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Blogophere By The Minute

Another View on Podcasting

The other morning I listened to a 30-minute Podcast while working out at the gym.  There was some vanity in the exercise, as the podcast in question featured an interview with yours truly along with several with other folks. But that's not why I'm logging this blog post.  What struck me about the experience is that it closely mirrored how I'm now watching television, which is 100% on-demand (thanks to TIVO and Time Warner's new DVR).   Nearly a week earlier, Jackie Huba, co-author of the excellent blog Church of the Customer sent me a link to this particular Podcast, but I couldn't for the life of me find the time to listen to the darn thing.  Minutes before I left for the gym yesterday, I dedided to download the podcast onto my iPod, which I often bring to gym.  Thanks to Apple's nifty new podcast software, I was able to do this in a matter of minutes.  And so I listened away while working out, which was quite cool and wonderfully convenient. I actually listened to the entire podcast, without interruption.  I expect to do more of this.  I'm actually more attentive in such situations....certainly moreso than when I'm at work, where distractions abound.  They key takeaway is this: the blog publishing format is bring TIVO to the web.  We're increasingly time-shifting our activities, and we're consuming content in ways that are more relevant and timely to our specific needs.  In some respects, I probably retained more useful content from Jackie and Ben's podcast than many conference I attend.  I listened on my terms, in my chosen environment.  That's the future.

Introducing the New BlogPulse

Today is a big day for Intelliseek.  We're launching a new version of BlogPulse, and we're all quite excited about it!  The most exciting new feature is called "BlogPulse Profiles," but you'll note there are a host of new services and tools.   We're even launching a blog based news service entitled BlogPulse NewsWire, as well as an entertainment focused blog entitled BlogPulse Spotlight.  Additional features include:

-- New interface: A reconfigured home page allows easier one-click access to BlogPulse's most popular services and tools, including featured trend graphs and a graph-creation tool, a blog search engine, conversation tracker and blog profiles

-- Enhanced search: Blog search results, previously sorted only by date or text relevance are now intelligently sorted using a combination of date and blog rank for more relevant informatio

-- Daily media rankings: The BlogPulse home page now features a daily rank of the top media/news sources and the top news stories cited most frequently by bloggers. 

We have an incredibly passionate, dedicated team dedicated to BlogPulse -- including a team of world class technologists at Intelliseek's Advanced Research Center (ARC) -- and we could not e more excited about this launch, and in receiving your feedback.  Have fun! 

The New BlogPulse - BlogPulse Profiles

BlogPulse Profiles is a powerful new tool we created to answer the very simple question: "Who are these bloggers, how prolific are they, and is anybody paying attention?" Each profile contains basic information about a specific blog: its title, its URL/link, its rank (based on citations by other bloggers), how frequently the blog author posts new information and other data points. Many Internet users are still feeling their way around the blogging universe, and we hope that providing profiles of blogs and their authors will help everyone get a sense of what bloggers are writing about, which blogs are getting more attention and traffic, which have the potential to be influential, and what other sources of information bloggers use to present their opinions, thoughts and insights.  If you want to learn more about the technology behind BlogPulse profiles, listen to this excellent video overview by our CTO Sundar Kadayam.

The "Age of Engagement"

This morning in my Jupiter/ClickZ (see full archive of my articles), I offer some additional thoughts and reflections on consumer CGM behavior in the aftermath of the recent London terrorist attacks. Importantly, I write:

"In this ever-complex, ever-evolving marketing landscape, the things that have the least to do with marketing tell us the most about marketing. Last Thursday's horrible terrorist attacks in London serve as a case in point and are worthy of some reflection. With this tragedy, the Internet once again turned over an important new leaf. If there was a ever a blur factor in how we thought about speed, velocity, distribution, and outcome of consumer-generated media, this incident brought new clarity."

 Welcome your thoughts or feedback.  I also encourage you to follow Sue MacDonald's excellent blog on the front page of www.blogpulse.com.   She's staying on top of all of these trends as well.

London Bombings Overwhelm Blogosophere

The important post from Sue MacDonalds, our BlogPulse NewsWire editor.  The consumer behavior described is extremely important for companies/brands to internalize. 

