I have been communicating online since 1987 when I became one of Compuserve's earliest members. When I started, we used 300 baud modems and Windows hadn't been invented yet, so we used DOS or Unix commands and many of the earliest online were those who had come out of the Ham radio hobby field. One thing you didn't find were many women. Then I found the ROOTS FORUM, which was started by Dick Eastman as Sysop and was devoted to genealogy research. I finally had "my" reason why a computer would be useful to "my" life. Dick is still going strong and publishes an online genealogy newsletter, and is still acting as a ground breaker for online communications, especially as it relates to the world of family history research.
As Windows came online and became more and more popular and as AOL grew and more and more people began to switch to their own servers and as the Internet grew, the intimacy generated by the old Compuserve Forums began to disappear. There were and still are other bulletin board type venues, but for many years now, it really has been every man/woman for him/herself. Until now ... now comes the blogs. Blogs are the old Compuserve Forums on steroids and with less control.
The best part of blogging is the interactivity of the blog. It isn't so much that I or any post writer is smarter or better informed, we just write it and hope that someone out there is reading what we write. Our feedback comes from comments. Some blogs can get hundreds of comments to a single posting. Often the posting is only a line or two and yet when you read through all the comments, you come away feeling as if you've finished a semester's course on the subject. Whole communities grow up around a blog and the blog's commenters and like the old forums, those who take part in the blog community begin to get know each other, socialize with each other, and care about each other.
Now, blogs are beginning to catch the eye of advertisers. Google, of course, has seen the benefits from the beginning and almost every blog runs the Google ad strip in the sidebar. Somehow, through the magic of the search engine's algorythms, each sidebar and each blog contains ads targeted to the readership based on the subject matter contained in posts on the blog. As an old newspaper ad rep, I'm all for finding ways to advertise and/or make money using the Internet, web pages and now blogs. I started an online store as a way to earn money during the years I was housebound with my knee and back injuries and during the years as caretaker for an ill parent. I have signed up as an affiliate for other merchants and agreed to run their ads on any of my websites in return for a small remittance based on the traffic/sales my little ad might generate.
I have two blogs, this one and GEN-DATA blog, which is devoted to my first love, genealogy research. Both are fairly new to the blogging world and neither have the readership numbers to catch the attention of any of the big advertisers, but both have the potential the same as everyone else. And the more people who become aware of blogs, the better chance those who run blogs will have to attract advertising dollars. The downside is, of course, that only a certain number will rise to the really big numbers and as that happens, cliques form and a hierarchy develops that leaves the little guy eating dust. Like any other venue, as more and more people come to it, the sophistication required to stay on top, get on top, or be considered a top blog grows too and the off beat and innovative no longer have the room or time to experiment. We begin to move into cookie cutter land.
However, we aren't anywhere near that point yet with blogs and that is why I'm happy to read the following article and why I've written this post in the first place.
Science Blogs as a Vehicle for Upscale Ads
IF great oaks from little acorns grow, a company called the Seed Media Group is hoping that its efforts in a fledgling field, blogs, will yield a forest.
Seed Media, which produces science publications in print and online, is seeking to broaden its audience - and its appeal to advertisers - by introducing on Monday a network of blogs, or Web journals, devoted to science and science-related subjects. The network is to be made available on a Web site, scienceblogs.com, that is now operating in beta, or test, mode.
The Web site will initially bring together 15 blogs bearing names like Adventures in Ethics and Science, Cognitive Daily, Living the Scientific Life and Stranger Fruit.
One of the blogs, scienceg8 (pronounced "science gate"), is part of Seed Media, and the rest are independent. In coming weeks, Seed Media is hoping to have as many as 30 blogs on the network.
Seed Media will sell advertising on scienceblogs.com as it does in its magazine, Seed, which is published every other month, and on its Web site (seedmagazine.com). The idea is to not so much to carry ads for beakers, test tubes and centrifuges as to attract ads from marketers wanting to reach bright, curious consumers who buy products like automobiles, books, cellphones, computers, liquor, music and watches.
The blog network is a sign of the growing interest among media companies and advertisers in using new media for an old purpose: selling.
