I’m not going to post every part of the process here, although if your interested or even better a publisher, please don’t hesitate in contacting me.

What I need some guideance on is the history of blogging. What follows is the first draft of Chapter 3: A Short History of Blogging. My writing style is to write to the end without editing, then go back and add and amend with the reflection of time and space, and this hasn’t had that treatment yet, and will probably be expanded and totally changed before going to press, but for those interested in the subject please enjoy, and for those who may know more of the history than please, please dont hesitate in correcting any errors in the comments of this post.
regards
Duncan.

A Short History of Blogging

The Word

The first use of the term weblog in relation to the delivery of content on a website comes from the delivery of a paper titled “Exploiting the World-Wide Web for Electronic Meeting Document Analysis and Management” by G. Raikundalia & M. Rees, two lecturers from Bond University on the Gold Coast, Australia made to a conference on August 14, 1995.

The paper discussed the use of

“a Web browser access to various meeting document information, such as minutes, tabled documents, reports and document indexes. Applications are being developed to take standard electronic meeting log files, postprocess them in a variety of ways, and generate a series of indexes and summary files. These files are formatted in HTML and exploit hyperlinks to the full in order to relate the different types of information.”

Although the paper is aimed at the recording of electronic meetings, the processes described reflect strongly on what blogs evolved into.

Interestingly the term “Weblog” is not featured on the remaining record of the paper, which is now hosted at the Charles Sturt University website, but is featured in its correct context in a Usenet post promoting the papers delivery at Bond posted on August 6, 1995.

Popular use of the term Weblog as we know it today cam from Jorn Barger of the weblog Robot Wisdom (robotwisdom.com) in December 1997.

The concept

The origins of modern blogging are often as argued about as what blogging is.

Many point to blogs as websites or webpages that provided links and comments to other pages, and its is from this basis that modern blogs emerged.

Tim Berners-Lee, father of the World Wide Web, first posted a web page in 1992 at CERN that kept a list of all new web sites as they come online.

The National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) started a What’s New list of sites in June 1993. Notably the site provided entries sorts by date and the What’s New links included commentary. This service was eventually taken over by Netscape in what became on of the more popular web sites of its time.

In January 1994, Justin Hall launches Justin’s Home Page which would later become Links from the Underground. The site included links to and reviews of other sites. Notably on 10 January 1996, Hall commences writing an online journal with dated daily entries, although each daily post is linked by through an index page. Of the journal he writes
“Some days, before I go to bed, I think about my day, and how it meshed with my life, and I write a little about what learned me.”

In February 1996, Dave Winer writes a weblog that chronicles the 24 Hours of Democracy Project.

In April, Winer launches a news page for users of Frontier Software, that goes onto became Scripting News in 1997, one of the oldest weblogs remaining on the net today. The company he heads, Userland goes on to release Radio Userland, one of the first blogging software tools.

After Jorn Barger introduced the term weblog into popular use in December 1997, blogging as we now know it continued to develop.

In November 1998, Cameron Barrett published the first list of blog sites on Camworld.

In early 1999 Peter Merholz coins the term blog after announcing he was going to pronounce web blogs as “wee-blog”, that was then shortened to blog. At this stage, a list maintened by Jesse James Garrett recorded that there were 23 known weblogs in existence.

As blogging started to grow in 1999, the first portal dedicated to listing blogs was launched, Brigitte Eaton launched the Eatonweb Portal. Eaton evaluated all submissions by a simple assessment that the site consist of dated entries, one of the criteria we use to day in identifying a blog.

In May 1999, Scott Rosenberg at Salon.com writes one of the first media articles on the emergence of weblogs and refers to the growing number of “Web Journalists”.

In August 1999, Pyra Labs, today owned by Google, launches the free Blogger blogging service, that for the first time provides an easy set of tools for anyone to set up a blog. Other services launched around the same time include Pitas and Groksoup, neither of which capture the imagination of bloggers in the same way as Blogger did.

Over the following 12 months, blogs explode, new companies and tools enter the market. The rest, as they say, is history.

The post A short history of blogging appeared first on The Blog Herald.

Accroding to Reuters, Barak Berkowitz, chief executive of SixApart said this brings the funding Six Apart has raised to roughly $23 million since being founded four years ago by Ben and Mena Trott.

Six Apart plans to use the financing in part to help launch a new service, code-named Comet.

The post Six Apart receives $12 mln in funding appeared first on The Blog Herald.

According to Human Events Online, a bipartisan letter urging members of Congress to vote in favor of passing the bill was sent off this morning. The letter was authored by Michael Krempasky of RedState.com and Markos Moulitsas Zúniga of DailyKos.com.

