Archive for September, 2008
Technorati’s 2008 Report on the Blogosphere–‘blogs are here to stay’
My last post at Library Garden was all about blogs attracting comments, and I continue to get comments and feedback about it. This morning’s post continues to highlight blogs, this time, in general and in detail.
For the last few years, whenever I was explaining blogs to library and school administrators, especially regarding their impact and trends, the report(s)/site(s) I would demo first were the “State of the Blogosphere” reports from Technorati. I was and continue to be impressed with the amount of valuable material Technorati has collected about the blogosphere on its site, but since November last year, I have been wondering if they would continue with their “State of…” reports. In fact, I finally removed a slide from a Web 2.0 intro presentation linking to the latest one from them, an April 2007 report, since the data was just too far out of date now.
Well, I was very pleasantly surprised to hear about a new full Technorati report on the horizon from Greg Jarboe’s post at SearchEngineWatch.com (one of my favorite places to stay-up-to-date on everything Web-related) late yesterday afternoon, and I look very much forward to reading and sharing the entire report.
Read highlights [from the post by Greg Jarboe at SearchEngineWatch], such as this:
Blogs are now a pervasive part of our daily lives. While there have been a number of studies conducted that tried to understanding the size of the Blogosphere — both in terms of the number of blogs and blog readership — all of these studies agree that blogs are now a global phenomenon that is “mainstream.”
Technorati cites the numbers from three of the studies, which vary in the details but generally agree that “blogs are here to stay.”
As of this morning, two of the five segments of the report, to be “released in five consecutive daily segments” are available, and this year’s report provides a lot of data thus far and it surveys many bloggers. While you wait for segments 3-5 of the full, detailed report, get started by reading the “Introduction,” Segment/Day 1: “Who are the Bloggers?,” and Segment/Day 2: “The What and Why of Blogging” over at Technorati. Do take the time to visit, because if you have any interest in the latest impact and trends associated with blogs, you will be educated and impressed with the detail of their latest report–I certainly was!
-Robert Lackie
Technorati Tags: blogs, blog report, blogger surveys, technorati, Library Garden
Banned Books
Time Magazine has written a feature article on John McCain’s Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin. Below is a paragraph from the article that discusses her relationship to the public library while Mayor of Wasilla Alaska:
“Stein says that as mayor, Palin continued to inject religious beliefs into her policy at times. “She asked the library how she could go about banning books,” he says, because some voters thought they had inappropriate language in them. “The librarian was aghast.” The librarian, Mary Ellen Baker, couldn’t be reached for comment, but news reports from the time show that Palin had threatened to fire her for not giving “full support” to the mayor. “
The full article can be found here.
What do you think? At what level should government be involved in library decisions and policy (i.e. we get our funding from them but does that mean they can tell us how to spend it)?
Library Garden 
Blogs that Attract Comments: Are You in the Active ‘1%’ ? Do You Want to Be?
The information above is only a very small part taken from a very engaging and interesting, and I think, on-target article by Lindy Dreyer and Madie Grant, entitled “Why Doesn’t Anyone Comment on Your Blog?” in the Associations Now Sept. 2008 publication. Many tips on writing style and basic content for blogs, all encouraging blog comments, are provided, with information on the types of blog posts and styles of blogs adapted from an excellent SlideShare presentation from Rohit Bhargava and Jesse Thomas also worth viewing: “25 Basic Styles of Blogging: And When to Use Each One.” Apparently, Bhargava put this up on SlideShare some time ago, since it has “55810 views 35 comments 606 favorites 334 embeds,” but I found it very pertinent still.
Back to the Association Now article–the authors provide 5 strategies to draw in blog readers and commenters, and various tips for what to do and what not to do to keep them coming back, including possibly changing “subscribe” with “get updates” and “trackback” with “blogs that link to this post,” among others.
Whether you are new to blogging or not, do take the time to read this article and its recommended links, not to mention the article’s comments and the bibliography provided at the SocialFish post (along with the SlideShare presentation mentioned above, found again at the bottom of the bibliography).
Although written to and for associations and organizations to help get the conversations going on their blogs, the advice and tips provided here are extremely pertinent for individuals as well. I am always attempting to give practical advice on blogging, but this is one of the best articles on attracting readers and commenters that I have read this year. I especially liked their detailed information about the five qualities common to many blogs with a vocal audience (i.e., strategies). I hope you enjoy learning from this, as well, and that you share it with other bloggers.
-Robert Lackie
Technorati Tags: blogging tips, blog comments, online communities, social media, Library Garden
September 16, 2008 at 9:09 am Robert J. Lackie 16 comments