"Live linking" blogads and t-shirts

We've worked out remaining bugs in the live-linking blogads (see the top ad at left for PoliticalWire.com) and are ready for more beta users.

(Update: see top left ad on DailyPuppy.)

The text in these blogads updates automatically every fifteen minutes. Each headline is linked. The pipeline for this is the advertiser's RSS feed.

To pull headlines into your next blogad text, put the letters "@RSS:http://etc...etc" in your text field for a standard ad and the rest is automatic.

What to call this new ad unit? Obviously, the word RSS is too obscure for most advertisers. So we'll probably go with something like "live-linking" blogads or "headline feeds" or "auto-update blogads" or ??

If you are first to suggest the name we end up using, we'll send you one of our new t-shirts. Speaking of which, please head over to Flickr and tell us which color combo you love or hate. (We're going to print up more of last year's popular brown/orange too.)

Update: Joseph Hughes experiments with the new ad.

John Aravosis does a brilliant write-up about the livelink ads. He tells advertisers, "this ad can be updated a practically infinite number of times throughout the day. You literally have your own mini-Web site incorporated in our Web site."

Taegan Goddard directs his readers to the new unit.

More thoughts from Richard C and Pam Spaulding.

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Staying aloft

Amused by my Slacklining, Rick Bruner points to his own imbalancing on a unicycle.

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Reading the tea leaves on HRC blogadbuy

Bill Beutler, formerly of the Blogometer at Hotline and now at New Media Strategies, does some very indepth sleuthing on the Hillary Clinton blogad order.

Bill highlights some questions about where/why the ads are running. My response to folks who have asked about the candidate buys: 21 months is a looooong time and there's going to be lots of experimentation and learning along the way. The key point is that candidates -- particularly Edwards and Clinton -- have chosen to make significant investments in blog advertising far earlier than in advertising on other media.

Smart candidates know there's a "blog primary." Blogs offer a unique opportunity to connect with the insiders and activists who are the fulcrum of American political opinion and action. To illustrate this point... Bill picks up a telling detail I had missed: the HRC ads are running on Edwards' advisor Matt Gross's blog. This is truly advertising inside the blog beltway. (Blogway?)

Matt Gross writes:

With the primary season now upon us -- or at least the netroots primary season now upon us -- it seems that this is a good time to reiterate my blog ad policy.

I accept ads from any Democratic candidate or progressive organization and most private industry or public relations firms, proceeding with the assumption that my illustrious readers, being media savvy enough to find this little blog in the first place, are media savvy enough to negotiate the world of advertising and p.r. without any help from me.

...the general policy around here is laissez faire, laissez aller, laissez passer. At the going rate of $20 per week, of course.

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RSS in blogads

We're beta testing RSS feeds into blogads -- the blogad's text auto updates with the advertisers RSS updates. If you'd like to beta test, give us a shout.

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Clinton blogads

Monday morning, new presidential candidate Hillary Clinton joined the ranks of blog advertisers. She's the first to buy some hi-rise units (150X600 plus 300 characters of text) and the first to cross the aisle.

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Political bloggers and the legislative quagmire...

Some vague wording in the new Senate lobbying bill bears watching.

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Squeezebox

The ten-watt signal of Blogads' official radio station, WXYC doesn't reach our new office, even though we're half a mile closer to their wire than in our old office. So we went shopping for something to funnel their internet signal into our concert hall. Nicole Bogas came up with the Squeezbox, which we ordered along with a set of Logitech Z-2300 speakers. For <$400, we're thrilled.

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Study: Congress reads blogs

I've just seen a fantastic study of Congressional readership of blogs that significantly deepens our understanding of blog influence in the US House and Senate.

Conventional wisdom in DC remains entrenched: while blogs can influence Congress, via journalist readers and activist actions resulting from blog posting and advertisements, the influence is only indirect. In fact, the newly public study suggests blogs' influence is much more direct, with a significant number of Congressional readers looking to blogs rather than conventional media for a glimpse of the future.

In short, "The blogosphere has a much stronger voice being heard by legislators than previously considered."

Last spring Neil Sroka, a senior at GWU, surveyed all the Congressional offices. Sroka got responses from 90 congressional offices, with a balance of left and right. The paper was just put online today and news of the paper is slowly filtering out. Here's a link.

Highlights:
* "9 out of 10 Congressional offices read blogs"
* 64% of Congressional staff readers say "blogs are more useful than mainstream media for identifying future national political problems and debates."
* DailyKos is far and away the most read blog on the Hill, with strong showings also from blogads partners Talkingpointsmemo, Redstate, MyDD, Rawstory, Eschaton, Powerline, and WashingtonNote. (Given the flow of requests we get from DC, I'm very surprised not to see PoliticalWire, Hotair, AmericaBlog and OutsidetheBeltway on that list.)

