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I read this article on Technology Review that correlates the logical association between gaming and the community building benefits of Blogs. Not to mention just the community building aspects of a Publisher hosted blog, but imagine every monthly subscriber to World of Warcraft being provided a blog to share their woes, tears, successes, and enjoyment of their gaming experience. Not to mention the fact a gamer who has a top character always wants to showcase what they have built, and what better trophy case than a game branded web presence that is easy to use and can track and hold descriptions of raids, screenshots, videos, and even podcasts or videocasts of gaming on the fly. Guild blogs, character blogs, storyline blogs… all of these networking and communicating together all the while reinforcing the awareness of the game and the publisher is a strong value proposition that I can see emerging just over the horizon.

As an avid part time gamer myself and  having experience with such titles as Earth and Beyond which has been cancelled for some time now, EVE, Guild Wars, Lineage, and currently Matrix Online, I know the amount of dedication players of MMORPGs (Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game) give to their game of choice. There is even a website dedicated to the realm of MMORPGs that discusses what is coming and what is the best rated today.

When a gaming publisher that generally acquires revenue from monthly subscription fees looks for that next big differentiator to their competition in this highly competitive market, it will be interesting to see how long it takes for one of these providers to take the next logical step from the chaotic tough to follow forums that do not support RSS that most provide today, to a Game blog, and eventually a Blog offering for every subscriber.

What better vehicle for providing this feature than an outsourced fully wholesale and completely brandable best of breed blogging solution than Blogware? There is none…

So according to Mediaweek, AOL has finally released AOL Journals, their formerly internet access subscriber only blogging tool, to the general AIM member public. Past AIM, this is really the only core service AOL has released to general internet surfers without requiring the payment for Internet Access.

In my opinion, this shows that AOL believes that Blogging is as big or even bigger of an opportunity than IM, and highlights one of their points of differentiation in the blogosphere as moblogging. Moblogging is a very powerfull application and has been a staple of subscription generating premium services such as Blogware.

A basic tool from what I have seen past the moblogging and AIM integration which you would expect from a free offering, but no advertising yet so it will be interesting to see how they propose to monetize this offering as opposed to the “me too” nature of this launch after the Microsoft Spaces, Google Blogger, and Yahoo 360 entries into this market.

 What an article, they even copied the chronological structure of a blog for the print! Could this be the future of all hard copy layouts? Maybe not, but what they believe is that if you are a business, and you are not blogging in some way shape or form, you will have a very difficult time competing online.

While the traditional web catalogues what we have learned, the blogs track what's on our minds.

“I'm amazed people don't get it yet,” says Jeff Weiner, senior vice-president who heads up search, “Never in the histroy of market research has there been a tool like this”

Definitely worth more than a read.. maybe even your first blog post… They did…

Finally it's begun, the monetization of RSS feeds and syndicated content by publishers.

I've seen debates on how long it would take Feedburner to start generating some revenue this way, but it looks like Google Adsense is beating everyone to the punch according to this CNET article.

Here's an interesting snippet that you may want to think about before you start counting the advertising dollars for your blog:

“Simple, relevant text link ads in RSS are one thing. Flashing banner ads like 'Shoot Mario to win an iPod' are another thing.”

I'm not saying this is good or bad, it's just a revenue generating tool that can be used for both the light and dark side of blogging. As a good sign this lends credence to the fact that RSS is finally becoming more mainstream, and is something the masses will eventually adopt through tools that are becoming easier and more commonplace to use.

I am totally behind anyone trying to monetize their investments, whether that's money, time, or effort. I mean hey, I'm in sales…. need I say more? Whether this becomes tacky or not is up to the publisher to decide. Rss has been white un-trodden snow up until now, and it's our responsibility as to whether that color changes from a bright virgin white to a light cream… or straight up yellow…

Anyone podcast? Are any of those that do or are interested in starting going to be in Toronto next week? Well come on down! Ross has setup a small podcasters gathering here in T.O. while Eric is in town. So, if you can make it the night of the 19th then make sure you RSVP by posting a comment to Ross' blog here, otherwise the big bad Lonestar police may not let you in the door!.

A great read that expands on the latest trends for blogs in business.

“it's estimated that around 45% of the largest 1,000 publicly held companies in North America have blogs or plan to start them sometime this year”

That's a telling statement, and goes to show how blogs are becoming a successfull and integral part of any online strategy for business when handled carefully.