Blogs in particular are popular, as companies advertise on them, post comments on them and even sponsor their own. Recently, Budget Rent A Car bought ads on 177 blogs, Audi of America on 286 blogs and MSNBC on 800 blogs.
"Blogs are starting to play a pivotal role in science, both in exchanging ideas within the science community and enabling a conversation between the science community and the general community," said Adam Bly, chief executive at Seed Media in New York.
The goal of the blog network is to offer readers and advertisers "the largest Web-based discussion about science and the role science is playing in our culture today," said Mr. Bly, who is also the editor of Seed magazine, which had its first issue last September.
"Expanding into digital media is an important part of our business plan, whether online, podcasting or blogs," Mr. Bly said. "It's an opportunity to surround our consumers whether at home, on the subway or at the office." In addition to the magazine Web site and the blog network, Seed Media also operates Phylotaxis (phylotaxis.com), a news aggregator devoted to what it calls "the space where science meets culture," which searches and browses continuously updated articles on science subjects.
"This intersection between science and culture is something we've been very interested in for clients at our New York office such as Pfizer, Unilever and Estée Lauder," said Pilar Cortizo, the planning director at JWT New York, which is part of the JWT unit of the WPP Group. JWT New York and Seed Media are collaborating on a study exploring the relationship between consumers and science.
The research has identified about 20 million Americans, 7 percent of the population, who are labeled in the study as "Leonardos," named after da Vinci for their avid, Renaissance-style interest in science as well as subjects like art and politics.
Leonardos are mostly male, in their 30's and middle to upper class, said Eliza Esquivel, a planner at JWT New York who is working with Ms. Cortizo on the study.
To be sure, there have been previous periods when science captured the fancy of Americans who did not live or work at Cape Canaveral, the Livermore National Laboratory or Los Alamos. In the 1950's and 1960's, the space race produced a generation that said "A-O.K.," drank Tang and yearned to embody "the right stuff."
In the 70's and 80's, magazines and newspaper sections were created to chronicle the rise of personal computers and the booming interest in what was called "science fact." In 1980, Time Inc. brought out Discover magazine, perhaps the best known of those publications, which is still in business but on its fourth owner.
One big difference between then and now is the increasing pervasiveness of technology in everyday life, Ms. Esquivel said, a trend that leads people "to feel more than ever they understand a bit more about science" and towant to learn even more about it. That can be seen in an announcement yesterday by Toyota Motor Sales U.S.A. that a commercial it will run during Super Bowl XL on Feb. 5 will be devoted to a hybrid version of the 2007 Camry.
Another important finding from the survey, Ms. Esquivel said, is that consumers say they "want to be more involved with how products are made, and want to know more about ingredients and how things are packaged and advertised."
That trend may accelerate as more marketers introduce products with scientific or technological underpinnings like hybrid cars and so-called nutraceutical foods, cosmetics and personal care products.
For instance, L'Oréal, which was founded by a French chemist, Eugene Schueller, in 1907, sponsors a program called For Women in Science that includes a partnership with the United Nations organization Unesco. The program is promoted extensively on the company's Web site (loreal.com).
"We are committed to raising awareness of the importance of this program," said Jennie James, a spokeswoman for L'Oréal USA in New York, "and are always exploring ways to do that, including advertising."
There is a good article on the rise of blog popularity here.
In a February 2004 study, George Washington University's Institute for Politics, Democracy, and the Internet found that 69 percent of blog readers are "influentials, or opinion leaders and trendsetters with their friends and neighbors." Institute Director Carol Darr said in a recent interview that the news and political junkies who frequent blogs are like "honeybees, kind of feeding the culture" with the information they gather and with their comments and diaries at the sites.
BlogAds, the company that pioneered low-cost, targeted advertising on blogs, confirmed the institute's findings in a 2005 report. Its survey of 30,000-plus blog readers found that many of them write to government officials, attend political rallies, sign petitions, and work actively with groups that try to influence policy. "Clearly, the blogosphere is crawling with certified, grade-A opinion makers," BlogAds founder Henry Copeland wrote in introducing the results.
Blogs have come a long way, they are being written all over the world. Some of the best come from our brave men and women now serving in combat zones and some, like The Jawa Report, are even contributing to the War on Terrorism by helping to capture terrorists.
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