A look at the Australian blogosphere by blogs.com.au

(via topherchris)

On the Gold Coast a breakfast radio show host has taken his fight against his former employer over his recent sacking to the web by setting up a blog.

The about page says all it needs to:

The process to protect my reputation and pursue my lawful rights is now actively underway.
- Rob McCasker

The open disclosure on this blog is good because so many times in the media industry whether it is radio, television, magazines or newspapers, a personality/broadcaster/journalist/columnist will leave yet there will be no explanation and their name will never be mentioned again by that station or publication. This blog gives his listeners as well as other industry people an explanation about the termination instead of it being a source of gossip and innuendo.

Still, even though the blogging evangelist inside of me thinks this is exactly why everyone should have a blog, it is a gutsy thing I have not seen done in the Australian media industry before so will be interesting to see how he goes in locating his next radio job and if there are any negative implications caused by fighting your old boss via a blog.

Of the 13 tips in the guide on How To: Write a Really Crappy Business Blog (found via John Lampard at disassociated.com) this was the one I see occur most frequently:

Never post anything. The easiest way to have a blog that’s crappy: Set up the blog, post once, and then never. post. again. This tip’s great because it involves no work on your part. It’s like you never created a blog at all. Which might have been better.

I think the rate of abandoned corporate blogs is higher than personal blogs. At least 75% against 50% is what I’ve seen while maintaining the list of 7000+ active Australian blogs here at blogs.com.au. Just as an example here are five 1 2 3 4 5 off the top of my head. I have a secondary list of non-active blogs that I maintain in the hope that they will one day have posts again but rarely does it provide any RSS activity.

It seems strange that businesses which usually pay significant amounts to maintain their image offline with expensive logo designs, costly advertisements and shiny double laminated matt business cards would let their blog stay online abandoned for the world to see a last blog post dated from over a year ago. It isn’t a good look to customers who would half be expecting to hear crickets or see tumbleweeds rolling by your blog. Neither is it fair to existing readers who would have been used to checking in to see what your company has had to say.

Either maintain a goal to write on your blog with a consistent but achievable posting schedule or close the blog down. If you are going to stop blogging and leave it online then ensure there is a farewell post encouraging customers with other ways to maintain contact with the business so people don’t assume you are no longer operating because you haven’t update your blog recently.

I’ve just noticed that a friend’s blog is running a very old version (2.1) of the popular self-hosted WordPress blogging software and his site has regrettably but understandably been hacked.

If you have a non-current version of WordPress installed the first thing you should do right now, regardless if you think your blog has been hacked, is to upgrade to the latest version of WordPress and make sure your themes are clean of any malicious content/links.

If you don’t, your site will be at risk of being blocked by network and ISP filters because of offensive content as well as more importantly it will get your blog banned/dropped by search engines. Technorati and Google do not show any sympathy towards a site that is compromised.

While it is definitely a boring 15 minutes waiting for your FTP program to upload the files and some more time is lost testing as well as possibly tweaking plugins/themes to ensure they work with the new version it is much less stressful than having your your site hacked.

The latest stable release of WordPress is version 2.5.1 and can be downloaded for free at http://wordpress.org/download/

Even though as bloggers we are happily doing our own thing here on the internet it is always a nice bit of validation when old-media take an interest to explain aspects of blogging or introduce bloggers to a wider audience.

There were a couple of new stories this week that I saw some blogs I read which were highlighted:

- Defamer Australia’s editor got some front page love from the Sydney Morning Herald web site over the weekend.

- And, Network Ten featured Darren Rowse, Karen Cheng and Neerav Bhatt in a segment in their news bulletins today on making a profession from blogging.

Hope everyone got some new readers and commenters to enjoy your writing. Congrats on the media attention!

Saw in my Tumblr dashboard via Something Changed that the identities behind the pseudonyms “The Hack” and “Caz” from the once very popular and particularly spiteful but now defunct blog The Spin Starts Here have been revealed.

This is pretty big news, especially to anyone who was around the blogosphere a few years ago but a fair outing considering the hateful attacks they used to dish out to other bloggers under the veil of anonymity the web afforded them.

You can read the whole story and back story of The Spin Starts Here at http://jamieduncan.wordpress.com

One of my fave bloggers, Marieke Hardy, also known as Ms Fits from the popular blog Reasons You Will Hate Me has announced she will stop blogging to concentrate on travelling and writing a novel.

