Blake Rhodes (and IceRocket.com) Want to Make *You* a Blogstar!

Sunday afternoon, I'm sitting here in my pink chemise with the black and pink lace trim and my stiletto heeled maribou slippers reading the NYTimes, having my third cup of coffee, and checking my email (all at the same time), when I see an email from "Blake Rhodes"...

I have no clue who Blake Rhodes is, but it the email doesn't look like spam, so I open it...

Tish,

I found your blog while using our blog search engine. Check out our site and let us know what you think. We already have you indexed.

Blake Rhodes
IceRocket.com

Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the blogosphere, the CEO of IceRocket walks into mine.

Now, I'd been poking around that search engine for a couple of days, searching the URL for my main blog with IceRocket's blog search feature, just testing it to see how many links IceRocket would reveal. I'm most curious to see if an IceRocket search will show the same type of information a contained in a Technorati search.

So far, it looks like IceRocket's yielding more post-links, but not as many blogroll permalinks. Searching my main blog, Moon River's blogroll keeps showing up every couple of days, but I think that has more to do with the way MSN blogs post and update. I notice, too, that LiveJournal entries that link to me are popping up. I usually don't cross-link to the LJ people who read me. I respect their space. Yet I like knowing who over there's linking to my blogs. ...so I don't freak when I get a cluster of hits from lj.

Not bad.

I notice, too, that the default search on IceRocket is the blogsearch rather than the websearch. I'm impressed...a bit.

Monday morning, I open that email again. I do a quick search thru Google (yeah, I should've used IceRocket--don't worry) and find out a few things about him. Enough to want to know a few more things....

So I send a short email asking some basic questions about IceRocket...and Blake writes back:

We had some ideas on ways we felt we could improve search. We started as just a regular search engine, about X-mas time we launched our blog search product which is now our default search option.
I think we would like to bring search to the blogosphere and also to those folks that are not actively involved in blogging. We want non-bloggers to be able to come to our blog search and see what the blogosphere is saying about their businesses, favorite movies, restaurants, etc.

Smart boy! He's thinking about how blogs might be used by non-bloggers. Considering that I get at least 40-50% of my daily hits from non-bloggers, who often stay and read awhile, even when the blog entry has nothing to do with a search criteria like "sex with your mother-in-law."

I'm also very surprised that Blake's willing to email. More often than not, whatever level the CEO happens to be, he/she seems to engender a bit of ego that often gives the "talk to the hand" signal to anyone who's not at least a B-lister or previously multi-published freelancer (or I get 86'd by the spamguard because of my yahoo.com email addy).

So I ask Blake if he (being IceRocket) is looking to open things up in the world of blogging so that those of us who are ubiquitous in the Tail get better recognition...

Absolutely! I love reading the A-list stuff like WeblogsInc, anything they do is awesome. That being said, I equally enjoy reading the small LiveJournal stuff that nobody else reads. I think there are tons of great blogs out there that nobody knows about and you can find them by using IceRocket.

Gotcha! I've done some searching so I know y'all are backed by
Mark Cuban and that Mark's in with Jason Calacanis and all that stuff...but I like the little bit about the "tons of great blogs out there." He knows the neighborhood and thinks like a blogger!

We hope to help anyone that wants to attain a higher profile in the blogosphere do so. People should come to us when looking for blogs about the things they enjoy reading about.

..but I'm still curious about the whole indexing thing. How the heck did he index me?

We have crawlers that go out and find blogs that we index. Smaller bloggers that are looking to get an audience can find that through IceRocket. People come to us to search for blogs about the topics they like, if you are a blogger and you are blogging about some of these things, you can benefit from this.

Yeah...y'all probably noticed that I'd been using your search criteria to stroke my little ole ego and wondered who the heck was so curious about a little ole fleablog...still, he's proving to me he's not just some guy looking to cash in on bloggers and blogging.