As you could notice by some of the moblogging posts I've made, I'm traveling in Europe again. I have a really tight agenda so I won't necessarily have much time to post all that often, although moblogging with Blogware is so easy I'll definitely be taking some shots of the sights.

I came into London early this morning UK time and was greeted by a beatuiful 19 degree Celcius day with some sunshine… absolutely georgious. Coming from Toronto where we had our latest conflict with old man winter this was a needed change for my sanity.

This time around a few meetings in London and other parts in the country, and then off to quite a few destinations across the rest of Europe. Very busy week to say the least, Blogware and Tucows is really taking advantage of my time this trip

Saw this on Gizmodo, very cool stuff, uses Bittorret, RSS, and the portable media device makes it's appearance in the form of a PSP. Check this out if you want to see the juicy details of how this all works.

We talked about these types of innovations on here before when trying to figure out where podcasting would lead. It's great to see some of them start to come to fruition.

“Blogging is like writing an email, cc:World.” - Doc Searls

..but even I didn't expect it this quick.

Huge feature on Business blogging, Blogware, and one of our reseller's focus on this niche from Smallbusinesscomputing.com.

Kim even get's quoted….

“Be honest. Blogging is not an advertising vehicle, it is a conversation. A blog's credibility comes from the honesty of the medium. Allow disagreements because blogging has an interactive aspect to it, and allowing this dialogue lends credibility to the site. “

Kathleen sent me an email this morning regarding some kudos she wanted to share with the team over here about a recent experience she had with our tool. With her permission of course, I felt I should share some of the snippets with all of you as well…

This morning Steve Bayle and I were working on setting up a demo blog for a local technology agency that has 7,000 members.  We brainstormed some ideas for components and rss “radars” for the blog which will act as the portal to the community.  Steve, who is not yet totally familiar with the back-end of Blogware, was concerned that it was going to take us hours of programming to add all of these new ideas into the blog.  I took care of it in less than an hour and added photo albums, RSS feed headlines, and a few custom components like advanced search (which searches all of the blogs in an opml list) that we have built for our customers.  

Blogware is really beautifully engineered to handle this kind of application.  It’s hierarchical structure where you can create custom components and then build these components into profiles within user groups is really well designed and engineered.  It means simplicity, flexibility, and convenience for us in building blogging communities.  You guys have done a great job on this.

We also really like some of the new components like expanded search and the RSS aggregators.  They offer a lot of power and are very simple and easy to set up.

So thanks for all of the great work you’ve done.

Thanks Kathleen, watching you and your team innovate and create compelling solutions with Blogware provides us with more satisfaction than you could ever imagine.

I wanted to know if all of you could do me a huge favor. A fellow Blogware blogger has one of the best blogs I have ever read dedicated to the formerly antiquated and thanks to Podcasting currently resurgent radio industry. Tod and his I love radio blog have been nominated as a finalist for Best Media Blog at the 2005 Business Blogging awards.

When I voted last week Tod was in the lead, but he is competing against a juggernaught of a Blog created by Fast Company. Due to their volume of visitors to their website all they had to do in response was post a link on their homepage and they have now taken the lead. Do the right thing and help out a fellow Blogware user by voting for I Love Radio! You can find out the instructions on how to do so on Tod's blog here.

I found this on Ross' blog:

“But there’s another gem in Bob’s note. He reasons that if they’ve managed to index 8 million weblogs in one year, that the total universe of weblogs must vastly exceed the universe of 10 million that seems to have emanated first from the Perseus weblog survey.”

According to Bob Wyman, Pubsub is not only tracking 8+ million (Make that 8.5+ million, thanks for the correction Bob! Up to date numbers can be found here) blogs actively, but based on the fact they don't track multilingual all that well added to the explosive popularity of the tool in many multilingual markets, this number could actually exceed 16-24 million worldwide.

A few minor bits of data that have come out in the last little while where nothing is necessarily that bloggable individually, but when combined together….well, you can draw your own conclusions:

LA Times launches desktop RSS reader

Guardian Newspaper launches RSS reader

Cnet launches browser based RSS reader

MSNBC launches “Blog This” button on news stories

French Newspaper Le Monde starts offering Blogs to readers

Hmmm, what do you think?

I'm very late to the game on this one, but noteworthy for the implications alone is the Ask Jeeves acquisition of  Bloglines.

