blogging experience?

Feedburner has quickly become many a bloggers tool of choice for easily amping up the power of the blog’s feed.

Two recent additions to the Feedburner toolbox suggest they don’t plan to sit around and watch the blog world go by.

PingShot allows publishers who burn their feed through Feedburner to automatically ping a growing number of RSS and blog directories every time they post.

FeedBlitz allows publishers to add email to the ways readers can subscribe. With only 4-6% of surfers out there really taping into RSS at the moment, email is still a great way to communicate.

Both of these new services integrate smoothly into the Feedburner interface and tracking mechanism.

Yea, I think this qualifies as big news. AOL is purchasing Weblogs, Inc. for a cool $20 million (or is it $30 million?) Yea, it’s big news. So big in fact it falls in the OMG! category. Rafat Ali says this is perhaps the first pure content-related company being bought out in the blog/Web 2.0 space…or at least of this scale. The story is spreading like wildfire across the blogosphere already says Ali. It’s true. Check out Technorati.

I used to blog for WIN. If Calacanis splits his bounty with his bloggers, I’m sure I’m going to wish I still did. (Maybe he’ll grandfather me in. Nah, probably not.)

Glam.com, a blog network devoted to fashion was supposed to have launched today, according to an ClickZ. The company combines "magazine-style independent editorial content with click-to-buy e-commerce functionality, courting fashion-oriented advertisers." The network, produced by Glam Media, has signed up seven blog sites so far, and is looking for more.

I visited the site, which requires registration (yuck!), and didn’t any evidence of the network. I didn’t register though, and maybe that’s a must do. Anyway, since I’m such a fashion buff, I’m sure it’s something I’ll keep an eye out for.

Blog Moguls…now that’s a term you don’t hear everyday. Blogging already has moguls? It’s an article on ClickZ about, no, not Jason Calacanis and Nick Denton (Until I read the article they were the only two blog moguls I knew of.) These are John Batelle and "Pud" Kaplan and they’re blazing new trails in blogvertising with their respective Federated Media Publishing and Adbrite.

Now, thanks to Audi, blog advertising has become respectable. Anyway, it’s worth a read. (Audi used BlogAds, btw, so how come Henry Copeland hasn’t been crowned with "mogul" status yet?!)

Lately, I’ve been focusing on the effect blogs have on business in terms of ROI (affecting the bottom-line), particularly those used for marketing purposes. To date, I’ve found no studies that quantify such data, just some occasional mentions like that of the Audi blog success, but that was more blogvertising. I’m interested in companies that actually use blogs as marcom tools. Anybody know if such a study exists?

Quite a number of blogging books are being written today. (Talk about stating the obivous.) Debbie Weil is writing one on corporate blogging. Jeremy Wright’s new book, Blog Marketing, will soon hit the shelves. Scoble and Israel’s Naked Conversations is scheduled for release in January. Rick Bruner ought to write one as should Steve Rubel. Heck, even I’ve been approached by a publisher to write one, not that I have anything to say that hasn’t already been said.

However, if you buy only one blogging book this year, pick up a copy of Blog!, by David Kline and Dan Burstein. If ever there was a book that presented a "meta" view of blogging past, present, and future this is it.

I’ve just started reading it, and the book’s introduction is worth the price. Take, for example, this paragraph…

The results of this unusual moment in time may be nothing short of a new paradigm for modern human communication, conversation, argument, and collaborative knowlege creation. Blogging represents one important wave that is contributing to restoring the lost voice of the ordinary citizen in our culture.

Damn, that’s good!

The book is over 400 pages, so it’s going to take me a while to finish it at the snail’s pace by which I usually read. It’s not the quantity, but the quality, and I intend to savor every page.

While you’re at it, check out David Kline’s blog Blog Revolt.

Welcome to the interesting world of business blogging, BSmith4664. I’ve had a chance to read your first posting to the Quickbooks Team Blog, entitled View from the General Manager and would like to offer up a few thoughts and pointers…

First off, whether you’re an executive or using a spade in the trenches, I do think that it’s quite helpful to tell us who you are. “BSmith4664” sounds a lot more like a Hotmail or AOL address than the General Manager of the Quickbooks team, doesn’t it? I realize that 60 seconds with Google reveals that you’re “Brad Smith” and that Intuit’s CEO Steve Bennett has said “We’ve been searching externally for a while and determined that Brad Smith is the best person – inside or outside Intuit – for the QuickBooks leadership role. He’s proven his ability to lead a team to win decisively in an intensely competitive environment.”

Very impressive. But why make me do the work?

A good metaphor for business blogging might well be having five minutes in front of a professional networking group or conference roundtable. Certainly your name, your title, your responsibilities, some comment that indicates you’re paying attention to the discussion and the interaction style that’s become the norm in the group, and so on. Bonus points for something amusing about yourself.

Since we aren’t in the same room, however, I’d really like to see a picture of you here, as part of your introduction, Brad. It really further helps personalize the weblog and helps us establish a foundation of trust for our future discussions. You can see my picture on this page, for example. Now you know what I look like. Something to think about.

Second, I like Quickbooks and your company. I like that you’ve quite successfully held off many competitive threats in the last decade, even from the 800 pound gorilla. You’ve got the industry leading product and produce something that thousands of business people use every day. So where’s the pizzaz, the visual design, the immediate visual feedback that you’re a leader in this marketspace? Surely your team could shanghai a graphic designer from elsewhere in the firm to help make your weblog more visually interesting?

In fact, there’s danger in having it be too bland: it doesn’t give me any confidence that you really are the Quickbooks team and so you lose out on the potential credibility boost that can’t but help you with your blogging mission.

Another point: you have a long, thoughtful article, but you aren’t offering me any visual cues to help navigate the material. You’ll do much better to have a few hyperlinks to other Web sites and even use bold and italics for some visual variety. I realize that there’s a niggling anxiety about pointing to a third-party Web site that isn’t vetted by legal, but if you’re going to be a business blogger, you need to take the plunge and point to other sites. You can always sneak in a disclaimer if you feel you must, but it’s widely accepted that someone pointing to another site doesn’t imply that they’re related in any manner.

Generously linking to other sites is a very blog-friendly philosophy too, and linking to other bloggers will frequently cause them to link back to you and perhaps even help you gain visibility in your target community. It’s certainly a ‘best practice’ for business blogging.

I also have a strong preference for long weblog articles, but expect that some people will shortly be complaining that frequent, short entries, even as short as a sentence or two, are the preferred style for the blogosphere. Ptoi on that. Write what you feel most comfortable writing!

Finally, I’m intrigued by your comment about the upcoming QuickBooks 2006 release. Trickling out feature lists, screen shots, and general tales of beta testing feedback and user stories (and testimonials) would be a splendid use of this weblog, and could also help increase product visibility further.

Again, welcome to the world of business blogging, Brad. Stay in touch.

Today Business Week’s Blogspotting Blog mentioned that Yahoo’s director of tech development, Bradley Horowitz has said Yahoo will be launching some sort of Blog or RSS search early next week.

Back in July Steve Rubel posted about Yahoo testing RSS search and ZDNet posted in August that Yahoo was testing blog search in Korea.

The Google Blog Search feature
recently released has had mixed reviews which means an opportunity for
Yahoo to gain a leg up if indeed it’s RSS or Blog search tool really
performs.