Blogs are pretty commonplace, no? I mean, at this point, I think most people have heard of blogs whether they are of the MySpace variety or something more like Blog Herald. Though some media outlets tend to ignore blogs as if they lived in a vacuum of information dispersion, other media outlets seem to be fully embracing them.
The U.S. Air Force has figured that they had better start paying attention to what bloggers are talking about and are paying nearly half a million dollars to find out.
As Michael Hampton states:
What’€™s not mentioned is the tools along these lines already developed in the private sector. I wonder if they’€™ve ever heard of Technorati, or del.icio.us, or digg. If not, I can put together a link analysis system for them in one year for half the price.
For real!
Listen, folks. Blogs are not that difficult to grok. Bloggers are easy to discover. If something is being said, you can know pretty quickly. I don’t know why the Air Force has to pay out this kind of money to reinvent the wheel, and who knows that it will really be any better than what is already freely available.
I bet Technorati might even cut a deal with the Air Force and not include their searches in “Recent searches” if national security is the coin being paid.