Bear in mind that Sroka's survey was done before election '06, the period that appears to me to be the watershed event for Congressional consciousness of blogs.

Also worth noting that Sroka's paper also includes a comprehensive survey of past literature on blogs and politics, turning up studies I had not previously encountered. For example, it's well worth reading this one, titled "How journalists see the blogosphere" which finds that "52% of journalists believe blogs have 'some to a great deal' of influence on the way media covers stories."

Update: Some say bloggers called the shots in the latest Senate vote unhinged by the line-item earmark veto.

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Balancing act

We got a slackline at Xmas and tried it out for the first time Sunday. After twenty minutes of practice, I can stand for maybe 10 seconds. Things that help: rhythm, staring straight ahead, breathing.

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Busting the glass floor

After ripping out the walls in our new office, we were left with a giant plate of glass. At 5X7 feet, it was too big and heavy to squeeze out the door and down the stairs. Cutting the glass into portable pieces was impossible, because this glass was tempered. So we laid out a tarp, tilted the pane down and started to toss things at it.

Screw-driver.
Brick drop.
Brick lob.
Brick throw.

The final result is here:

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'08 race: the first (screen) shots

Well, John Edwards' ads, launched in late December, have been followed by ads by Mitt Romney, Rudy Guiliani and, yesterday, Barack Obama. Screenshots below.

To date, the Edwards' ads make the most effective use of Blogads, reaching the most blogs, grabbing the highest placements, running multiple versions, including a video clip image in one version and, in all versions, multiple links to resources on Edwards website.

Yes, other candidates are on their way.

In MediaPost, Shankar Gupta does an excellent wrap-up of the first two candidates:

"Matt Gross, head of online communications for the Edwards campaign, said the candidate intends to use the Web to deliver his message to voters unfiltered. 'We saw blog ads as an effective way to bring people in the blogosphere directly to the campaign Web site, where they could hear from Edwards directly.'" ...

[Romney's spokesman, Kevin] Madden, said that Romney hopes the blog ads will reach the most influential voters. "The effort is driven by our recognition of a very unique and motivated audience among New Media devotees," he said. "Our blog ads help reach this audience and drive traffic to our mittromney.com website and provide more information about Mitt Romney, his campaign, his ideas and how they can then in turn join our effort."

Here are screenshots...

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Time's person of the year

Is it just me, or does Time's person of the year essay have serious problems with pronoun disorienation? I guess its symptomatic of media's general problem with disintermediation.

Here's a pronoun focused excerpt: "He believed... You control the media now... we could blame... you'll see another story... we are so ready for it.... We're ready to balance... You can learn more... And we didn't just watch, we also worked... We made Facebook profiles... We blogged... We camcordered... We're looking at an explosion of productivity and innovation... I'm not going to watch... I'm going to turn on my computer... I'm going to mash up 50 Cent's vocals with Queen's instrumentals... I'm going to blog,.Who has that time and that energy and that passion? The answer is, you do... Sure, it's a mistake to romanticize all this any more than is strictly necessary. Web 2.0 harnesses the stupidity of crowds as well as its wisdom. Some of the comments on YouTube make you weep for the future of humanity just for the spelling alone, never mind the obscenity and the naked hatred... But 2006 gave us some ideas. ... Go on. Tell us you're not just a little bit curious."

Go on, tell me, it's weird, right? This revolution is all about the subversion of the corporate "we" by the "I" and if you've spent your whole life writing as "we" its (apparently) nearly impossible to figure out how to write about the new world.

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Hissing?

I thought the web bubble 2.0 had another 18 to 36 months to go -- since after all, its underpinned by real market growth of 30-40% a year -- but apparently some folks think the bubble is already abursting.

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Blogads for film screening in Second Life

Before Christmas we ran a pile of ads for Haxan Films' Altered DVD. (Haxan of Blair Witch fame.) The Altered ads were really creative and got a phenomenal clickthru. And I just noticed that while I was on vacation, Haxan ran some ads for a virtual screening of the DVD in Second Life. (See the top ad on the left.) Here's a review of that screeening. That's gotta be a first, right? Here's the Altered blog, which includes links directly to Youtube clips about the movie's filming.