Part of the letter includes:

H.R. 1606 would preserve the status quo which governed the 2004 election cycle and beyond, one in which a vibrant blogosphere empowered millions of citizens to influence national politics, leveling the effect of wealth on the electoral process, and without any of the corruption which its opponents now fear. Its passage would send a strong message to the Federal Election Commission to tread lightly when it comes to the Internet, telling it that Congress does not wish to stifle online citizen participation in the political process.

Published reports indicate that, as of February 2006, there are over 14 million weblogs, with approximately 75,000 new blogs are created every day, about one every second. The blogosphere is over 60 times bigger than it was only 3 years ago. With the blogosphere continuing to double in size about every five-and-a-half months, it is simply not possible for any person or entity, no matter how wealthy they may be or how much money they can spend, to dominate or corrupt online political discourse.

Mind you, they cant count. 14 million blogs? Even Technorati managed to track 27 odd million.

The post Bloggers Unite to Promote Online Freedom of Speech Act appeared first on The Blog Herald.

The new version allows mobile bloggers to automatically attach location, time, and relevant calendar information to photos, videos, and audio clips.

(via TechWackNews)

The post Nokia releases updated version of Lifeblog appeared first on The Blog Herald.

As part of the Mitsui partnership, Feedster’s syndicated content service will provide Japanese web publishers with web-based tool to help editors tailor aggregated feeds to generate new content and new ad inventory.

‘€œBlogging and feed creation continue to experience explosive growth around the world. In the US alone, our index has exceeded 25 million sources,’€? says Chris Redlitz, president of Feedster. ‘€œBy using Mitsui’s evolving media group, Feedster is entering a very hot market at just the right time with a product mix and a partner that will accelerate our growth in Japan.’€?

‘€œThrough strong relationships with major US partners like Feedster, Mitsui will establish its market leadership in Japan for a variety of e-marketing services that satisfy e-commerce client needs,’€? says Andrew VanEtten, senior director of Mitsui & Co., (U.S.A.), Inc. Consumer Service Business Dept. ‘€œWe are confident that Feedster and Mitsui will enjoy rapid and great success in Japan.’€?

The post Feedster Expands into Japan appeared first on The Blog Herald.

The post Blogging Minister Worries Whitehall appeared first on The Blog Herald.

Greenwich Schools Superintendent Larry Leverett said the four Greenwich High School girls arrested were given multi-day suspensions.

“There was an exchange of threats precipitated by a disciplinary incident at the high school, and they were of a sufficient nature to raise our concern,” Leverett said.

Three of the girls, two from Greenwich and one from Stamford, all 17 years old, were arrested on warrants Monday and charged with tampering with a witness — a felony — in addition to single counts of threatening, and second-degree harassment, according to police.

On Tuesday, two more Greenwich girls, both 16, were charged with single counts of threatening, and second-degree harassment, according to police.

The post 5 nabbed in blog threat case appeared first on The Blog Herald.

Loren Baker writes at Search Engine Journal that Scott feels that the blogosphere is being controlled by a clique of A-list bloggers “who are sitting on top of their blogostools, and adding to their perceived level of divinity by playing link grabass with each other” and thinks that bloggers don’€t link enough.

From Scott’€s Internet-Marketing-Blog :

I challenge every blogger to post links to new blogs, unknown blogs and blogs not in the Technorati’€s Top 100. And I’€ll pay out a total of $10,000 to those who participate.

All I ask is that you announce on your own blog your intentions to blog about newer, less known blogs, and post your blog URL here in the comments. ( A link would be appreciated but is not required.)

In six months time, I will make a list of all the blogs participating – the ones who have followed through and blogged about unknown blogs – and I’€ll let the readers here vote and choose a winner.

Grand prize is $3,000. The top 70 runners-up will receive $100 worth of schwag or cash or gift certificates

The post SEO offers $10,000 to bloggers to subvert the A-List appeared first on The Blog Herald.

(via JOAB)

The post God joins the Blogosphere, and he prefers WordPress appeared first on The Blog Herald.

The new features will help bloggers track those people who are republishing RSS feeds automatically, including both those who might be doing it legitimately with your permission – but also those who are not and who are writing spam blogs and infringing copyright.

Darren at Problogger puts it this way:
“This is a killer app as far as I’€m concerned and if it works will remove my main barrier to publishing full feeds on my blog.”

Now if only their feeds would actually work more often I might be tempted to switch as well.

The post New Feedburner stats to combat spam blogs appeared first on The Blog Herald.