I decide to test IceRocket's search capabilities a bit more, and use it to search one of the women I interviewed for my Women and Blogging article. Alison Teal was a '60's political rabble rouser (she'd laugh at that one) who blogged while on the campaign trail with Kerry and during the DNC. Because of her relationship with the DNC, she was one of the few actual credentialled bloggers. Hot Flashes from the Campaign Trail was the result. Google and Yahoo searches really didn't give me much except a moldy old NYTimes blurb. So, I tried IceRocket's websearch (rather than blogsearch) and it yielded a ton of web-based articles on Alison's blog. The blogsearch, though, isn't all that helpful--but I think that has more to do with the fact that Hot Flashes was more a topic/situation blog, with a clear beginning and ending.

The emphasis in the blogosphere though is the immediacy of information. We can save our blogs forever, but the blogosphere really isn't like a library where people go to look up stuff...not yet anyway. Right now what matters is the topical, the current, the up-to-the minute. Who's got the scoop. Who's saying what about whatever. This is what people mine the blogosphere for right now. This is what matters to bloggers and blog readers.

What Jeff Jarvis or Dooce said three years ago really doesn't mean squat today.

What I really, really want to know from Blake, though, is if he's looking to take on Technorati. So, balls and all, I ask....and get this answer:

Hell yeah we are going to give Technorati some competition!

Making a list by links only is something I have NO interest in doing. To me it means nothing. Just because someone has a ton of links does not mean they are the #1 blog out there by any means. I want to recognize both large and small bloggers. If someone started a blog today, they would have zero chance of ever making a list based on links, to me, that does not seem fair.

We might be working on a list, but it won't have to do w/links :)

WOW! He really, really *does* think about bloggers! He's got a clue! He's not just stroking his own ego with his Little Engine That Could! He gets it! He gets that all those permalinks added up over the years creates a stack of links that blocks anyone who's just coming into blogging (other than celebrities) from rising out of the doldrums of The Tail. He knows we're not all just compulsive journallers doing this thing for a handful of our friends. He gets that some of us might be providing great content but can't be found because there are all these blogs-which-came-before.

Often I feel like apologizing because I haven't been blogging since the Days of Yore, and haven't accumulated thousands of links over all those years... but hey! I'm a damned good writer and I'm pretty freakin' funny at times and I want people to find me and read me!

and, dammit! this 23 year-old kid in Texas is getting the message that Dave Sifry can't seem to tune into--that the Blogosphere is a world of the immediate, that ancient links don't tell anyone a thing about who's popular, who's got the best conversation or who's got the best information right at this minute, and that Yahoo Messenger!, even though widely linked, really isn't a blog...

I've gone back to IceRocket since Blake's and my email exchange, and checked out a few more of its features...there are interesting little linking options, and ways of finding blogs that are buzzing about certain topics. It has a tags option, but it's kind of tough to figure out the code for the tags (esp. if you're tech inept like me). There are some bugs to the baby, but, with enough bucks to float the project, IceRocket should be able to enlist some bright techgeeks to tweak the algorithms a bit and refine the search criteria. I like the emphasis on post-links, and possibly a feature to sort post-links from permalinks could be configured at some point. There might even be a way to track the comments sections of blogs--but that's down the road a bit, I'm sure.

It's been nice getting to know Blake and IceRocket (keep in touch sweetie..I'm only an email away ;-) ). Take some time and get to know them too...I think you'll be very surprised...

