JotSpot, one of the leaders in the Wiki space, was sold to Google. This was covered on a wide variety of blogs, including Battelle’s SearchBlog, Scobleizer, Mashable, TechCrunch, and A VC. I was actually very surprised to hear this one- having watched the video on the ScobleShow where Joe Kraus talked a bit about his vision of creating “do-it-yourself” applications. Having founded Excite, I was guessing Joe wanted to build JotSpot into something large himself- but I guess the funding & possibility of almost limitless resources proved tough to pass-up. Here’s an interesting podcast for you to listen to. Congratulations to the JotSpot team nonetheless!

I posted a summary of last week’s conference on the Zillow Blog today- so take a look if you’re STILL wanting more BBS coverage!

I think this is the last of my coverage of the event for awhile- I’ll let my mind wander to other subjects for awhile.

I just came across this post over at Compression, which pulls a lot of great points made during Robert & Maryam’s presentation at the Blog Business Summit last week. Two interesting points of interest (among the many)-

• Maryam- There are two kinds of bloggers: bloggers who want to change things, and bloggers who want to talk about their lives.
• Robert- A lot of corporate types are skittish about engaging others. Participate in the conversation that’s going on at other blogs. Keep your integrity. You are what you appear to be. Disclosure helps you keep your integrity. You present yourself to your readers as you are. Don’t try to hide who you are. If you are not what you appear to be, people will find you out.

So- I’ve had a couple days to think about everything that was covered at the Blog Business Summit. Here’s a couple major takeaways from my perspective:

1. Companies need to come to the realization that they can not control their brand- only influence it. That said, companies need to try to maximize their influence. This goes along with the point you always hear- “Engaging in the conversation.” It’s hard to influence without engaging.
2. John Battelle’s keynote was great! Relating to all the talk about user generated content, he mentioned that “If you can figure out how to get your customers to help you build your business, you’re in.” John also talked about how companies need to understand the intent of the end user if they intend to produce content. Much of the reason that search is so powerful is that it all but eliminates waste & the users intent is (relatively) clear– customers are looking for something specific when they type words into a search engine, which makes placing a relevant advertisement against those keywords a good possibility.
3. Disclosure. When talking blogging, this subject inevitably comes up. I think the vast majority of speakers, except Jason Calacanis, don’t mind the PayPerPost model as long as there is full disclosure. Personally, I think everyone should disclose when they are being paid to post a message.
4. Engagement- Just look at Robert Scoble’s blog and you’ll notice what a vibrant discussion he has going on his blog. He gets comments on about every single post, which makes his audience much more valuable because people are paying attention to everything. They are THERE to be part of a discussion- not listen to someone cramming their ideas down their throat (there are some bloggers I’ve seen that do this). I wish I could say traditional marketing is all but over, but I don’t think it is entirely irrelevant (yet). But great word of mouth, which is more powerful than advertising will ever be, is far and away the most trusted source of information. Blogs are the 21st version of word of mouth because they have the potential to be so engaging.
5. SEO (search engine optimization)- There were a lot of amazingly smart people at the event that had very creative ways of monetizing their blogs. I’m simply amazed that it’s possible to draw so much monthly traffic to a blog. And Google loves blogs due to the focus on fresh, original content and links.
6. Podcasting and Video is up and coming. Those in the video game now have a huge early mover advantage- the ScobleShow is in a great position in my mind.
7. PASSION- good bloggers are passionate about what they blog about. This is utterly apparent. If you don’t have an opinion about lots of different issues (and want to voice them), you probably won’t be a good blogger. Blogging is not for everyone. I actually did relate to Jason Calacanis when he said, “It’s (the blogosphere) not broken. You suck. How well you do in the blogosphere is up to YOU. No one else.” If you don’t have good traffic to your blog, don’t complain. Do something about it- success in blogging really is all up to YOU. Don’t make excuses why your blog doesn’t get traffic.

Honestly, I think I’m on blog business summit overload- all I’ve done the past week or so is think about blogging- sorry to not have a more insightful post (i’m disappointed with myself on this one but thought I’d post it anyway). Here’s a good summary of the event if you’re interested in reading more. Teresa at Blog Business Summit has started to post session slides from speakers that have e-mailed them already- check the BBS blog.