As well as winning the gong for best Australia/New Zealand blog at this year’s international blog awards (a result that as far as I noticed didn’t raise the usual petty remarks and vitriol from other bloggers towards any high profile blog that scores some mainstream media attention). She has been a wonderful example of how by the simple act of writing online on a blog can lead to recognition of your talents in wider endeavours. All through having a blog Marieke landed a weekly newspaper column as a television critic, a panel spot on a television show and a gig co-hosting a breakfast radio show.

While the attrition of a blog isn’t really newsworthy outside of her readers. I thought this text from her farewell post shows how sometimes people’s mindshare can be too devoted to their blog.

It is my sneaking suspicion that perhaps reducing the amount of mind-numbing political photo based ring-rings and scouring the newspapers for vacuous crap to tear apart each day may lead to some more productive work, though this is of course all speculative at this stage.

I guess not everyone would need to go cold turkey but certainly something to consider if you feel like your blog is holding you back from getting stuff done.

Joel Postman has a spot on post arguing that claiming oneself to be a blogger is now a misnomer:

A blog is a tool. There is no such thing as “a blogger,” or someone who can be rationally defined by their ability to use a blog, no more so than there are “wordists,” people who define themselves based on their ability to use MS Word. The number of people who blog is now so large, and the things they blog about and the reasons they use blogs so diverse, that classifying someone as a blogger doesn’t makes sense.

The rest of the post is well worth a read.

I’m off making changes to my business cards right now.

I collect so many blogging links during general www surfing that instead of doing a proper post on each one I find a quick linkblog about blogging satisfies my desire to announce them to the Aussosphere.

1. A successful entrepreneur has vowed to give up public speaking and focus more on blogging

2. A heartening story that despite the great firewall of china, 20 per cent of bestselling books in China now stem from online literature like blogs. The interesting thing I take from this is that in countries like Australia that already have an established publishing industry structure very few books originate from an online form and are turned into books. Local publishers need to wake up to some o the gold that exist online.

3. A quick guide on finding images to use in your blog posts.

4. While I can’t say I have read or heard anyone specifically say micro-blogging tools like Twitter or online social networks were going to bring about blogging’s demise. Still, one of the Aussie Bloggers has outlined a strong case to why blogging won’t be a replaced anytime soon.

5. There’s another push for a blogging code. This time by a UK law firm. They’ve published a lot of stats about how unaware of legal issues people are but very little detail on their proposed code.

6. Back in the day (’98 + ‘99) there used to be a online service called Web Site Garage that was run by Netscape where you could put your site through to evaluate a number of factors before publishing to the web. One of the features I appreciated most was the spell check. For some reason the whole service went offline and was never replaced. Until now. There’s a soon to be launched service called Spellr.us that will offer a free spell checking service to make sure your blog doesn’t appear by someone who didn’t graduate from Grade 4. I really need this service.

7. A reminder for people a little obsessed with blogging. ‘Tis fun to do but only in moderation.

8. I usually avoid the Blogging VS Journalism debates as I find they focus on the utterly pointless but did find this quote offered an interesting perspective: “…bloggers who are unconstrained by the cold, objective, impersonal style required by Modern Journalism can more easily present themselves as more credible — sincere, authentic, and vulnerable.” (via The Future of News)

When you see some of the blog related initiatives that are occurring during the US Presidential election which really embrace bloggers you realise just how far behind blogging is in this country.

The DNCC (Democrats) previously announced an expansion of the credentialed blogger pool from past Conventions and the addition of a state blogger credentialing program. As part of the new DemConvention State Blogger Corps, designed for bloggers covering state and local politics, bloggers will receive unparalleled access to state delegations and the floor of the Convention hall. In a truly unprecedented move, the DNCC will seat these bloggers with their respective delegations during the historic four-day event, providing even greater access for local coverage and perspective. Highlights from these blogs will also be featured on www.DemConvention.com in the lead up to and during the Convention.
- DNC Chairman Governor Dean Announces Blogs Selected For 2008 Democratic National Convention ‘State Blogger Corps’

(found via Something Changed)

While on the other side of stateside politics, the Republican party is courting lefty bloggers.

The McCain campaign has recently started to hold bi-weekly conference calls with left-wing blogs and blogs focusing on single issues, such as the environment and health care.

Politicians who hold blogger calls usually reach out to writers on the same team, trusting that those writers and party activists will amplify their message.
- via Wired

While it would be very easy to get down about this sort of thing. I think it is best to just look at it as an opportunity to teach politicians at every level of government in our country about blogging.