If you're dying to know more tech-oriented stuff about IceRocket use it for a blogsearch--you'll find great articles by all manner of bloggers...

tags: Blogging, Blog, Blogs, Weblogs, Links,A list, search engine

So, you think you're so special because you keep hoping a woman dressed as a policeman would rough you up a bit?? Read When is a Fetish Not a Fetish at my other blog and get a clue....

tags:Blogs, Weblogs, Sex

Fleablogger is a term yours truly has coined to distinguish those of us in the tail from the Technorati 100 and the Feedster 500, and any other A-list that might be out there. We are small, sometimes annoying, incredibly smart, amazingly articulate, and will drive you nuts when we have the time to do it. We probably won't rise to the top because linking systems are skewed to those who have been blogging for a long time or are celebreties who have cashed in on their names. We are none of those, but we are what keeps the blogosphere rolling along. We are created every second of the day and may age out of the blogoshpere when we get sick of the hoo-ha or just find other things to do. The Blogosphere is our Flea Circus as much as msm is a Media Circus.

Get used to us. We're here to stay.

tags: Blogging, Blog, Blogs, Weblogs, Links, Weblog

The Jersey Exile mentions yours truly in his post Just Guys With Blogs, in which he mentions the amazing insincerity of Daily Kos who seems to think he's just a regular old blogger like the rest of us...

when will people like Markos Moulitsas stop treating us fleabloggers like we're town fools? does he honestly think we're that gullible?? him? a regular blogger??? oh, puh-leeze!!

I don't know whether to laugh, cry or throw up over that one.

Jersey also points out Jarvis' change of heart these days....yet, like Jersey, I'm not sure that trying to change the conversation re blog ranking to one of the value of trust over content is going to change all that much in the blogosphere. There's a bit more to it than that.

I think I'm going to have to start reading some of these big-time bloggers--not because I trust their content is so great, but because they're just so massively insincere--kind of like the popular girls they couldn't date in high school....


tags:Blogging, Blog, Blogs, Weblogs

Over the next couple of days I will be working on an article for my Alumni Quarterly on women in blogging.

So, if I don't post, it's not that I've died, or that I'm giving up on blogging, or anything like that.

It's that I've got a piece of writing to complete that might actually yield a bit of cash. And also might do more than that for me. I hope.

If the anxiety attacks don't kill me first.

Who Values Conversation?

This morning, I read Mary Hodder's discussion on conversations in the blogosphere at Napsterization, where I left a comment regarding some of the attitudes aflot out there regarding conversation. My sense is that the attitudes towards conversation in the blogosphere will shape whether or not a metric might be developed to measure conversation. If conversation is not valued, and if blogging continues to be viewed as merely as an exercise in information dissemination, then there will be little interest in sorting conversation from information. Conglomoblogs and aggregators, which rarely stimulate conversation, will still be considered the "top blogs."

Mary makes a distinct point about bloggers who comment as well as post--and intimates that sometimes the comments are as interesting as the initial blog post. Take a look at the fabulous conversations here and here at Mac Stone's great blog Stones in the Field. In her posts, Mac posited great suppositions, and the conversations that grew around them end up conveying information within converstion. Significant conversation and information dissemination are not mutually exclusive but can oftentimes be inclusive of one another.

I feel sorry for the little brains out there that can't understand that conversation and information can be combined--and that the conversation may be as significant as the information it contains. Since it's these little brains who rabidly link to all those link-sucking, comment-lacking infoblogs and rarely link to any of the wonderful little cocktail parties going on in the blogosphere, I wonder whether the changes in metrics that Mary suggests will help boost the importance of conversation in the blogosphere.

Perhaps we need to just make the conversations alot louder thru the shameless arts of self and mutual promotion. I'm all over that one!

a conversation about conversation

Great post this morning at Buzzmachine, where Jarvis actually thinks a bit about the value of conversation in the blogosphere. I have left a small essay over there because I sometimes think, and speak, in essay form....that's just me.