There’s been some conversation/debate recently about the lack of Apple blogs in the blogosphere, which got me thinking…

Here’s an idea that I would love to see Apple act on (I’m not hopeful that they will though)-

• Create a blog focusing on the Mac vs PC debate that is written by the Mac representative (guy on the right below) from the commercials

In my opinion, Apple has done a superb job with their “Get a Mac” commercials- partly because they have put a “face” on the debate. I don’t know who the represents the Mac in the commercials, but I now have a face to picture whenever I think of a Mac. However- I think extending the concept into a conversation in the blogosphere would be even more powerful. Why not have this conversation on a blog written by the Mac representative in the commercials? Here’s another conversation occurring on Netscape rather than Apple.

For instance, I would love answers to questions such as what’s his real name, is he a real Apple employee, what does he do at Apple? A blog would be a great way to move the conversation to a place where Apple has a voice in the debate(assuming he is actually an employee & not some hired actor). People relate with individual voices better than they can relate to institutional voices. I know I would participate in the debate if there was a blog where an individual spoke to the Mac vs PC debate. Set him up with a blog, have one of Apple’s content writers help him refine the posts, and make his voice apparent!

This strongly relates to a point that was made in Ben Edwards presentation on Friday at BBS- it’s all about letting go of control. Corporations cannot control their brand, only influence it.

That’s just my opinion- anyone else think the idea would work??

John Battelle, who runs Federated Media Publishing and is enamored with blogs (he runs SearchBlog), search, and media, gave a Superb keynote presentation. My notes are below-

I thought it was interesting that Battelle mentioned that Web 2.0 was partly due to the notion that people started creating companies based on passion rather than commerce (amazing what happens when passion becomes apparent in your job!).

He talked a bit about being in the third wave of tech and culture. Digitize the back-office, digitize the front-office, and now digitizing customers. The command line is now a common language (real words typed into a search box) rather than a programming language such as DOS in the 1980′s.

Web 2.0 principles

• the web is a platform
• the architecture of participation – also known as user content or collective intelligence
• lightweight business models
• innovation in assembly
• the long tail – economic possibilities that didn’t exist before
• SEARCH RULES – driver of web 2.0 businesses, a turning point in marketing, and a new reality for all forms of traditional business

Other notes of interest to me-

• It’s amazing to think about how far customer acquisition costs have fallen. Think about intent over content.
• Marketing has become a dialogue.
• Where did someone come from?
• Content is once again king, and the landing page is queen
• Conversation over dictation
• New tools, new research/planning, new thinking about media buying, new (and highly iterative) creative, from the approach to the payoff after the “envelope opening” moment
• new forms of ROI
• Marketing into media into conversation

Federated Media Stats:

• 100 sites
• 750 mm ad impression/month
• sales force of 15
• engineering staff of 4
• author services staff of 4
• nearly 1500 active advertisers

Robert Scoble asked the question, “If you were a entrepreneur trying to start a blog and want to be a FM client, what type of blog would you start?” The short answer is “a blog with a great voice.”

What technology is cool and upcoming in his mind? Two come to his mind. 1) VOX from SixApart and 2) a platform that uses a mash-up approach to create a better search using RSS.

VERY cool demo of the Federated Media platform.

These tips are thanks to Robert & Maryam Scoble during their presentation at Blog Business Summit in Seattle. So you now have no excuses to not creating a compelling and interesting blog. 

