Ask Jeeves, a search engine, is acquiring Trustic, the company that owns and operates Bloglines. Bloglines is a popular free online service for searching, subscribing, publishing and sharing real simple syndication (RSS) feeds, blogs and rich web content. The company has indexed 280 million live web content elements-news feed and blog articles, images, audio and video (compared to 8 billion by Google).
Another notable acquisition in the blogosphere is by Six Apart, the makers of the highly acclaimed Movable Type publishing platform and TypePad personal weblogging service, of Danga Interactive, the operators of another similar service, LiveJournal, popular among teenagers and college students.
Google operates Blogger, a similar service, and many experts estimate that it may no longer be the largest now. Microsoft has also launched a competitive product called MSN Spaces. The day is not far off when Yahoo might jump into the game as well since it already provides a blog reader in its My Yahoo feature.
It was not too long ago that blogs were merely online diaries of teenagers. That is no longer the case. Blogs are now real businesses that produce six figure incomes for individuals who blog from their garages. In other words, bloggers are now called nano-publishers and in recent months venture capitalists and investors are making investments into blog/content related businesses. The credit to turn blogs into real businesses, of course, goes to Google that through its AdSense program has allowed bloggers to generate enormous incomes with literally zero operating costs.
Most of the bloggers today create value by sharing their insights without being burdened by endless editing of the press releases and statements by the corporate communications departments and somewhat similar businesses processes at leading newspapers and magazines. Accordingly, in a world of reality television, bloggers are gaining enormous clout and many of them compete with major publications (yours truly does the same by sharing his expertise as a management consultant).
While new ways of leveraging blogs are still being discovered, the first one that is being tested by marketers is creating a buzz about a new product or a service. Many companies already stay in touch with bloggers that they want to work with and provide them with samples/content (and advertising dollars) to critique their products. Marqui, a company that has created even bigger buzz for itself, is openly paying bloggers to talk about its products.
What does it mean for you?
Another notable acquisition in the blogosphere is by Six Apart, the makers of the highly acclaimed Movable Type publishing platform and TypePad personal weblogging service, of Danga Interactive, the operators of another similar service, LiveJournal, popular among teenagers and college students.
Google operates Blogger, a similar service, and many experts estimate that it may no longer be the largest now. Microsoft has also launched a competitive product called MSN Spaces. The day is not far off when Yahoo might jump into the game as well since it already provides a blog reader in its My Yahoo feature.
It was not too long ago that blogs were merely online diaries of teenagers. That is no longer the case. Blogs are now real businesses that produce six figure incomes for individuals who blog from their garages. In other words, bloggers are now called nano-publishers and in recent months venture capitalists and investors are making investments into blog/content related businesses. The credit to turn blogs into real businesses, of course, goes to Google that through its AdSense program has allowed bloggers to generate enormous incomes with literally zero operating costs.
Most of the bloggers today create value by sharing their insights without being burdened by endless editing of the press releases and statements by the corporate communications departments and somewhat similar businesses processes at leading newspapers and magazines. Accordingly, in a world of reality television, bloggers are gaining enormous clout and many of them compete with major publications (yours truly does the same by sharing his expertise as a management consultant).
While new ways of leveraging blogs are still being discovered, the first one that is being tested by marketers is creating a buzz about a new product or a service. Many companies already stay in touch with bloggers that they want to work with and provide them with samples/content (and advertising dollars) to critique their products. Marqui, a company that has created even bigger buzz for itself, is openly paying bloggers to talk about its products.
What does it mean for you?
- Do not be scared of blogs. If you are still new to blogs, take the time to learn about them. They are not a threat to your business if you know how to use them effectively and creatively, but they can be a threat to you if you ignore them and your competitors decide to exploit the potential of blogs. (Related article: Easy guide to blogging for non-technical people)
- Bloggers are still a fragmented community and you will need to develop a system to reach out to them. If you want to start small, you must consider approaching a dozen or so bloggers that cover related topics and develop a working relationship with them. Many blogs have more marketing power than leading business publications in your industry. Since blogs are preferred by search engines, they also appear much higher in search results, ahead of print trade publications.
Recommended article: More business bloggers wanted