Matthew Allen

Richard Jalichandra from Technorati presenting a sneak preview of the 2009 Blogosphere (see also “What To Watch For At Blog World Expo“, socialmediaexplorer.com)

Commences by emphasising that blogging remains strong and is of profound social importance; viz. the 2008 US election. “Blogs are media”.

Looking back, what happened in 2008
Social media – conversation is the content
Blogs are media
brands are in the blogosphere
Many internet users – 75% – read blogs (USA)

2009
focus on professional blogosphere – survey 2900 bloggers; 20 interviews with leading bloggers

Key findings
46% bloggers – professional bloggers (self-identified) – but by data, 28% are professional, in terms of making money. [Interesting difference]. Of these – three categories – part-time (15%), self-emp (9%), corp (4%)

66% male; 60% 18-44; more affluent and educated than Internet population; more also than hobbyists. Massive proportion have graduate degree; average of 4 blogs each. 17% = blogging is primary income.

Richard emphasises that, despite the mainstream media’s attacks on the blogosphere, it is growing, and becoming significant. Yet the survey shows 75% of bloggers blogged more this year; twitter did not have a major impact to reduce blogging. And, those who did blog less, did not identify micro-blogging very much (only 33%).

40% of bloggers worked within traditional media creating content; this is the professional class of online media types – with graduate degrees, and/or professional content creators, and some (27%) still employed in traditional media. 60% of bloggers think that blogs are the coming wave for news – indeed some say no newspapers in 10 years.

Twitter and blogging – 6x the use of twitter by bloggers vs general population. Twitter – #1 use is to drive traffic to blogs. Tweeting – gets ideas, interact with readers, it’s not about interacting with celebrity.

Sincerity is what everyday bloggers say about themselves; professionals say ‘I am an expert’. professionals do ‘muse’ but they are reflections on professional activities. Professionals spend more time, not surprisingly.

Upside of blogging:

– hobbyists – personal satisfaction
– professionals – unique visitors and page views (audience reach)

Blogging – it’s about building credibility, as well as monetization; building of repute through the judgment of the crowd. Note, for example 68% increase in blogs with ad tags between 2008-2009; BUT Google’s share is declining – more players in the market. Massive development of a new channel through which ads can be served. In other words, new media emerges in concert with new marketing; the power of Google to change the way advertising works goes hand in hand with new places through which those ads can be presented.

Blogging and brands: “brands are in the blogosphere” [constant refrain at this conference]

What to the pros say about how to be good at blogging: be passionate – to generate the content and the pageviews

Questions:

– video blogging (not answered – data not crunched)
– critical comment re use of term ‘hobbyist’ – better term needed
–

Side notes
The discursive rendering by RJ of this ‘professional class’ of bloggers (who are perhaps far more diverse than might be captured in the stats) is a really significant move to create both a new audience for the tech industry – including Technorati and its new products – and to create a cohesive counter-force to traditional media, especially at a time when trad media is ‘fighting back’ against bloggers. Also important for the development of the Google approach – new marketing needs new media; (or ads + channels = change in state for media business). Essentially, we are seeing the formation (deliberate and shaped through conferences such as BWE) of a new industry – differently formed – which stands apart from and in competition with traditional media channels. the question is: is this industry a ‘tool’ of the ‘not media’ companies like Google? (see my post re not media).

The data is really important, and speaks to a truth about the Internet which is often obscured in the focus on individuals’ experiences; developing a picture of how the Internet serves as a locus for new economic formations which are part of the net but also separate from it (blogging is not the net; but blogging often appears to define the net). That said, I sense the hand of Foucault on my shoulder as I blog – the professional blogger is a category between words and things – this category enables an ethic of care of the self = caring for oneself as a blogger.

Chris Brogan, President of New Marketing Labs blogworldexpo: keynote, closing Day 1 [disclaimer: liveblogging]

Addresing the audience as people committed to, and expert in, blogging; reminds us to be humble of this new ‘street religion’ and to stop criticising people who ‘don’t get it’; nor claim everyone needs to get it. Focus should be on moving out from the inner-circled wagons of the blogging community and exploring and developing the world beyond. Calling on people to lead, to push and force the pace of development. “take what you learn at this event and move it forward.”

So, what is next? How does human business work? – Social Media is one part; it’s more about human business. It’s about avoiding avatars, and doing bad stuff online; focusing on the human dimensions. Exemplifies this approach by calling for a refusal of the switch of business cards; shake hands instead. Restructuring the geekiness and inward-looking nature of the blogging world. Emmphasis on social tie building via giving. “love everyone like you mean it” but…get out of the business if it is not your business; commitment.

Blogging is not about yourself; the audience is more important than YOU. Audiences need to turn into communities; the key term Brogan is using here is commitment – communities are committed to you (and what you say) – audiences are not.

Don’t keep secrets; share ideas; share data [again mobilising strong ideas from opensource movement]. Also share resouces and abilities; let others do your work (in a good sense), move on to a new place. equip the people with ‘how to’ and they will want to do business with you. Brogan extends this later to emphasise the blog as spreading good ideas around far wider than one can do personally.

Finishing with a twist on the meaning of money: money is a currency of regard. Money, in our society, generates the deep recognition of the value you might bring; if you want to make ideas work, they do need to work for money, but money is just a superficial – it signifies regard when your acts make money for others.