1. Blog cause you want to
2. Read other blogs – everyone has a different style to blogging.Pick up a style by reading other blogs and finding out what you relate to and enjoy reading.
3. Pick a niche you can own (and be different)
4. Link to other blogs
5. Admit your mistakes
6. Write good headlines (this is absolutely crucial in my mind)
7. Have a voice – “blogging requires passion and authority. Which leaves out most people”
8. Get outside the blogosphere
9. Market yourself
10. Write well – be creative and different
11. Expose yourself
12. Help other people blog – share what you’ve learned
13. Engage with commenters – don’t be skiddish
14. Keep your integrity – “you are what you appear to be”

Ben does not have a background in technology. The rise of blogging started to effect his view on print journalism about 18 months ago and is now in charge of new media communications at IBM, which has abut 340,000 employees. Here’s some important points-

• Establish social media skills
• New media communications have lower costs and improved effectiveness than existing communications
• Innovation in communications to connect with audiences in different ways is on the rise
• Try to broaden the conversation- get new users to adopt web technology
• “The rise of social media heralds the advent of a new communications paradigm” – a new way of communicating
• Focus on how to USE the technology (not WHAT the technology is)
• The economics drive everything else- blogging, podcasting can be done for practically nothing
• The New Communications Paradigm consists of the difference between mass media and social media in the following areas: publisher, economics, audience, engagement, voice, communications, and marketing
• “People relate to individual voices better than they relate to institutional voices”
• Brands have started to represent symbols of our social aspirations- such as BP’s new branding campaign (beyond petroleum)
• It’s all about having to let go of control
• GAP, SOny, Kodak, and Ford have all lost much of their brand value since the year 2000
• People can create and share brands themselves- with social media, there are self-publishing tools to let all audiences find a relevant communitiy of interest & publish the brand to each other
• We can listen better- employees, shareholders, customers, suppliers, and partners all have something to say. Listen to them (give them tools to do so)!!
• We can create and share the brand with them- corporations can’t control the brand. But they can influence! By inviting people to share the brand with us, we can hope for maximum influence (this is something I REALLY agree with).
• Everything is available for everyone to see – the concept of the “Naked” Corporation

An Agenda for change (how create a strong brand in the age of social media)-

• Don’t segment your audience
• Provide employees the means to tell their own stories about the brand in their own words
• Listen
• Where there is potential for positive outcome, engage to INFLUENCE

Well, sorry I don’t have much to add here, but go check out Guy Kawasaki’s blog post for his insights on the topic.

On a related note- It’s my view that small businesses/start-ups put too much emphasis into getting a patent. In my mind, it’s not a primary key to success. And further– even if I had a patent, but didn’t have a successful business, I would still not take a company to court over it trying to make money. Making money from a patent is not something that appeals to me because it is entirely about the money and it would require a lot of legal work. I’d rather focus my time on building a company than going to court in a patent lawsuit (where’s the challenge in that). My friend and I debate this quite often- so when I have more time, I’ll write a more detailed post about the subject. Where do you stand- does a patent make a company defensible?

Being interested in social networking, this topic immediately caught my attenton.  Here’s some notes-

Tara Hunt talked about Commodity vs Community. Don’t be a commodity.

Community:

• Takes time and patience
• requires introspection, commitment and honesty
• Need to stop outgoing messages & start listening to incoming messages (make yourself available)
• Be open more than you are comfortable
• Put community first- before profits
• There will be chaos
• It’ll be rewarding

Tips to Success:

1. Increase the “win” for your customers
2. Create open communication between customers
3. Be real (I can’t stress this enough)
4. Get a personality
5. Reward your customers
6. Be extraordinary

Betsy Aoki talked a little bit about the QnA community she is building. Let the community speak for itself- take the high road.

Elisa from BlogHer mentioned the following points that I found interesting-

• building community is circular
• It’s not enough to just ask the community what they want
• Make sure to realize that not everyone will love your community- transparency is key (this topic keeps coming up)
• Set the right expectations (super critical) from the outset
• Community will tell you where to go- and go with you
• Strong communities will self-police- take advantage of it (and benefit from the power of the community responding on your behalf)
• Know your audience
• Debate is good (as long as it doesn’t get into personal attacks)- people are engaged and interested. Have guidelines that promotes civil debates.

Once I have time to actually add my own thoughts on the subjects covered at the Blog Business Summit and spend some time putting them into words, I’ll post a summary- maybe not until this weekend though.

This panel discussed the topic of blogger engagement. So everyone seems to be wondering- how do you engage bloggers? Below are some of the points that I thought were important-

What Not to Do?