The post Google Testing Video Advertising on Blogs appeared first on The Blog Herald.

The post WordPress users reporting issues in WP 2.0.1 appeared first on The Blog Herald.

The blogosphere is no longer the domain of geeks and political junkies, in its totality it’s richness and diversity reflect all of humankind.

I’m often asked to explain what blogging is, what’s it all about, why do it, what does it all mean. Given that many would argue that we are alone in the Universe, then I provide this answer. The meaning of the blogosphere is indeed 42.

There is no other answer, and there never will be, because there is no other way to describe all that is life, as there is no other way to describe the blogosphere.

This is my last post as the owner of The Blog Herald. At some stage within the next 24-48 hours the site will be residing in its new home, for its new owners to love, cherish and feed (and she is often hungry, so take note!). I’ll be posting for roughly the next two weeks, but I won’t be doing any commentary, only news posts, whilst the new owners settle in.

It’s been a magical experience, and there are so many people to thank.

Christian Churmlish of Radio Free Blogistan, and Jim Elve of Blogs Canada. You probably didn’t realise at the time but your syndication of The Blog Herald’s feed helped lay the foundations for what The Blog Herald is today. You’re early linking to posts opened up what was once a little tiny blog in a pretty small blogopshere to many new readers. In Jim’s case my Canadian fan club is still to this day pretty big because of it. I promise not to make to much fun of Canada though when Australia kicks some mounty rear ends at the Commonwealth Games. :-)

To Nick Denton, who sent me the hottest ever piece of A-List bad-assed email thread an up and coming blogger could ever want back in the days when The Blog Herald was about the only blog who was actually covering the blogosphere as part of its daily brief. That one email alone got me into the RSS accounts of a pile of A-List bloggers, even if the likes of Scoble has since unsubscribed due to the part feeds :-)

To Dave Winer, for entertaining me for so many years, and even the occasional link. There have been times that I couldn’t stand you and even wondered why I continued to read Scripting News (and I still don’t get OPML), and yet I have. Continue to be yourself, sure, you’re a grumpy old man but we all love you because if it, it’s who you are, and it’s what makes you unique.

To Jason Calacanis. We’ve not always agreed, but I enjoyed some of the email conversations we had. You’ve also been extremely amazing to watch, and you’ve done more than you’ll ever know in helping people like myself actually get to the stage where we can blog for a living.

To the people who have contributed posts here over the years, Natalie d’Arbeloff, Vicki Fox Smith, Jim Elve and Trudy W Schuett to name a few. Some of you I’ve lost touch with, others I haven’t, but you all helped so much, particularly back in the days when writing The Blog Herald was actually a challenge every day because there just wasn’t. Also to John Mudd, who along with Trudy helped judge the The Blog Herald Christmas Awards…don’t be a stranger.

To Darren Rowse, who is really the rising star of the Blogosphere. A lot of the rise in The Blog Herald in 2005 in particular came with help from Darren’s generous linking to The Blog Herald, indeed even today we share a lot of the same readers. Of course Darren’s rocketed past The Blog Herald and it this rate will be in the Top 50 according to Technorati pretty shortly (he’s already broken into the Top 100). I couldn’t think of anyone more deserving, a true gentleman who is beyond generous with his time.

To Jeremy Wright and Shai Coggins, for joining (along with Darren) our new adventure of b5media. Of course Jeremy himself was always great fodder for many years in reporting things at The Blog Herald, from being banned from entering the United States for being a blogger, selling his services on eBay or selling off other blog projects…his energy is amazing. I’d think with Jeremy he’s the sort of guy if you hung around with there would never be a dull moment.

To the new owners, you’ve got such a bargain, and yet I can sleep well at night knowing The Blog Herald goes to good hands. My wife is eternally grateful as well, I’m no longer having to paint the internal walls of our new house, and I’ll never again be able to complain about the heat because we can pay for Air Conditioning :-)

To the Official Friends of The Blog Herald, those who I swapped links with back in the days prior to automated link exchanges, who at the time of writing this post still sit in the nav bar (I’m not sure what the new owners will be doing with this). There are too many of you to name, and as I check the links every now and then I notice many of you have since left the blogosphere. These incoming links helped so much, and it was a pleasure to swap them with you, I can only hope that you received as much in return as I did from you.

To all The Blog Herald readers, many of you who have been reading this blog for a long time (in blogosphere time anyway). My thanks for all your support over the years, for your comments, your occasional flames, and your links in, tips, suggestions for posts….a blog is nothing without readers. Thanks.

