Interesting blog at roblogfest

One blog that stuck with me after roblogfest was one called Joy Tricks. You can find it here. It features some really neat handmade toys. My favorite ones below (photos from the blog here, here and here)

Heartenstein


















Agent Orange


















Cloud for Sale

Romanian bloggers on voting

Blogosphere newsroom and google journalism (1)

These are, if I may be so bold as to say, the only two things that really caught my ear during this year's Webstock. While it was an amazing networking opportunity and a good chance to see all the people who make a difference online these days, I still think that because there's loads of doing, nobody stops to think about the "springs" behind some of the things that happen in online these days.

Vlad Petreanu mai have nailed the much discussed issue of bloggers and new media vs journalists and old media with his reference to "newsroom blogosphere". While he was trying to make a point about circulation vs traffic he actually stumbled upon a more interesting concept of how we really read blogs. Because, truth be told, nobody really reads one blog. We read several like we would read a newspaper - to get info about different fields. Our "online newspaper" is actually made of several blogs covering several themes, pretty much like a regular newspaper which devotes pages to different subjects. This concept while making a lot of sense also solves two things:
1. The idea to pay just one blogger to endorse your product works, if that blogger's following and stature equals that of a famed editorialist, someone who offline would represent the voice of a whole newspaper (and online, the voice of a whole group of bloggers)
2. To make a campaign stick, you need to enlist the help of several blog (i.e. pages in online readers' daily digest) - unless you think that offline you'd be able to get noticed by placing just one ad one one page, in one newspaper, for just one time.

Now, what this concept does not solve is the problem of endorsing vs advertising which was much discussed at the Blogging workshop and which I will save for later
[Saturday calling]

Blogging in danger

Romania has lot of bloggers, a few good ones and a handful of bloggers who piss a lot of people off.

One of them recently pissed off a huge media conglomerate by making a silly - although distasteful - joke, which the media conglomerate itself aired thus creating a huge media scandal. The immediate result of this is that the media group is now on a focused rampage against blogging of all sorts, pushing almost all staff to speak out against blogging. I have seen this in several shows, read it in some editorials.

I am concerned for one reason: the power of mass media far outstrips that of the blogosphere and it is a losing battle. From this confrontation, the few will come out branded as criminals, losers and anti-social dangers. But the few include more than that handful of bloggers who piss everyone off. The few include people who may add substantially to knowledge and thought produced locally.

I think someone, maybe within the media conglomerate, should allow the blogosphere to redeem itself by giving it the chance to respond. Somehow, this strikes me as very similar to branding Romania: we have some good stuff but those who speak about us insist on pointing out the orphans and gypsies. So, how do we go about giving the rest a chance?

Google analytics

When they work, they give you interesting info. For instance, I used to think, and most of my blogger friends told me, that my posts are way too long and nobody reads them because of that. I also tend to write long rambling sentences which is not blog etiquette.
Interestingly enough, in analytics, my most accessed posts are the longest ones (which should make the one below this one the most popular of all) and my least accessed is one where I simply said I had had a bad day :-).
hmmm, food for thought.

: )

Thanks Stefan

: )

Must read for corporations looking for bloggers

Victor Kapra has put together a great "how to deal with bloggers" guide. Very useful if you are a PR manager for a major corporation who spends his/her time trying to keep up with the world, while at the same time participating in all the "productive" 5-6 h meetings with your boss.

It refers mainly to interacting with bloggers and what the best ways are to not mess up your incipient relationship with them.

Full text here

Google analytics

WOW! I have not checked my google analytics in a while and today i had a look.

This is the map of visits for my blog in the past weeks. There's people from all over and mostly from the States (98% increase in US visits :-) and also lots of people from the UK and Germany. I have no idea if it's a google search thingie but it's just a WOW feeling there... Thanks you guys, whoever you are :-) for reading.