• Send an e-mail to a blogger without a link that you want them to talk about
• Be shy

What do Do (Your Homework)?

• Use an Aggregator
• Track at least 10-20 blogs. READ THEM!!
• Be authentic & transparent
• Search for information in blog search engines
• Focus on customers for your blog posts
• Build relationships (and let me stress personal relationships) with the influencers in your industry
• Engage others in comments- that’s where the conversation is
• Engage with the young crowd- they will be the future of this country

 Other points that I found interesting-

• Do 23% of bloggers not even know what an RSS feed? That seems stunning to me.
• Bloggers are your collective agents. If you can connect effectively, it’s a gold mine. How can you turn away free market intelligence?? Throw an idea out there.
• I agree with this point Buzz made- the more you write, the better you write.
• The desire to create- people want to create. If you are passionate about something, you can get out there (become known in the blogosphere).
• The conversation is happening anyway in the blogosphere- get out there and engage in it. I think many companies are still fearful of negative conversations occuring.
• Have a nice blend of humanity in your blog posts.

Jasaon Calacanis mentioned that 2003 was when blogging really started to take off even though the concept has been around since about 1995. Why? The internet bubble bursted and many workers in the technology space lost their jobs and had time to play around with blogging. One thing Jason just mentioned is that he came to the realization a few years ago that talented people are no longer going to employable since they can make a great living working on their own with just a blog- minimal costs. That turned out to be why he got into blogging. He mentioned that Mark Cuban is a great investor to work with.

Bloggers are misfits- something interesting is Jason’s point that blogger’s content should not be edited. That’s what makes blogging great and that’s why it works!

One thing I related to is Jason’s point that business is all about finding incredible people and supporting the hell out of them.

Regarding bloggers who are frustrated and not an “A-Lister”, he said that “It’s (the blogosphere) not broken. You suck. How well you do in the blogosphere is up to YOU. No one else.”

Conclusion? Disclose everything as a blogger and do not deceive others. “Do not let anyone get inside the blog post.”

Jason also announced that PodTech and GoDaddy have agreed to pay $100,000 to sponsor Calacanis’ weekly podcast– money will go towards putting 2 kids into a private school in Brooklyn (interesting podcast if you’re interested). He is looking for more sponsors if anyone is interested- check his blog. “Social” media is upcoming. Jason proved to be a very personable speaker during the presentation, which consisted of mostly stories from during his beginnings with Weblogs, Inc and the early web days.

I didn’t get to posting anything yesterday from the Blog Business Summit (long & busy day)- but here’s some brief notes from this morning’s breakfast session. If you want information in addition to this- check out Teresa’s notes over at Blog Business Summit.

Jeremy Pepper of POP! Public Relations, Jeanette Gibson from Cisco, and John Starweather from Microsoft participated in an interesting discussion about what bloggers will be trying to convince their bosses a few years from now.

Jeanette mentioned that consumers are starting to dictate their marketing message. Cisco has realized that they are not the generators of content anywhere- it’s about the community. The “Employee Experience Network” (an internal blog) is one thing Cisco has done to get feedback from employees. How to determine the buzz is a big question among corporate bloggers. She mentioned that it is a blessing that everything is becoming so open and transparent, which I agree with.

Jeremy mentioned that it is all about trying to reach the specific community you are interested in– wherever that community is on the web.

John brought up the fact that phones are going to be the future– there are 2 billion phones shipped each year vs 250 million PC’s (don’t know the exact numbers). That should tell you the magnitude of how the web will be changing. Live video casts from a phone are coming, which will be very cool. Us bloggers should be thinking about small screens and how to format our blogs to work on small screens.

One question that was brought up was- How do you pull in new bloggers and podcasters? Sure, there are the main influencers- but that second and third tier bloggers also have something interesting to say & influence a decent sized community. Are they worth reaching out to? I would say absolutely.

And to answer the question in the title- I would say live videocasts being published directly to vlogs. What do you think?