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World literature and the melting pot of Central Europe

Fans, foes and former residents of Central Europe should enjoy Milan Kundera's essay in the January 8 New Yorker. Since its not online, I'll quote generously:

There are two basic contexts in which a work of art may be placed: either in the history of its nation (we can call this the small context) or else in the supranational history of its art (the large context.) We are accustomed to seeing music quite natually in the large context: knowing what language Orlando di Lasso or Bach spoke matters little to a musicologist. But because a noval is bound up with its language, in nearly every university in the world it is studied almost exclusivitly in the small-- national -- context. Europe has not managed to view its literature as a historical unit, and I continue to insist that this is an irreparable intellectual loss. Because, if we consider only the history of the novel, it was to Rabelais that Laurence Sterne was reacting, it was Sterne who set off Diderot, it was from Cervantes that Fielding drew constant inspiration, it was against Fielding that Stendhal measured himself, it was Flauberts's tradition living on in Joyce, it was through his reflection on Joyce that Hermann Broch developed his own poetics of the novel, and it was Kafka who showed Garcia Marquez the possibility of departing from tradition to "write another way."

...

(And what about the professors of foreign literatures? Is it not their very natural mission to study the works in the context of world literature? Not a chance. In order to demonstrate their competence as experts, they make a great point of identifying with the small -- national context of whichever literature they teach. They adopt its opinions, its tastes, its prejudices. It is in foreign universities that a work of art is most intractable mired in its home province.)

...

I explained that while there is a linguistic unity among the Slavic nations, there is no Slavic culture, no Slavic world, and that the history of the Czechs, like that of the Poles, the Slovaks, the Croats or the Slovenes (and, of course, the Hungarians, who are not at all Slavic), is entirely Western: Gothic, Renaissance, Baroque, close contact with the Germanic world; the struggle of Catholicism against the Reformation. Never anything to do with Russia, which was far off, another world. Only the Poles lived in direct relation with Russia -- a relation much like a death struggle.

But my efforts were useless: the "Slavic world" idea persists as an ineradicable commonplace in world historiography. I open a volume of the "Universal History," in the prestigious Pleiade series: in the chapter called "the Slavic World," the great Czech theologian Jan Hus is irremediably separated from the Englishman John Wycliffe (whose disciple Hus was) and from the German Martin Luther (who saw Hus as his teacher and precursor.) Poor Hus: after being burned at the stake at Constance, now he must suffer through a dreadful eternity in the company of Ivan the Terrible, with whom he would never want to exchange a single word.

...

Between the large context of the world and the small context of the nation, a middle step might be imagined: say, a median context. Between Sweden and the world, that step is Scandinavia. For Columbia, it is Latin America. And for Hungary, for Poland?...

The fundamental shift that occured during the 20th centurey: until then, mankind was divided in two -- those who defended the status quo and those who sought to change it. Then History began to acceleerate: whereas, in the past, man had lived continuously in the same setting, in a society that changed only very slowly, now the moment arrived when he suddenly began to feel History moving beneath his feet, like a rolling sidewalk; the status quo was in motion! All at once, being comfortable with the status quo was the same thing as being comfortable with History on the move! Which mean that a person could be both progressive and conformist, conservative and a rebel, at the same time!

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Holiday media

Movies:
Borat: 8.5/10 (Gonna have to see this one again.)
Casino Royale: 9/10 (Maybe the best Bond movie ever?)
The Illusionist: 8/10 (Giamatti mirrors his father's sardonic smile.)
Eragon: 3/10 (A disappointment even for youngsters I'm afraid.)

Books:
One flew over the cuckoo's nest: 9/10
Darkness at noon: 6/10
Electric Coolaid Acid Test: 8/10
The Scarlet Pimpernel: 8/10
The Exploits of General Gerard: 7/10 if you like Conan Doyle, 1/10 if you don't.

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Plugged in

After two glorious weeks offline, I'm back and fully recharged. I've posted a few photos from the trip here: here with more on the way.

While I was away, we saw our first official ad of election '07, a liberal blog blast from presidential candidate John Edwards.

We're now in our new office, thanks to lots of hard work by Joe Stanton. All the old walls are ripped out and the new wiries zipped in. After some sheetrocking, we'll get some pictures posted. We'll be having an office warming next Thursday night, January 11, so if you are in town, stop by 101 B street, second floor, Carrboro. (Right across the railroad tracks from Weaver Street Market.)

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Wikians versus busblog

Last month Tony Pierce was deleted from Wikipedia.

I'm trying to get my head around how all these various DIY cultures and their status metrics-- wikipedia, blogospheric, journalistic, high school, Yahoobuzz, Myspace -- compare and clash.

What does it say that Technorati, the service lazy journalists most love to quote when it comes to blog popularity, ranks PerezHilton as blogger #45 despite the fact that Yahoo ranks him as the most searched for blogger? I've got a longer essay brewing on this subject, but figure I haven't posted in a while so should get this out the door.

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