The folks at LiveJournal will be very happy with an AP report heavily syndicated today which focuses almost exclusively on them:
AP Wire | 08/28/2003 | Ether Replaces Paper As Diaries Go Online
Canady is one of a growing number of people who are using online journals to share their triumphs and pains in hopes that other people will read them and respond. The largest such site, LiveJournal.com, has more than 1 million members.
The Blog Herald has been targeted today by a group of Flash Bloggers posting the message “News Flash! You’re the third, YabbaDabbaDooo, this flash is for you! Woooohooo! (goo-goo-kachoo!)” on the recent Blog Herald link to a flash mob gathering in Melbourne.
The Flash Bloggers organise through a site at Yahoo! Groups and according to their site “visit random blogs upon email announcement and place comments in those blogs, click on links, leave messages, and have fun!”. The Blog Herald seems to be the third target of the site, following flash blogs on Joho the Blog and Smartmobs.com.
Flash mobbing has gained world wide attention with its bizarre gatherings world wide, but whether Flash Blogging is a natural, and healthy extension to this trend, is yet to be seen. Whether there is art or creativity in posting odd messages on blogs is open to question, but no doubt many will see this more as a nuisance than political or artistic statement. The Blog Herald will watch with interest.
The full text of the first Flash Blogger mailout:
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PC Mag has rated Tripod Blogs higher than Blogger, Live Journal and Weblogger in a review published today that is bound to attract criticism. Lycos is trumpeting its win with a release to Yahoo! Finance, although the Blog Census figures would indicate that the wider Blogosphere would not agree with this decision.
There are hints of some bias in the reviews with Blogger being attacked for its use of advertising in its free service, yet the Tripod review does not mention that this service has twice the advertising featuring on Blogspot sites (in fact it did not mention advertising in the Tripod review at all).
Please feel free to post your thoughts here as to what you think: Tripod v Blogger and others, are you all rushing off to use Tripod?
Slashdot/ Sven Lathams reports today that Yahoo! is set to launch into blogging based on the blog service it appears to be running in Korea (but no one is sure as its in Korean except the logo: Yahoo Korea Blog) ignores the recent history of Yahoo! and its hunger for acquisitions when it misses the boat on major new trends on the internet (which it usually does).
Sources inside Yahoo! have told the Blog Herald that the company is already in talks with a number of Blogging firms, looking for the right acquisition vehicle to integrate into the Yahoo! stable of sites. Yahoo! is also concerned with the widening scope of the Google stable the recent purchase of Pyra Labs by Google Inc.
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At long last flash mobbing has commenced in Australia
The Age> Peak-hour commuters were left gaping when 120 people, each wearing a yellow dish-washing glove and pointing at the sky, blocked the Flinders Street Station steps this evening.
Toronto Star> Unsurprisingly, many new entries come from the world of science and high-technology, particularly genetics and the Internet. Thus blog (short for Web log), and egosurfing (searching the Internet for references to oneself) are joined in the dictionary by more unusual phrases such as shotgun cloning (the insertion of random fragments of DNA).
Chicago Tribune columnist Eric Zorn has launched the newspaper’s first Web log, part of a new approach to immediacy in journalism that takes advantage of internet Web logs. The site, in Zorn’s own words, is “a frequently updated journal containing observations, reports, tips, referrals, tirades and whatever else happens to be in my notebook. My goal is to make Breaking Views useful, provocative and amusing, sometimes all at once.”
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There are some classic quotes in this story that must be read, one of our favourite is here:
International Herald Tribune> Jessica Litman, a law professor who lives in Ann Arbor, Michigan, said she kept heading upstairs to her computer to get blackout news online before remembering that her sole news source then was the car radio.
Washington Post> President Bush’s campaign will unveil a Web site today that allows proprietors of online journals — Blogs or Web logs — to “get the latest campaign headlines and inside scoop posted instantly to your site through a live news feed from GeorgeWBush.com!”
Dave Winer has responded today to widespread criticism in the blogosphere that the cost for BloggerCon is nothing more that a Con by releasing 25 seats labelled scholarships, to the conference to bloggers in a randomly drawn competition.
Winers initiative, whilst in the right direction, has only come about as a result of the negative feedback the conference has been receiving in the Blogosphere.
However Winer will only attract further criticism with a snobbish attitude taken to bestowing “scholarships” to bloggers (a scholarship being something bestowed upon normally from a high, from those of authority, on those below) further ingraining the growing belief that Winer and his fellow group of self appointed blogging elite are nothing more that; a self appointed, self focused group of blogging carpetbaggers whose relevance may only be amongst their own small clique. His continued promotion of a hierarchical structure of a blogging elite through his actions and words will only continue to add fuel to the backlash he is already receiving.
For those who didn’t receive the email read the following:
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