It’s always fun when Robert Scoble shows up at your office. With the Blog Business Summit conference the next 3 days, it was hectic trying to wrap up loose ends prior to being OOF the rest of the week. Since it is a blogging conference- you can bet I’ll be posting both here and on the Zillow Blog over the next few days. Stay tuned…

This is a great and insightful post that is a must-read whether you blog, plan to blog, or are just curious about blogging. It explains blogging from 6 perspectives: Advertising, Creativity, PR, Strategy, Influence, and Conversation. I HIGHLY reccomend you read the post yourself.

NOTE: This is a work in progress until I remove this note!! If you have any insights into Dell’s blogging, please let me know to make this a complete description of Dell’s blogging policy. Thanks (and don’t be mad it’s not complete yet)!

Corporate Blogging:

Dell (#25 on the Fortune 500 list) launched its corporate blog, called Direct2Dell, on July 5th and got reemed for it! Why? Well, start off with the fact that their 1st 6 posts included videos of products and not much else. Look at the 1st post on their blog- it included a video showcasing the XPS 700 BYO (what the hell is that anyway). They didn’t even do a welcome note to their users.

This post on July 11 was where they started to get things right:

Yesterday was the first official day of Dell’s one2one weblog and already Jeff Jarvis and Steve Rubel were kind enough to tell us what we’re doing wrong. Thanks for the feedback, guys. We’ll keep working to get it right.

Shel Holtz weighed in a bit more constructively. Our intention with this blog is to address issues that are important to our customers. Give us some time and we’ll prove it. Robert Scoble told us to listen, and to link to the folks who don’t like us. First step was to launch Dell’s one2one. Check. We’re excited to be here, and we welcome your ideas.

Four links and counting.

I do like the look and feel of Dell’s blog. The header can be seen above and the sidebar (below) looks clean.

For further details, be sure to check Easton’s great post over at Business Blog Wire. He also followed it up with a round 2 of analysis.

Q & A with Michael Dell Regarding Social Media:

• Podtech has a great video where bloggers were free to ask Michael Dell questions, with many of those questions relating to blogging, at the 2007 CES.
• Jeremiah Owyang posts some interesting insights from the video with a post titled “Roundtable with Michael Dell: Social Media, Reaching out, New Products”

Non Corporate Blogging:

I’m looking for Dell employee blogs- haven’t found any yet. Let me know if you know in the comments if you know of any.

Overall Impression:

Dell did a great thing by changing their tone on the blog based on feedback from customers. It just goes to show- listening to your customers is key. Users are willing to forgive you for mistakes. You just have to admit them (I know it’s hard)! And act on complaints to make things right.

If you are a business/web junkie- you’ll probably find this podcast interesting. The online advertising panel discussion that took place at the Momentum Growth Conference features Toby Trevarthen of AOL, Payam Zamani of Reply!, Rob Solomon of Sidestep, and the CFO/VP of Marketing of Zillow (my employer) Spencer Rascoff. It’s about an hour long if you’re wondering.

I checked Robert Scoble’s blog this morning, which pointed to an interesting podcast that included a disagreement between Jason Calacanis and Dana Gardner. Like Scoble, I’m in Jason’s corner on this one. In my opinion, Dana’s argument was a load of complete crap. He was trying to argue that Jason was being short-sighted by providing 4 kids a better education rather than focusing his efforts on fixing the system. Not everyone wants to deal with the politics of fixing a broken educational system and it shouldn’t be considered “evil” to help a few people where possible. The government is a very inefficient entity and since Jason  mentioned that he is someone who can’t stand inefficiencies, he would rather maximize his efficiency in time and money spent to help others. If everyone helped 4 people, this world would be a better place (like Jason says). Sorry for getting into politics- it’s a topic I try to stay away from, but I thought Dana’s argument was so bad I had to comment.

Just thought this post I came across (which is great by the way) was worth a quick mention since I realized I agree on just about everything mentioned in the post. Most notably-

• The future of social networking is in niche sites
• MyBlogLog is up to great things
• VOIP is a space that hasn’t yet been integrated with the social networking scene
• The best social networks have yet to come

Further, I noticed a One.org banner in the upper corner of the blog- so that tells me the author has similar values as well.