There’s a new weblog business venture afoot. It’s called Weblogs Inc. and it’s focused on creating niche weblogs.
It seems to be pushing an idea of building a single portal that aggregates relevant blogs in a whole range of industries, then selling Adwords type ads on those blogs to pay the rent.
They are currently looking for bloggers with experience of media, technology, business and life sciences.
Thanks for my favorite Moose Tickler for the link.
USA Today published a very interesting story about a former Wall St. Reporter, Les Gapay who was downsized and now lives in his pick-up, camping in various national parks around the West coast as he looks for work. It’s worth a read.
Tom Mangan did some research and it seems Gapay left the Wall St. Journal in the late 1970’s to become a Cherry Farmer. In fact the only mention of the Wall St. Journal in the story is the headline. In fairness to Gapay he doesn’t write about the Journal.
Even with that correction, it remains a harsh reminder of the realities of a downturn.
USA Today link courtesy of Mitch Wagner.
Microsoft is a fantastic case study on the power of effectively managed and implemented Public Relations. Their business was built on PR.
I did some work for Microsoft outside North America, way back in the sands of time, and I have never, in twelve years of high tech PR, seen any company with the systems and processes Microsoft have to keep their PR machine moving.
However our world moves in cycles and according to Jon Oltstik who writes in CNET, Microsoft’s latest PR blitz around security will not be enough to stop the damage. He argues that what’s required is less PR and more engineering effort. And I find myself agreeing with him.
For every PR win Microsoft achieves around security they will lose any gained ground once the next vunerability appears. It’s a losing strategy until the products match the rhetoric. PR can’t fix what is clearly broken.
“Money won�t win this war. Nor will additional security tools or yet another PR blitz. People are already voting with their pocketbooks buying more and more Linux–and security is a big reason why.”
Link courtesy of G2B Group blog
Another PR blogger has entered the fray. Elizabeth Albrycht has launched the CorporatePR blog.
Among her most recent posts she tackles the Agency Analytics post from last week. As a small agency owner, Elizabeth has some interesting views on the proposition and her questions seem to reinforce my view that for “Agency Measurement” to be a success you have to engage with the Agencies.
“Corporations today are rightly skeptical of PR agency performance, given the bad, sometimes downright unethical practices that occured during the tech boom. Demanding accountability and performance measurement is their right. However, as many many academics, practioners and others have written about PR — it is inherently difficult to measure. And I fail to see how timesheeting and billing practices are the key to success here. As an agency owner, I would demand to know the details of the methodology before I let any of their auditors muck about.”
Murphy's Law 