There are probably a whole pile of people who should have been named in this list but haven’t been, (Loren Baker for syndicating some of the best bits of The Blog Herald exposing me to the SEO community, Nick Wilson for his links at Threadwatch…it’s just not the same without you there Nick, Steve Rubel for his links and entertainment, and undertaking one of the best PR stunts I’ve seen in the blogosphere that launched him into the blogosphere in a big way)… if I’ve forgotten anyone in particular my apologies. I’ll probably start thinking of more people but by then it will be too late.

I hope you’ll give the new owners your full support. If you want to catch up though you’ll can find me a duncanriley.com, b5media and Weblog Empire. I’ll be covering a wider range of topics on my personal blog, and maybe even the tinniest little bit of blogging news as well (but not to compete in anyway with The Blog Herald itself).

So, so long and thanks for all the fish, and I’ll see you all on the other side of the galaxy at some time in the future.

Duncan.

The post The meaning of the Blogosphere is 42: So long and thanks for all the fish appeared first on The Blog Herald.

The post Google pulls Page service due to high demand: now you’ve got to wait for an invite to experience 1995. appeared first on The Blog Herald.

The post Kottke gives up the ghost on micropayments appeared first on The Blog Herald.

A taste:
“Robert steps up and opens the door. A faint musk of patchouli and indica lazily seeps out into the evening air as he shuffles his girth into the seat. A roll of pudge catches itself on a pile of discarded iPods laying haphazardly around the belt.”

The post Scoble Fiction: What the Flock? appeared first on The Blog Herald.

The Age reports the Chinese media calling it the first such case to come before the country’s courts.

Blogcn.com told Nanjing University journalism professor Chen Tangfa that it was up to individual bloggers to respect a code of conduct barring insulting or politically sensitive content, the China Daily reported.

The offensive remarks have since been removed by the blogger, a Nanjing University student identified as “K007.” He or she wrote in a post dated Monday that they had not expected the blog would be read by people outside an immediate group of friends.

The post Chinese professor sues blog host appeared first on The Blog Herald.

The post Ri.dic.u.lous appeared first on The Blog Herald.

I was dreamin’ when I wrote this
Forgive me if it goes astray

But when I woke up this mornin’
Coulda sworn it was a Google beta day

The blogosphere was all buzzing
There were posts popping up everywhere

Tryin’ 2 run from the distraction
U know I didn’t even care

‘Cuz they say Geocities party over
but it’s come right back again
So tonight I’m gonna blog like it’s 1995

I was blogging when I wrote this
So sue me if I go post to fast

But life is just the internet
And home pages weren’t meant 2 last

Web 2.0 is all around us
My mind says prepare 2 write

So if I gotta post
I’m gonna read my Bloglines subs tonight

Yeah, they say Geocities party over
but it’s come right back again
So tonight I’m gonna blog like it’s 1995
Yeah

Lemme tell ya somethin’
If U didn’t check the beta
Don’t bother knockin’ on my door
I’ve got a 486 in my cupboard
And baby she’s ready 2 roar

Yeah, everybody’s got a blog
We could all burst any day
But before I’ll let that happen
I’ll going to retro my life away

They say Geocities party over
but it’s come right back again
We’re runnin’ outta time
So tonight we gonna, we gonna (Tonight I’m gonna blog like it’s 1995)

Say it 1 more time
Geocities party over
but it’s come right back again
No, no
So tonight we gonna, we gonna (Tonight I’m gonna blog like it’s 1995)

Alright, it’s 1995
You say it, 1995
1995
1999 don’t stop, don’t stop, Google Pages is here….

Geocities party over
but it’s come right back again
Yeah, Yeah
So tonight we gonna, we gonna (Tonight I’m gonna blog like it’s 1995)

Yeah, 1995 (1995)
Wanna blog using Google Pages (1995)
Give me that Geocities feeling (1995)
The past is so much fun (1995)
I don’t want home pages to die
I’d rather blog.

The post The new Google Pages song appeared first on The Blog Herald.

There were a few things that stuck in my mind from the interview on cultural differences. The first one was minor. He was saying that everywhere they went in Canada everyone was into the Winter Olympics. They’d stop in a pub for some tucker one night (translated: a drinking establishment for some food :-) ) and everyone was glued to the TV watching Canada in the Curling. His wife had never seen curling before and was fascinated. Of course most Australian’s couldn’t care less about the Winter Olympics (its not even on until between 8:30 and 9:30 at night) and we know nothing about curling. It was described as Lawn Bowls on the Ice.