There's not much conversation on this particular blog. If you want to see my little barroom in the blogosphere, go here

This blog was set up because personal conversation is often too intimate for male readers and for female readers, theoretical conversation on my regular blog is a distranction. Really intersting the way the male and female minds work...but this, too, is why Jarvis' post is important. Here is a man who is valuing the conversation rather than the content or the information gathering aspect of blogging.

amazing. not sure what to think of it, of what kind of conversation he values, but he's def. stimulating more conversation about the value of conversation in the blogosphere.

tags:Blogging, Blog, Blogs, Weblogs

Rethinking "Blogging"

I came across this little tidbit in the NYTimes today: "For Niche Film Audience, Studios are Appealing by Blog", where Joel Topcik explains how Focus, "the art-house unit of Universal Pictures" recently purcased ads for its new Ralph Finnes star-vehilce "The Constant Garder" on Wonkette.

Talk about new media reflecting old media. No wonder new media is turning into old media. Where there's money to be made, the old models work.

With this little bit of news, it's beginning to look like blogs are going the way of true art films--most "art" films are not just distributed under the ageis of large production companies, but actually receive money from large production units such as Universal, Disney, Paramount, etc. Miramax was bought some years back by (I think) Disney, and the quality of their films has been sliding downhill...because we all know everything Disney is NOT everything art film.

But what does this mean for blogging? Well, I'm getting the sense that blogging isn't what it used to be, nor what it should be. Blogging is a populist medium. It should not be co-opted by ads. Sure, lots of us who love to blog would also love to make money from it--but I think we've got to grow up and realize that if we want to make money from blogs, we're going to have to become part of a conglomorate, like Gawker, and then we'll get those big ads.

Is this, then, who we bloggers really are?

I don't think so. Blogging is about community--about sharing, chatting, exchanging ideas in ways that can't be in the msm, by people who don't want their opinions influenced by the drives of msm.

Then again, maybe I'm being a total polyanna on all this, and maybe bloggers should sell-out to the big ads and all of us should be sitting around with our fingers crossed, hoping Mr. Denton will discover us, or hoping that our corporations discover our bad-mouth blogs so we can get the juicy book deal.

Frankly, though, we should have careers in other places, and should be using our blogs for personal expression--for things we can't say because we want to say them, not with the motivation that we're going to get something for it. If we want a monitary kickback for blogging, we should do it for an organization or a business to further the goals of that business, and have them pay us a fee for "content management." A film company taking out ads on Wonkette is the exact same thing as a company running an ad in an alternative newspaper--it is old media pretending to be edgy, like the old guy who goes out and dyes his hair, gets botox, and buys a 'vette. It's not blogging any more than a series of two-line scatalogical blog entries with links constitute an essay.

And all this is going to do is, eventually, shut the door on new voices in blogging. What's new could, unfortunately, become old very, very fast.

tags: Blogging, Blog, Blogs, Weblogs

Also check out Sour Duck's post Culture Isn't Dying.


Blogging, Blog, Blogs, Weblogs, Links

Bullshit in the Feedster 500

So, yesterday I found the new Feedster 500...which just proves more of the same old same old crap about the blogosphere:

1. blogs by celebreties rank high.

2. mediablogs powered by groups of little bloggers rank high

3. a number of the "blogs" aren't really blogs at all but massive link lists (like Milk and Cookies)

4. group blogs are linked high.

5. Some "blogs" aren't even blogs! (McSweeny's anyone???)

What is most disturbing about this is the number of blogs listed that never, ever link to anyone else, yet are widely linked.

What kind of bullshit is that?!?!

That was part of my biggest argument about Arianna Huffington starting a "blog." Her attempt was a transparent use of a new media to continue the spread of her own bloated ego throughout the internet by co-opting a medium of the people. On top of that, people are so freaking stupid as to link to her thinking that it shows they are "in the know."

Frankly, that just shows that one is interested in maintaining a power structure that blogging was meant to undermine.

In the spirit of my post the other day: Stop linking to media bigwigs who won't even give you the time of day in a link post! Their blogs are out there enough in the MSM--they really don't another endorsement from us fleas...and, frankly, it just makes us look like rubes.

