The cure for it? Not web 3.0, I certainly hope not. The receipe is quite simple (isn’t it always), but the execution much harder. Let go. Let me repeat that. Just let it go. I see Twitter, Friendfeed, and all these other sites as rivers of information, anekdotes, posts, friends. I tap in whenever I feel like it, join the conversation. But I leave when I need to get back to real life. I know the river won’t dry out. There will always be a next scoop, another funy remark, a great blog post. Life doens’t stop simply because I choose not to be drwoning myself into this cyber river of information. I don’t need 20.000 followers, nor do I want to follow 20.000.
If anything, web 3.0 should be about the user, about user value, about letting the Internet evolve around you, instead of around some destination site or walled garden. Web 3.0 should set us free, letting the important things come to us, instead of us having to go to the important things. It’s about freedom of data. And yes, noise reduction or filtering will be nice. But that isn’t really what web 3.0 should be about. Until it is here I’ll be dreaming of a user centric web.
Yet, some bloggers act as if it’s their God-given right to write, post a few ads and start raking in cash. In my opinion, content is absolutely cheap. It costs nothing, except time, to put text on paper or computer screen. In the world of journalism, finding willing reporters for newspapers hasn’t really been much of a problem. Instead, there’s a dearth of readers, and advertisers, which the Web has helped accelerate, as paper circulations dive and reporters are laid off. And while Google is reporting great earnings, the same rules will hold true online. Bloggers are a dime a dozen in most cases. Those that offer non-unique blogs without significant audience or differentiation might as well not exist as far as ads are concerned. Delivering more posts per day won’t fix that. Following the big, successful networks won’t do that. Spamming and trackback abuse won’t fix that.
There are millions of bloggers out there today, screaming for their “fair” share of the advertising pie. And while Google rakes in cash from vendors by the billions, some smaller bloggers are crying foul at the perceived inequalities. But it’s more likely they are getting exactly what they deserve when it comes to ads - pennies. They would be better served to pull the ads off their site altogether and find different ways to make money, because for most, blogging will never get them what they want.
“Most likely the reason is
that both blogs and social networks take time to understand, and marketing tactics are
still at an early stage of development,” said Jeffrey Grau, senior analyst at eMarketer.
So how should marketers approach bloggers?
In an October 2007 audio interview on The Talent Blog, Peter Rojas, co-founder of Engadget and Joystiq, and former editorial director at Gizmodo, offered
the following tips to marketers on how to promote products on blogs:
Most important, there must be a fit between the product and the subject of the blog.
Avoid shooting e-mails and press releases to bloggers. It is more effective to become familiar with a blog and get to know the writer behind it.
Give a product to a blogger as an exclusive and allow the blogger time to work with it.
Provide bloggers with links to more information, such as product images and updated information.
Linear Mode
