Ad:Tech: The blogging panel
: Denton, Calacanis, Bruner and others talk to money.
: Rick Bruner, now of DoubleClick, honchoed a study of blog audience sponsored by Gawker Media and SixApart and done by ComScore. He presented the first preliminary results for the first time today. This really was an outcome of Bloggercon II. Some big news here.
ComScore looked at 15,000 blogs and their audiences.
35 million Americans, more than 20 percent of U.S. Intrernet users, read from 250 blog domains (that is, some large domains such as blogger.com and large individual sites; that mix does skew things a bit among big and small blogs; the numbers will be massaged, Rick said). That’s up 10 perecent over the proir quarter.
Blog readers are more likely to be broadband users (index of 113 vs total population), college educated (index 114), higher income (index 116 at 100k household income), Asian (index 136… go figger).
: Jason and Nick put together a joint presentation. Who says they feud?
Jason asks for the yucks whether there is anybody who doesn’t know what a blog is so we can make fun of them. A woman raises her hand. “You’re kidding, right?” Jason says. Apparently not.
What not to do: “faux blogs, bribe bloggers, blog when your company is not ready for complete transparency, write blog posts for your CEO.”
Nick: “Weblogs. They’re just websites. You say you don’t know what a weblog is? It doesn’t really matter. They’re just websites.” I don’t fully agree. Blogs have the added dimension of conversation; they have a new dimension of relationship.
Jason says that only 20 percent of a CNET page is content and blogs flip that.
Nick: “Weblogs are not for every single advertiser but for advertisers who want to reach influencers, tastemakers.”
Nick: “Of people who read weblogs, one-third write weblogs or are journalists… The result of that is that any message that is targeted at weblog readers will reverberate beyond weblogs readers.”
: Next: Mike Nazzaro from Intelliseek, which measures “consumer generated content” (Doc Searls would hate that phrase — they’re not consumers; they don’t generate; it’s not content). I’ve mentioned Intelliseek’s Powerpoint slides before so I won’t repeat now.
Companies like this create jargon: They call bloggers speakers and others seekers. Nope, everybody’s both. It’s a conversation. We all speak and listen.
He shows a great timeline chart revealing how the bloggers’ links to the Swifties preceded media coverage and Kerry’s response.
He shows another chart tracking the Subservient Chicken buzz, starting in blogs a week before it hit news media.
He makes a big deal about segmenting blogs into “credentialed news” vs. “non-credentialed news” and regarding their emotions (cynical, inspired…). No, it’s just people, man. It’s just people. That’s the point.
: At sessions such as this, the first question from nervous corporate types is, “What do the lawyers say?”
Jason: “If youi’re a bad person, blogging is very bad. If you’re a good person, blogging is great.”
Nick: “Business blogging is generally a bad idea.”
Someone at Salon asks what’s different about this: It’s just another medium. Nick says yes. I keep adding that one thing is different: It’s a conversation.