Blogging, Blog, Blogs, Weblogs, Links

Community Building and Linking

Aside from my DSL getting knocked out a bit tonight by the most dreaful and wicked thunderstorms in New England this summer, I'd like y'all to go over to this post on Love and Hope and Sex and Dreams about linking and building community. Mary Hodder left a comment (to which I'm about to address), and also wrote this post at Napsterization which expounds a bit more on linking (which I also have to go in and read more thoroughly--as I'm sure I'll have something to say about it).

I also have a wicked huge load of email backed up from Thursday that I have to get to....that's what happens when I decide to get out and do some old-fashioned, face to face networking as I am trying to take the "free" out of freelance....

Blogging, Blog, Blogs, Weblogs, Links

slept late and am off to a workshop on writing a business plan and manage cash flow. how bourgeois of me! will post more later...

All Blogs are not created equal...and aren't searched equally either...Idyllopus has some interesting observations on this little phenomenon.

tags: Blogging, Blog,Blogs, Weblogs

After finding out from Jay Rosen that a comment I left on his site didn't make it thru because his spamblocker blocks Blogspot urls, I figured out a small part of the problem in the blogosphere that keeps the tail long--spam and fake blogs. Sifry addresses this problem of spam and fake blogs in this State of the Blogosphere post.

This is another "human factor" of blogging--there will always be lowbrow opportunists who will find ways to try to beat the system and make some bucks. Sifry explains AND has examples. Sadly, many of the examples are Blogspot blogs.

I wonder if there's a way that Blogger can address the problem of so many Blogspot blogs ending up as spam and fake blogs. It bothers me that a great free service like this, and the people who use it, end up de-valued by A-listers and Others not in the tail because of spams and fakes.

Do I have the nerve to write to the Powers that Be at Blogger??? you never know.

NOTE: if you click on one of the fake blogs that Sifry's got on his page, you may get dinged by some adware that will try to download itself. Another big problem with spam and fake blogs.

Blogging, Blog, Blogs, Links
Weblogs

Blogher on TV

hey! look at this cool video of Blogher from KRON-TV! (thanks Halley for the link!)


Tags: Bloghercon, Blogging, Blog, Blogs, Weblogs

Linking and Stats: Why Should We Care?

Terry asked me this really great question:

Here's an oddball question for you; what do we hope to accomplish by getting linked lots of places? Even the top blogs don't make that much money on advertising. We all want more traffic, but why do we want it? Do we see it as a measure of respect? Or is it a matter of wanting to be liked? Or maybe for politically oriented blogs, it's about changing the world one reader at a time?

And here's what I said:

Well, if we think of blogs as "new media" that will, over the course of the long haul, make old media obsolete, getting women's voices out there is very important. Most of the men who dominate the blogosphere right now are old media, tech, or p.r. people. Men tend to link to other men on a relavance criteria (if it's relavent to my blog, I'll link to it--not that I really like it or read it), which often leaves women's voices out. (That is, unless you're in the same industries as the guys, and maybe you'll get linked)

Women blog differently and link differently than men do. They will link to what they like, or to a voice that they can relate to, rather than to whether or not the content correlates exactly with what they are blogging about.

If you see blogging as culture-changing, and as media, then it makes a difference in this way: If women aren't represented among top bloggers becasue the male bloggers deem us not relavent to what they are doing, then blogging ends up becoming another bastion of Eventually-Dead White Guys--alot like the English Lit canon.

This, however, isn't the 15th or 16th centuries, and women have made progress in msm...they need now to have a presence in new media.

Further, this has a long range effect on the busness aspects of blogging. If men are perceived to be the best bloggers, then women who try to break into blogging as a business veture will be viewed as not as credible. This is something I am looking at very carefully, as I am in the earliest phases of developing a business-based blogging venture. We have only begun to scratch the surface of what blogs can do for business (as in the case of Stonyfield Farms), but as blog-savvy young people begin to arrive in the job market, and eventually rise in business, blogging will become an intergal part of the way businesses do business.

