Blog Relations

The Easter Scandal in British politics proves once again that Government does not, and cannot understand what blogs are about. One of Gordon Brown’s closest advisers planned to plant unfounded rumours about opposition politicians and their wives in a phony blog run by a crony. Big mistake.

Three reminders about blogs.

1. Big institutions cannot find the authentic voice needed to run a successful blog. The fake blog (RedRag) would not have rung true.
2. You can’t just start a blog and expect that people will take any notice of you. It takes time, hard work, networking, and consistency for a blogger to build up a following. There was never any chance that a new fabricated blog would burst onto the scene and make waves. It would have gone unnoticed because it hadn’t taken time to grow roots and branches into the blogging scene.
3. The blogosphere is one giant lie-detector. Information in blogs that count is peer reviewed by the rest of the blogosphere. Lies and fabrications always out. It’s a myth that blogs are a good place to spread unfounded rumours. Get an unfounded rumour on the BBC (as New Labour used to do in its youth) and it becomes The Truth. To get a story established in the blogosphere, it has to stand up to vigorous cross-examination and testing.

A lot of people have a lot of trouble understanding what blogs are about – and they always will. I don’t think that governments or large companies are ever really going to “get it”.

About a year ago, as an experiment,  I uploaded some audio onto Podango, the podcasting start-up.  Today I received an email saying that sadly, their future is in doubt:

Our ability to continue operations past the end of this year (2008) is in question. We do not want any of you, or any of your shows to be negatively affected by this uncertainty and so we are encouraging you to begin taking all necessary steps to secure your data or begin moving to another hosting provider.

The truth is that podcasting isn’t profitable enough to support more than one or two major service companies. As far as we are concerned, Libsyn is the only game in town. They offer unlimited bandwidth and cost-effective hosting for audio and video based on the amount you upload and store every month – and they make a profit out of it. Through their parent company, Wizzard Media, they arrange sponsorship deals for podcasts. Wizzard is listed on the Nasdaq, and Libsyn seems to be a rare instance of a company that hasn’t lost its user-friendly start-up ethos after selling up to a bigger company.

Unfortunately, not many other podcasting service companies are going to survive the downturn.

Slightly more on-topic, but still McCann related (for whom my sympathy grows ever day), I do wish that when newspapers and news agencies like the Guardian refer to a blog – in this case Gerry McCann’s – they could give us the link.

Does James Bond accurately reflect the British mood?  I’m switching off my brain and watching “The World Is Not Enough” on TV.  It’s from 1999 and stars the slick Pierce Brosnan.   Nowadays, 007 is played by more rugged Daniel Craig.  Does this mirror the Blair to Brown transition?  Does it reflect the current public taste, and does it suggest the best strategy to convince the public in today’s world?  A smooth act isn’t quite so trusted.   A few rough edges are considered more ‘real”.