February 23, 2005
AMA Blogging Conference: Chicago
I had the honor of participating in AMA's Blogs: Marketing Beyond the Website conference in Chicago last week. I rate this conference among the most valuable I've attended in terms of a) quality and quantity of information presented and b) dynamic, engaging speakers
Even as a weblog + RSS industry insider, I walked away with a tremendous amount of new, actionable information. Highlights included:
- Toby Bloomberg's Introduction + Key Takeaways
- Ben McConnell's Intro to Blogs
- Bill Flitter's Discussion of RSS Marketing
- Dana VanDen Heuvel on Marketers Using Blogs Intelligently; and
- Wayne Pelletier of 360i on Blogs and Search
Rumor is this event may come to San Francisco soon. Marketers who want to effectively and intelligently implement
a blog and rss strategy need to attend.
Posted by charles at 07:44 AM | Comments (1)
February 02, 2005
Sony + Weblogs = $$$
Ad Age reported that Sony, through its Consumer Electronics e-Solutions Group, is spending $75K over three months on two weblogs. Sony will be the exclusive sponsor of Gawker Media's new personal gadgetry LifeHacker blog. The buy will also get Sony exposure on Gawker's more established Gizmodo (1.3M montly visitors) -- a safety valve in case Life Hacker stumbles out of the starting gates.
The $75K spend is tiny by the consumer/media conglomerate's standards, but reflects big companies' growing acceptance of blogs as a serious marketing channel. The milion or so visitors to Gizmodo, while relatively small in raw head count, are considered leading influencers who help direct emerging tech trends.
Look for more sizeable advertising deals in blogs and RSS with other Fortune 500 companies.
Posted by charles at 12:55 AM | Comments (0)
January 23, 2005
RSS: Not Just For Blogs Anymore
The recent publication of blog and RSS statistics from both PubSub and Technorati shed some quantitative light on the explosive growth of RSS beyond the blog arena. The numbers below provide some sense of the degree to which RSS extends outside the blogosphere.
PubSub recently reported tracking over 2,000,000 new RSS items per day from sources including blogs. I estimate that Technorati tracks approximately 550,000 new items a day from blogs (see calculations below). Assuming that PubSub tracks a) the same 550,000 daily blog items as Technorati and b) an additional 1,450,000 non-blog RSS items -- these numbers support the emerging consensus that RSS is growing up.
This admittedly rough estimate suggests that even in this early phase the extent of non-blog RSS is approximately 3 times that of blog-related RSS. Considering that many of the blogs Technorati tracks do not have RSS feeds, the degree to which non-blog RSS feeds surpasses blog-related feeds may be significantly understated.
Sources:
As of 1/23/05 PubSub reports:
1) Over 8 million blogs tracked & 4.6 million active sources
2) Over 2 million daily RSS items
As of 1/6/05 David Sifry of Technorati reported:
1) Over 5.5 million blogs tracked
2) Growing at 20,000 new blogs per day
As of 10/2004 Technorati reported:
1) Over 4 million blogs tracked
2) Growing at 12,000 new blogs per day
3) 400,000 new posts each day.
Based on Technorati's numbers I estimate that they track approximately 550,000 items per day as of January 2005. Assuming same average number of posts/day/blog -- 400,000 posts/day for 4 M blogs in October 2004 translates into 550,000 posts/day for 5.5 M blogs in January 2005.
Posted by charles at 12:51 PM | Comments (0)