The more interesting point was this: he said on the radio how happy he was to be back in Western Australia because people in Canada couldn’t believe how upfront he’d become. He basically said that Australian’s are very open and honest people, and you always know where you stand with Australians. He said that Canadians are overly polite and that if you were to accidently stand on the foot of a Canadian, the person whose foot you’d stood on would apologise for having their foot in the way, even if it wasn’t their fault. Of course an Australian would say something along the lines of “whadda ya think ya doing, mate?” (and that’s the censored, language free version).

I’ve written previously about my generalisation that Americans have a serious problem using the word sorry. It is a generalisation because it doesn’t obviously apply to all American’s, just my general experiences. Compare and contrast however to the cultural norms in countries such as Japan and South Korea where business men and politicians who make mistakes or do the wrong thing not only say sorry publicly, they also beg for forgiveness.

You see, different countries = cultural differences.

Although we are one big happy, international blogosphere, it’s interesting to consider that when you are blogging cultural differences can actually change the way you are percieved by people in different countries.

Of course I know all about this because I’m often called out for being blunt. The saying in Australia would be that I would call a spade a bloody shovel. However in Australia, being upfront and open with how you feel is pretty much the norm. We also have a tendancy of using what other countries would consider to be derogatory or offensive language as terms of endearment. It’s not uncommon for example if somebody was to call me here that I would say words to the effect of “how ya going ya bastard”, and variations involving inserting words prior to bastard, such as evil, slimey, sneaky…to name but a few. And that’s the tame version, many people here would consider my language to be pretty tame. The use of the C word is common for example, such as “how you going you c***”. Yep, I’ve had people ask me this before (I don’t use that word myself, well hardly ever) but if somebody I knew asked me that question on the street I wouldn’t take offense to it, indeed I’d respond with something like “bloody good ya bastard”.

Now imagine saying such things in the US? You’d be shot within about 5 seconds, given all American’s have guns (joke about the guns, but that’s how most of the world percieves Americans :-) )

Now I’m not suggesting you use lots of language in your blogs, but even using what would be considered non offensive language can often be interpreted the wrong way by others due to cultural differences.

I’m not even going to pretend though to give you a clear answer as to how to avoid them, because each country is different, but if you are writing a blog post for an international audience it’s something to consider, particularly if you are writing commentary. After you’ve written a post, stand back from it for a second and consider how others may percieve what you’ve written. Can certain things you’ve written cause offense to others, will it be understood by English speakers in other countries? will it even translate well into other languages?

The inverse should also be considered. When reading blogs from people in different countries to yourself, if you take offense at something, think for a second whether this is truly offensive or just a misunderstanding based on cultural differences.

At the end of the day though, always try to be yourself. Restricting/ limiting your writing by trying to become to sensitve to cultural differences may actually result in you losing traffic, because sometimes its those very cultural differences, and even backgrounds as well (even within a country there are many different types of people) that could also be your key to standing out in the blogosphere, may assist you in developing an audience and maybe even becoming an A-List blogger.

The post Considering cultural differences in blogging appeared first on The Blog Herald.

Introducing Google Pages. It’s what you get when you cross Geocities with Web 2.0. I would have thought that Googlecities 06 would have been a more catchy name though :-)

The service seems pretty basic at this stage, indeed I’d say more basic than Geocities was in 1996 (for example you cant custom design your page, you’ve got to use a template). If you’ve got a Google/ Gmail login you can get up an going in seconds. This was my effort here in about 10 seconds :-)

More info on the service at Search Engine Watch here.

(via Steve Rubel)

The post Google launches Geocities, the 2006 version appeared first on The Blog Herald.

(via Zoli)

The post YABST: Blogbeat appeared first on The Blog Herald.

3 years of The Blog Herald

The First Blog Herald challenge
In the days before the term link bait even existed, I had my first big hit based on a competition to record the song The Day the Blogging Died, written by Christian Churmlish of Radio Free Blogistan. We only had 3 or 4 entries and Christian ended up winning, and the prize was only $20. This was in the days though that the blogosphere was very, very small, so although the traffic wasn’t huge it bought the site to the attention of some of the then A-Listers, and it grew from there. The words to the song are still great today. Maybe someone should open it up for a new competition today….the song lyrics were published under a CC license, and I’d love to hear it on the radio :-)

Star Wars Kid Blog Charity: Help, Publicity Stunt or Fraud?
My first flame war. Andy Baio of Waxy.org (who I believe now works at Yahoo on a Web 2.0 project) was fairly well known at the time in the blogosphere, but his traffic went through the roof when he posted a video of a poor, unfortunate fat kid who was caught pretending to play a Star Wars character. Indeed at the time Waxy.org went to No. 1 on Google for Star Wars kid, and for a few months it was the hottest viral video on the net.