Leaving women out of that could be economically and professionaly catastrophic for women. We would never rise past the pink collar ghetto, and would end up being modern-day stenographers, inputting content rather than creating our own.

So, being noticed is imporant. And because we are a networking world, part of being noticed is being liked enough to network and get the link. That women have different blogging styles than men does not mean that we are not relavent in the blogosphere. It means that male standards of judging links by relavancy to the content of their own blogs should not be the *sole* critera of why someone links to another blog. By not being linked, women risk losing position in new media and new business.

It's not just about a popularity contest, it's about the future of media and of business.

Just a few thoughts...

tags: Blogging, Blog,Blogs, Weblogs, Links

Just gotta love a man who knows when the stats have been juggled and isn't about to let Nick Denton get away with it. Jason Calacanis has the smarts to show where they could be monkeyed with, and the chutzpah to call out the monkeys-- here and here.

gad! I just love the tenacity!

And I don't think this has anything to do wtih Denton's snarky transparancey comment on 3/9. It's been bleeding obvious for a long time that Denton is trying to build an empire with Gawker (much in a similar way to Rupert Murdock--on sex, sex, sex) and wants to do whatever he can to build it...which includes commissioning a report that presents some wonky stats skewed in his favor. Whether Calacanis deletes negative comments or not, as Denton claims--well, in the grander scheme of empire-building, that's not any more egregious than using the hottie factor to the nth degree to get your way.

Jarvis tends to whine about how new media isn't supposed to be like old media--but Denton's little figure juggling seems to be an indication that the playing field's just moved from one venue to another...

Blogging, Blog, Blogs, Weblogs, technology, Web/Tech,

Sour Duck has been higlighting some of the points of contention that occurred at Blogher..her breakdown of the Breakdowns is pretty spot on...


Tags: Bloghercon, Blogging, Blog, Blogs, Weblogs

war on terror in an age of anxiety

Liz Ditz left a great comment a few links down, in response to my post about Jay Rosen's use of the "T" word...

I agree with you about Rosen's comments. What I heard was a lot of the commenters wanting to have their anxiety lessened--to be reassured that there was no real risk of

*stalkers
*bad people coming to take their children away
*unwanted attention.

Some of the anxiety I heard was about disclosing too much -- how can you use this tool (blogging) without betraying others' confidence? That to me is a reasonable question.

Another anxiety was about loss of control over one's public image.

Another sort of question seemed to have the subtext, "What mistakes have you made that you can share with us?" -- mostly about too much disclosure, or unwanted repercussions.

I mean, if you ask Dooce, who was fired for her blog, that's a reasonable question!

Maybe the title of the noon talk is in part at fault "Flame, Blame and Shame" -- catchy, but presupposes shame, after all.

I wish that part of the conf. had been, well, more didactic. For example, I have a rule that I do not allow the 7 words on my blog, so if someone uses those words, I edit the comment. I also edit--restate-- comments that are potentially actionable (libel and slander). Amy Geren (contentious.com) has a good taxonomy of "vermin" -- people who have bad internet manners. It would have been more helpful, I think, to have someone talk about how to manage your own reactions to this type of behavior.

In short, I didn't hear "terror" -- I heard anxiety, appropriate anxiety, seeking some reasonable reassurance.

Liz hits the nail right on the head: anxiety would have been the appropriate word..."terror" was too strong and, in our particular politically charged climate, was def. inappropriate. I think Jay and I actually share a love hyperbole...

Thanks Liz :-) Hopefully we'll get the chance to meet at another gathering!

(in a strange way, I'm beginning to think I should move out to California)

Tags: Bloghercon, Blogging, Blog, Blogs, Weblogs

Trackback: http://journalism.nyu.edu/mt/mt-tb.cgi/954

In a much more tech-geeky kinda way Danah Boyd comes to a similar conclusion that I did on the problem with the linkistocracy...


tags: Blogging, Blog,Blogs, Weblogs, Links