• Wednesday's terrorist bombings in London exerted a single-minded focus on the blogosphere, capturing 90% or more of blog-related buzz. Today's results show that 36 of the top links involved coverage of the bombings, and 37 of the top 40 key phrases used most frequently by bloggers discussed the blasts and the aftermath -- phrases that included "london explosions", "tube stations" and "morning rush hour."

• And strange as it may seem, an event of this proportion finally pushed another Brit -- fictitious Harry Potter -- from atop the list of personalities discussed most by bloggers. That spot is now held by British Prime Minister Tony Blair, while eyewitness Belinda Seabrooke is today's "burstiest" person, meaning she shot from obscurity to the top spot amongly newly discussed personalities. She's joined on the bursty list by Metropolitan police commissioner Sir Ian Blair, London Mayor Ken Livingstone and British Home Secretary Charles Clarke.

• Streettech.com blog points out that Wikipedia's coverage of the bombings represents a new way of collaborative citizen journalism, while many bloggers cited The Guardian's blog as another fine example of up-to-date coverage.

WSJ Story: Blogging and Marketing Insights

The front page of this morning's Wall Street Journal Marketplace edition features an article entitled "Marketers Scan Blogs for Brand Insights."  Intelliseek is featured in the story, but more importantly, the article underscores the very real potential for brands to harvest meaningful brand insights from unaided consumer conversations.  Some excerpts:

• "... a growing number of marketers are using new technology to analyze blogs and other "consumer-generated media" -- a category that includes chat groups, message boards and electronic forums -- to hear what is being said online about new products, old ad campaigns and aging brands. Purveyors of the new methodology and their clients say blog-watching can be cheaper, faster and less biased than such staples of consumer research as focus groups and surveys.
• "Marketers say bloggers' unsolicited opinions and offhand comments are a source of invaluable insights that are hard to get elsewhere. "We look at the blogosphere as a focus group with 15 million people going on 24/7 that you can tap into without going behind a one-way mirror," says Rick Murray, executive vice president of Edelman, a Chicago public-relations firm.

Word of 7/13 Mouth Research Conference

If you are serious about web measurements and research, don't miss the first ever research conference of the Word-of-Mouth Marketing Association (WOMMA)   The event will take place in Chicago on July 13th.  Top firms in the WOM/CGM industry will be presenting papers on this topic.  You'll be among the first to see cutting-edge work in word of mouth research. Intelliseek will be presenting several times during the conference, including on the issue of "emotion" and "wordof mouth. Clients and friends of Intelliseek can receive a discount. Just use the Intelliseek code:

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Meet the Bloggers: Inaugural Interview

Today we officially kick off an Intelliseek sponsored series of podcast interviews entitled "Meet the Bloggers." We'll use these easily downloadable interviews as an opportunity to educate folks about the vast diversity of bloggers out there. Who are they? What makes them blog? How specifically are they using blog technologies, and what can we learn from this? In addition to popular bloggers, we're also going to focus on on lesser known bloggers who are doing really interesting stuff. Today, I interview Jay Stockwell, who during the day wears the Intelliseek VP of Sales hat. In the off hours, he's an aspiring comedian who is using the blog publishing format as a vehicle to promote and communicate his work. Recently, he discovered "podcasting" and we'll be covering this topic in this interview.

Download jaystockwell_cgm.mp3

Employees and Blogs

The topic of "blogs and employees" is receiving considerable attention right now.  Yesterday, USA Today featured an excellent (and quite in-depth) story on this topic, and last night I was interviewed live by anchor Erica Hill of CNN Headline News.   As we've discussed in so many of our Intelliseek webinars, especially last week's on this topic on employees and blogs, companies need to think proactively about employee blogging politicies.   This is already beginning to happen with many companies such as IBM, Yahoo, and GM.  The key is to strike the right balance between employee empowerment and loyalty and the need to keep proprietary, confidential, or compromising information from spreading via blogs authored by company employees.  The reality is that just about every blog author out there makes some reference, often peripheral or tandential, about his or her work experiences.  Most is innocuous and benign, posing no risk to the company.  In fact, as I explained to CNN, if you pay close attention to BlogPulse trend charts, you'll find that more people talk about positive work experiences than negative work experiences on blogs.  Net, many companies (like Microsoft) are benefiting from employee evangelism and advocacy as expressed on blogs.