Takeaways:

1. “having friends you can move and mobilise matters” – “actionable people to rise to a cause”
2. tune your business, “work on quality” “amateur hour is over”
3. focus on “holistic human business”

Quotables:

“Social media is not a channel; it’s a tool to develop channels”

“You are excited about your awesome startup; but we are not”

“Social media doesn’t fix everything”

Side notes
A reprise of the strong evangelism from this morning’s session (‘Awesome’). Calling out to a particular, connected almost religiously committed group of people, creating the community of bloggers (which is not all bloggers but those who reflexively identify as such, in a similar manner to the hackers of 90s) through this mode of address. Indeed, bloggers are the new hackers, not a community of all bloggers, nor a community of something, but a grouping which commits to ideals, values, and ethics – eg don’t be stupid online – which are articulated through the language of social media development and deployment and articulated with the world through the subjects which ‘bloggers’ touch. The blogosphere labels, inadequately, the totality of the blogging enterprises; what then is the totality of this smallish, but powerful community and the people who dynamically engage within and with it? Perhaps the blogorg? Later in the keynote, the thematics return – giving, open source and so on; in a way, the blogorg if we can term it that, the blogger community, is teetering on the edge of the divide between commercialisation in a traditional mode, and new forms of economics. Brogan’s keynote, to a large extent, is a call to arms against the former and to push the new political economy of opensource

The moral dimension of the social media advocates is important. Brogan refers to it, in several ways, throughout his talk – giving, don’t be stupid, do good things. There’s a reason for this: dissent. Blogging involves and should require dissent, according to Brogan, as well as commitment to change. The legitimacy of social action by bloggers stems, in this discourse, from the commitment to a different kind of ethical action in the world. Is this sustainable? Can it rewrite the Internet in ways which rebuild some of the originating openness? And this is not just a call for a cool internet, it’s a call for a new kind of political economy, a rebuilding of the basis of economics in relationships, not numbers.

One of the key things which resonated with audience, reading the twitter feed behind the speaker as evidence, was the claim for the difference between audiences and communities and the value for social change, and self benefit, of turning an audience into a community. Community holds deep resonance with people as a place of commitment and care; audiences are fickle and cool; while the development of community is in everyone’s interests, it does nevertheless reflect a selfish desire from the originator for acclaim and regard and belonging. Communities, which we normatively think of belonging to, are now something we can create.

Social media involves,

Laura Fitton, @pistachio “how dare you not be awesome” (First keynote for blogworldexpo)

Fitton, takes the stage, “twitter turned her life inside out”, “little things to make the world better”, “when everyone gets it – 4 billion handsets – then some amazing things are going to happen”. Home-bound mom, blogging, twittering, playing, brought into her life “ideas..people…energy”; but it is not “about me”. What you personally can do – if you don’t do it – then you are cheating other people as well!

Awesome – a personal strategy, but it’s about sharing and inspiring others; creativity, personal commitment, ethics, quirkiness. Social media unleashes “awesome” because it aggregates that strength and passion.

Emphasises mentoring as a key aspect of social networking.

Describing superpowers: Fitton’s is ‘being lucky’ – demonstrates (Wiseman, Luck Factor) that luck can be managed, created based on intelligence, insight, optimism.

Unpredictability of twitter; ‘what technology is twitter disrupting?’ – face book, isolation, email… NOT interrupting lack of resources. Focusing now on twitter; twitter as ‘global sensing and reporting” system; asking for mathematical tools to analyse this datastream. Twitter kills the ‘influencer’ model of mass media; Fitton doesn’t see her role as influencer – it’s the message NOT the person. (refs various ‘unknowns’ who get to be important via msg – eg photo of plane in Hudson). Big media does NOT get it.

A key message “you are not alone” (links to her personal foundations in twitter?); astute insight – socialising is huge in business, twitter is about socialising .

Really key idea about social media: you have to connect with people, your link is not about ‘driving traffic’ to your site, nor narcissistic posting; it’s about opening a space for people to gain from your insights and so on.

Conclusion: “Influence WAS attracting attention to yourself”

great keynote

Side notes
Not surprisingly, different vibe from academic conference; more open to locating pedagogic stories within personal experience; but, there’s curious synergies – while the discourse is different, this keynote is self-ethnographic research, and the presentation communicates outcomes from that research, both as summations and openings for the future. It’s also damn more entertaining than most keynotes!

Keynote, both presentation and reaction, creates embodied performance of the passion and significance with which many people take to, and live through social media; there’s a nice edge to Fitton’s presentation – it’s about negotiating the potentials and actuals for individuality and ego which often have too much emphasis with the much greater impact that collective strong self-identification can bring: we can see Wellman’s networked individualism at work.

Theory in action: academics discuss the challenge of making people see that technology is not determining, but is interwoven in a kind of actor network way, both enabling and guiding, but always within social context. She mentions twitter and similar, but these are not divorced from social context; indeed twitter now stands in for a deep and sophisticated self-theory of social mediated networking – twitter is a language through which new forms of social relations are spoken or, at least, new ethics for progressive social life

The dichotomy between the influencer and the influential message approaches (she sees twitter as the second); I think there is a third component or a way of linking, since I am not sure that people are not still influential (partly through things other than twitter, but also through presence and reach). The power Fitton describes – eg getting donations from 1000s of followers – is a network power, a combination of the message, the followerers and the sender. This brings crowd-wisdom/action back into the mix.

“Twitter literacy” – excellent; it’s about an ethic of care, of the self and the environment. Literacy, online, is a more advanced version of netiquette which was always about respecting the applications and the network, not just the person. Once again, we have a deep sense from Fitton that ethical behaviour is both necessary and valuable; it is achieved/ managed by education within a social grouping not just within the self; ethics sustains environment

I sense a degree of faith (not unlike religiousity) in discussions of twitter, especially in a practical way – eg how do key twitter advocates convert / evangelise people in their companies to see how it can work – reminiscent of discussions I was involved with late 1990s about the net. Perhaps the question to ask is: what will disrupt Twitter?