CIO Today

“The short-term gain is that Ask Jeeves improves its search service,” said Daniel Read, vice president for products at Ask Jeeves. “The long-term gain is that a large number of people will be consuming information through blogs and RSS technologies,” he told NewsFactor.

So why? Well RSS search and categorization is a direct competitor to web based searches for content, which has been the only real option available until this new format emerged. As RSS readers and associated tools develop better search functionality such as what the work on Feedmesh could bring around, there will be less of a need for traditional HTML searches through search engines and browsers, especially if Blog content continues it's ramp up the continuim of choice for content consumers.

This goes down a path where you will see a line blurring between Blog search engines and the traditional players. RSS is an evolution to the Internet, and as stated in the CIO article, I agree with the fact that this is probably the first time in my 10+ year history of working in the Internet industry that there is a visible long-term nature to where we can expect the Internet to go, and it's looking great so far. Definitely a positive move from my perspective for everyone.

Another really good article completed by Steve Rubel who's work I've followed in the past. This one surrounds business blogging, but drills down to some of the hard to describe value propositions surrounding corporate use of blogs and how they may cost effectively and significantly impact marketing efforts for any business looking to close that emotional divide with their customers and prospects. He even cites some great examples I have also brought up in the past like Channel 9:

Today, Microsoft has more than 1200 corporate bloggers - more than 10 times the number it had just last year. They have the company's blessing to write about whatever they want, provided they adhere to some basic guidelines. As a result, virtually overnight the bloggers have become one of the company's greatest marketing assets, generating incredible online and offline word of mouth.

He describes how blogs really differ due to their structure, and how that structure changes the way information flows through the net:

What makes blogs unique is that they are easily discovered and social in nature. Weblogs facilitate transparent dialogue by incorporating tools that encourage readers to give feedback through comments and emails. In addition, since many blogs link to each other, they are often found engaging in an exchange across the Internet, just like two friends conversing on a street corner.

It's this intimacy factor that has really changed things, and why blogging is growing at such a phenomenal rate. But for me personally, the biggest and most profound statement found in this article is the simple two sentences he closed with:

While some might dismiss blogs as a fad, I can assure you they're not going away. And right now they are one of the most cost effective tools you can use to reach influencers who will recommend you to others.

'nuff said, read the article.

I have no idea how credible this story is since I've never come across the service, but I must say this is a pretty big accusation whether it's true or not. Even if it is true though, they have about 70 customers so I don't necessarily blame MSN for overlooking this one if there was no trademark, but it'll be interesting to see how this plays out.

No actual law-suits have been filed as of yet so make up your own mind on this one…

Is this a milestone? One of many that have and will come.

From Politics to competing with journalism blogs are here to stay so they say.

I agree from allot of perspectives, but journalism and catching stories with cameraphones and immediately publishing them are examples of how blogs are perceived by the media… a potential threat? Maybe… a revolution? More likely.

The blogging “phenomenon” is the birth of a new way of consuming and distributing data. It's just a tool so that everyone can share and be heard. Other tools will emerge, but this is the groundbreaker that will foster a major industry.

“We are entering one era in which the technological infrastructure is creating a different context for how we tell our stories and how we communicate with each other,” said Mr Nachison.

On this point, I couldn't agree with you more Andrew

Some impressive numbers for you to consider. Here is a link to the actual report in PDF format, but I have provided some of the juicier details for you to chew on:

-    Over 7% of Internet Users in the US have created a blog, that is a number in excess of 8 million customers while at the same time only 38% of Internet users even confidently know what a Blog is.

This means that almost 19% of anyone who knows what a blog is has created one of their own, or basically 1 in 5-6.

-    27% of Internet users regularly read blogs, 12% have commented or contributed content to blogs, and over 5% use RSS aggregators to consume dynamic content through blogs or Interactive websites.

Blogs are changing the way surfers interact with the Internet. A basic portal to information is morphing into an experience connecting Internet users professionaly and personaly. Connectivity is becoming an application that provides more value to their lives.

-    Likely Blog Creator Profiles:

    57% are male
    48% are under the age of 30, while 52% are older
    70% have broadband at home
    42% have a household income over 50K US
    39% have college degrees or better

Blogs are not only the realm of teenagers and geeks any longer. They have entered almost every demographic and as the knowledge of this application is spread so will the diversity of the customer base.