Baio wrote at the time he posted the video:

‘€œIf you’€re going to videotape your Star Wars fighting skills on a school camera, remember to remove the cassette when you’€re done. Watch this embarrassingly good video’€?

And yet a little later, once he became known as the No. 1 source, his traffic was massive for a blog (in that day) and he was being interviewed by the MSM, he strangely decided to write this when he announced a donation drive for the kid:

‘€œI thought he deserved better. This video was uploaded to humiliate an awkward and overweight computer geek…I personally feel that he is like me and all of my friends,’€?

And yet he still hosted the video. I called it as I saw it, a got a whole pile of flames via the comments and email for it. Later I accepted that Andy had not intended for it to come across this way, although I still believe today it was extremely poor judgment to profit from the suffering of a child.

The SixApart/ Mena Trott files
This causes mixed emotions in me even today. Back when MovableType was really the only game in town, it’s fan base was like a rapid cheer squad, and I was one of it’s strongest members. Then we had MT 3.0, and the world changed. SixApart essentially put up a sign to all the people who had helped put it where it was today (and then) and said F.U., we’re going to charge you for MT now unless you want a basic, poverty model cut down version off it. The blog storm against it was amazing (and I’d think has probably never been repeated since), and very few people supported the move. SixApart backflipped on the pricing model twice, which was some improvement, however by this stage the cheer squad was already on the move, mostly to WordPress. I can only describe my feelings at the time as anger, and Mena Trott made it worse by writing at the time that they had “improved” the pay model, and never conceded the mistake, (at the time, I think she did later) nor apologised for it (and as far as I’m aware she still have never said sorry to this day). Perhaps it’s a cultural thing, because I find generally that many American’s seem to have problems with saying sorry for mistakes, even today. I became the flag bearer for a hard core group of people who pretty much felt the same way, and it showed in my writing.

Eventually of course I realised it was time to move on from this, and today I’ve settled my differences with some at SixApart. In part it was wrong to hold onto this for such a long time, although it wasn’t made easier by a number of serious bungles from SixApart throughout the last 2 years. I still to this day believe that what SixApart and Mena Trott did was disgusting…but I suppose in some ways the longer you blog the quicker you learn to forgive and/ or forget. I’ll never personally forgive Mena for what she did to so many people who were members of the SixApart/ MT cheer squad, but I have since moved on and started looking at SixApart from the perspective of a glass half full instead of a glass half empty. If Anil Dash is reading this, he’ll probably think to himself it’s about time as well :-) Life is too short, after all,

The Jason Calacanis experience
I first started receiving emails from Jason Calacanis when he first set up Weblogs Inc.,…they were strange, short, and included the words (regularly) of “no love for Weblogs Inc?”. Yep, Jason Calacanis blegged his heart away for links and coverage when he started Weblogs Inc., like we all do to some extent. At the time I didn’t have much time for Weblogs Inc., because they were another small player and I honestly at that stage didn’t get the model he was trying to work with at all (remembering that there were virtually no advertising on blogs at this stage (outside of BlogAds.com), and nothing had really been done like this before…it was new!). I’ve exchanged the occasional email over the years with J-Cal, and I’d have to say that watching Weblogs Inc., grow would be one of the most interesting things I’ve observed as the editor of The Blog Herald. J-Cal helped create a market for blog advertising, and he really created the blog network model that so many follow today. If they ever start a bloggers hall of fame I’ll be nominating J-Cal.

Helping people in need
The biggest amount of comments I’ve ever had at The Blog Herald was with the Hurricane Katrina posts, particularly the post dedicated to matching up survivors. This post had 450 comments (the highest for any post I’ve ever written) and I actually managed to help people reunite with their families. It was amazing, it really was. The traffic spiked to something like 100,000 uniques a day for 3 to 4 days as well.

Helping bloggers
Sure, its not life and death like Katrina, but it’s been wonderful none the less. Over the years I’ve lost count at the number of people who have emailed me to thank me for some of the advice, tips, and links I’ve put up at The Blog Herald. I’ve discussed this with Darren over at Problogger before and he feels pretty much the same way: helping people is personally rewarding, and I’ve had plenty of personal rewards over the years. There is something just amazing in receiving an email from a person thanking you for helping them get their blog off the ground, or in helping taking that blog from virtually no traffic to one that is highly successful, and looks good as well. To everyone who has ever sent me an email, or I’ve helped directly or indirectly, it was a pleasure, and I’d happily do it all again tomorrow.

The mistakes
The Bad: I’ve made a few mistakes at my time at The Blog Herald, but I’ve certainly learnt alot from them. The biggest mistake I ever made was calling Jason Calacanis and Weblogs Inc out over Hurricane Katrina. I was watching and reading all this stuff, and had been reading the comments from the post for people looking for survivors…and I made a very bad call in an emotional state (reading those comments is also the only time I’ve ever cried whilst reading comments on a blog…). I apologised to J-Cal at the time, and I’ll say it again, Sorry J-Cal, I f*cked up. There other times as well, but I don’t really recall them like I do this one. The lesson though for everyone: if you make a mistake say sorry. It’s really not a hard word to use.

The Technology
You know on of the best things about blogging, particularly if you are a DIY blogger is that you end up learning so much about the tech stuff behind it. The older versions of MT were always a bit clunky in the coding (for example tables as opposed to CSS) and perl isn’t exactly an easy language to learn, but once I eventually moved over to WordPress, I picked up PHP in no time. (Oddly enough the main reason I held back from switching for probably six months was a fear of PHP because I didn’t know anything about it :-) ). These are skills that can be applied outside of blogging as well, and I’ve done things since such as designed web pages with WP as the back room for the site.

If I was to nominate something in the “ugly” file though that would be my experiences with Web Hosting. The Blog Herald has lived at 5 (or is that 6?…I’ve nearly lost count) web hosts. Back in 2003/04 when blogging only first starting to become well known, a number of web hosts actually wouldn’t allow you to hosts blogs! (seriously!). The ones that did allow it didn’t know much about them at all, and there were widespread reports of web hosts banning accounts from users who used MT (and even later WordPress). Things have only marginally improved today. Sure, most web hosts now market 1 click blog setups in their packages, but what I’ve found with web hosting is that they’ll promise you the world to get you to sign up, and once they’ve got you they won’t lift a finger to help if/ and when you run into any trouble. Honestly I think a lot of web hosts run a model that basically says that there are so many fish in the sea if we treat our customers like crap there will always be new customers to replace them….if of course they actually change providers because as most bloggers will tell you, transferring hosts is never an easy thing (and its taken me 3 years to get to the stage that with CPanel, phpmyadmin and ftp I’d regard myself as pretty proficient at it). I also thought once I co-founded b5media that working with people like Jeremy Wright would make a difference here….it didn’t, even with Jeremy’s superior experience we managed to get totally screwed over by The Planet.

I’m always hesitant to recommend hosts to people given they always come back to bite me at a later date, but at the moment I’m using Dreamhost for my personal stuff on a shared server, and b5media is using dedicated servers from webnx, and so far they’ve both been absolutely brilliant.

Legal threats and spammers
I’ve had plenty of these over 3 years, although most have occurred in the last 12 months. Comment spam and spam blogs are a blight on the blogosphere, and yet the people who pedal software to do this, or partake in it themselves deserve to be called out. The legal threat tally would be about 15 for memory, but the only time I became a little bit scared was when I took on the famed blackhat SEO DaveN, who had boasted about his comment spamming techniques to a tech journal, and got rewarded with a private tour of the Googleplex from Matt Cutts. When I realised that what he could do to The Blog Herald and other sites I owned…..we’ll suffice to say I’ve never mentioned him again since before this post.

The People
I could continue writing this post all day, however I’ll finish it before it gets too long by saying the best thing about having established, owned and written at The Blog Herald is the amazing variety of people I’ve gotten to know in varying degrees through this blog, and from all over the world. You know who you are :-) My life is so much more richer today (personally) because of it.

Finally though I’ve know I’ve missed a lot of things, The Blog Herald Christmas Awards, 100 blogs in 100 days, the old link swaps, the Blog Herald Blog Count and Blog Network lists….and I’ll probably think of more in the next couple of days. It’s all been a wonderful adventure.

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Blog A:
Topic: celebrity
Pageviews: 1500-3000 per day
Pages in Google: 172
Age: 4 months
Adsense: 500 ad views per day average
Also using: Fastclick (popups and banners)
Revenue: $3-5 per day
PR with update: 4

Blog B:
Topic: tech
Pageviews 500-1000 per day
Pages in Google: 103
Age: 2 months
Adsense: 70-150 ad views per day
Also using: affiliate links
Revenue: $1-$3 per day
PR with update: 6

Both blogs run WP with essentially the same Kubrick based template (with color/ design variations), same setup in terms of plugins etc.., are on the same shared server. The number of incoming Technorati links was similar.

So what was the difference?

I got some more information based on what I saw from the sites:
Blog A was a member of services like Bloghub and Blogtopsites
Blog B was not a member of any of these sorts of services, however he had advertised the blog at WeblogEmpire and had managed to do 3 reciprocal link exchanges with blogs who cover similar tech items.

Blog A was linked into by all his other blogs as it was older (essentially the blog network model)
Blog B was linked into by only a handful of other blogs he owned.

Now I don’t know whether the popups/ Fastclick stuff would affect a PR update, but it could be a factor, but this is what I believe the problem to be:
Blog A doesn’t have quality links
Blog B does.

He also had another Blog (we’ll call it Blog C) that came in at PR 5. It sat somewhere between Blog A and Blog B in terms of links and memberships.

And this is where it gets tricky, because Blog A makes more money (it has higher traffic) but I’d say with a PR of 6 once the current PR update finished Blog B has better potential, but it may take some time to get there. I’d note also that Blog B also has nearly 50% less posts, so if you look at it on a time perspective it’s actually tracking about the same place as Blog A was at a similar point in its life….except for the PR update :-)

Less links but from higher quality and related sites equals better PR.

Now I’ve always been an advocate of exchanging legitimate links with people (it’s also a great way for your readers to discover new blogs as well), and the numbers we are talking about here are pretty small, but my conclusion, particularly when you are starting out in blogging, surprised me.

What not to do
It’s fairly common knowledge that link-farms and similar sites are a big red flag for Google. I can’t help that wonder whether multiple blog directory listing may do the same thing. Now I know a number of people who run these sites, and they are all good people, but I’d advise that you don’t join multiple sites of this nature when you first start up, because I’d think the more you join the more chance you’ll have of being red flagged by Google (and it’s also advice shared to me a while ago by Nick Wilson of Performancing who knows his SEO stuff. I guess I didn’t really believe it at the time because these services are so popular….and yet I’ve now seen it as part of this study).

The interlinking perspective amongst blogs you own is an interesting equation. You’ll see that this is standard form for any blog network or multiple blog owner, and in my experience previously (from when Weblog Empire was a blog network and not a forum, and from b5media) is that it works a treat, however the difference between the reader example and what I’ve personally done in the past is this: the interlinking always included a number of blogs with high PR (for example The Blog Herald at PR7). I would conclude that too many links from PR0 sites without a high PR blogs to offset the lower quality links upsets the Google rankings, as in this example Blog A has a lot more links than Blog B.

What’s a PR site worth?

I only have one example here. A long term reader about 12 months ago asked for a link from The Blog Herald for a new blog she had setup. She only had a Blogger blog of her own (no PR). I wanted to give her a hand so I swapped links with the site. The blog received a PR 4 at the next update with no other incoming links. I’d conlcude that one link from a PR 7 site, and maybe a few stray minor links, would create a PR 4 site.

The alternative
Services such as my recently launched Weblog Empire Blog Link Exchange (ok, shameless plug, but there is a moral to this story) change this equation because you are able to network with bloggers with similar blogs and exchange links in the same way blogs and bloggers use to in the blogosphere 2 and 3 years ago, in the age prior to automated link exchange emails where today its nearly impossible to actually ascertain legitimate link exchanges. I’d note also that these links are usually contextual (ie people are exchanging links based on similar topic areas) and in this case the blogger only swapped links with blogs he liked, in the same way that many bloggers did (and to some extent still do) via email.

Google appreciates quality links, it doesn’t appreciate lower quality links.

The disclaimer
I’ve written here about improving your Page Rank with Google but I do not suggest in anyway that you should attempt to game the system Google’s Page Rank service is meant to provide a quality review of a site. However, there is nothing that stops you improving your standing with Google, particularly if you are doing less linking as opposed to more, which is what I’m suggesting in this post (to a point).

The reality is on PR:
1. Many advertisers will consider your PR when they place an ad. Although some may wish to manipulate Google with their ads, I honestly don’t believe all of them look at it this way. To many advertisers PR is a quality metric that they assess along with things such as Alexa traffic.
2. Better PR normally equals better traffic and success in the longer term, the two are interlinked. Using PR as a metric in which to improve you blog isn’t any different than looking at ways of increasing your traffic from any of way, what’s different here is that I’ve chosen PR as a measurement of future success (so Matt Cutts, please don’t ban me :-) ). It’s part of the bigger picture and shouldn’t be taken into consideration alone in building a successful blog, but it’s still an important part of the jigsaw puzzle.

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