Monitoring the blogosphere: should you take the leap?

Blogging seems to be the word on every communicator's lips these days. Companies big and small are "either already blogging or considering it, citing reams of information about how this new communication tool is expanding the connection companies have with their customers, their employees, even the media. But does everyone really do it, and does it make sense for you?

Think about who you are and who your customers are. When the market research firm comScore's "Behaviors of the Blogosphere" study appeared last August, for example, some people were quick to question some of its findings. What generated suspicion wasn't the startling headline numbers--although the fact that one in six Americans visits blogs is pretty surprising--but smaller anomalies immediately apparent only to blogger initiates. Gizmodo has more unique users than Engadget? Quelle horreur!

The somewhat arcane nature of this outrage points to problems in comScore's methodology. To describe its methodology as flawed would be harsh: Its sample panel included some 1.5 million people, a number that should be sufficiently large enough to ensure a representative group.

But it's the identity rather than the number of these panelists that cause the problems. ComScore, like any other panel-based calculator, lures its guinea pigs with techie delights such as antivirus upgrades, although it's worth noting that they're not so delightful for some--as one post on the blog of Weblogs Inc. CEO Jason Calacanis put it, "The only ones running comscores [sic] software are users that are too dumb to uninstall spyware." Well, quite.

To give comScore its due, the company does supplement its online findings with more traditional means of market research. Which is to say it probably has a dedicated unit of cold-call specialists. But who's engaging with nuisance callers from Internet measurement companies?

More recently, Onalytica released a white paper examining the effect of the blogosphere exemplified in Jeff Jarvis' "Deli Hell" rant. For those out of the loop, Jarvis' tirade against Deli first appeared on his Buzzmachine blog, before eventually breaking onto the online pages of traditional media such as the BBC News, The New York Times and the Guardian Unlimited. Onalytica based its research, rigorously enough, on the academic method of citation indexing, in which the number of references to any given piece in the published work of others becomes a measure of the original piece's influence. Citation indexing would appear a perfect means to assess an environment as chummy as the blogosphere.

As promising as the method may seem, Onalytica's research is as limited as comScore's--for similar reasons. The main problem is that the whole thing is about Dell, whose business is likely to be of more interest to your average "techhead" than to the general public. And is this average techhead not also more likely to read and write blogs? That standard epithet of 20th-century media, the endless echo chamber, seems to be equally apt at describing the blogosphere. It's a nursery for narratives unable to invade mass consciousness without the assistance of the grown-up media of traditionalauthorities.com.

Learning from experience

Another survey might show how few potential scandals occupying blogs have made it into the wider public eye without the assistance of traditional media. Cosmetics giant L'Oreal came under fire late last year for promoting an antiaging cream via a fake blog (a "flog") purportedly written by an uncreased 30-something named Claire, but more likely the work of a senior PR executive named Jean-Paul. But outside the U.S. and Japan, all the shots were fired online, and even in these Net-hungry territories more mainstream exposure--and consequently the overall damage to the brand among its core audience--was extremely limited.

Despite the fallout, the flog may well have been worth it. L'Oreal learned from the experience, quickly establishing a real blog that included criticism. How many would-be buyers of Peel MicroAbrasion were lost we may never know, but I suspect it's not that many. Techheads, seldom associated with high standards of beauty, are one major element of the blogosphere's writer-readership. The other significant demographic still awaits the signs of aging: the millennial generation.

"Millennials" are defined as those born between 1980 and 2000. And guess what The New York Times recently reported about them? They don't read traditional newspapers (which they describe as too big and clunky), they like technology, they like consuming, and they like consuming technology. So, if consumer technology is your business, you should probably be doing something about the blogosphere.

It will require cunning and subtlety, but it is not beyond the powers of professional communicators to join blog conversations and influence their direction. L'Oreal's Claire was undoubtedly a misplaced step intended in this general direction. Successful examples have, by definition, attracted considerably less attention.

The "emergence" of blogs

Imagine global media, both new and old, like water heating up in a pan. First come the bubbles at the bottom, charging randomly, violently in their brief life span. This is the vast majority of the blogosphere.

But in the warming water, there comes a point at which the molecules suddenly and enigmatically align themselves, and the water simmers. The phenomenon is known as emergence, and it is exactly what happens to blogs at the corresponding level of the media. Here are what could be called "consumer-facing blogs"--the likes of Engadget (a blog about new technology and gadgets), professional or semiprofessional magazines linking to similar sites, constituting something like a settled aggregate of Internet content. It has an appreciable and growing audience, and it's the place to watch for that potential crisis that you don't want anywhere near the traditional media, no matter who your audience might be.

Content that makes it here has been sufficiently compelling to stand apart from the blogosphere's cacophonous chatter. If it's compelling enough, it can go one further. At boiling point, large bubbles splash with urgency across the surface of the water. Crisis-spelling content erupts across the pages of traditional media, online or off.

The model is remarkably similar to the structure of traditional media, although the processes--and particularly the speed at which a new voice can rise through the ranks--are all hugely accelerated. Some argue that the sheer number of niche interests to which the Net caters is the mark of new media. But as far as the power of niche markets goes, in my capacity as a media analyst, I've realized that no matter how extensive and vile the condemnation in the pages of Northwest Fish Farming Weekly, it's the tart comment in The Wall Street Journal that causes problems.

All for the time being, of course. Because if there's one thing guaranteed about millennials, it's that they'll grow up. Any consideration of this does not bode well for traditional authority, certainly not for the icons of print media. It is hard to see any evolution of media that will be kind to the newspapers, although that's not to say the professional communicator can start ignoring them anytime soon. In our lifetime the papers will remain an important channel, although our understanding will shift toward closer and closer examination of demographics groupings as the readership ages. A hardcore following of "general print media readers" could stick around for a while, but it will be increasingly eccentric. A newspaper revival of the kind that has come about for certain retro formats in the face of keen electronic competition seems unlikely for the papers. Ironically, it is the ephemeral nature of their content that makes them prey to new media.

In the U.K., as the Guardian newspaper made a 80 million [pounds sterling] investment recently in color printing presses, voices from inside the paper made it clear that they expected this to be the last such expense on print. Traditional authorities recognize that long-term relevance, even permanence, if you will, necessitates finding a new home for their powerful brands online.

The millennials have their own totems, and it goes without saying that Google is the most potent. With its nerdy public-service image, its matchless and mysterious homespun technology, and its largely unquestioned reputation for slick search supremacy, Google stands out as the one new authority capable of standing up to the old. Its content might be almost 100 percent outsourced, but it can readily provide the same diet as traditionalauthorities.com--not to mention a near-infinite selection of richer, more obscure fare.

Google also likes blogs, drawn to their tendency to link to one another. Should our information-gathering habits continue their migration toward new media, communication planning will find itself increasingly focused on ever smaller target audiences. Understanding this landscape--detailed content analysis rather than sweeping statistical summation will be key.

Look over your shoulder

But before we all rush to pick apart the bubbling-under blogosphere, we should pause for thought. In many instances, blogs still appear amateurish and nascent, while at the same time there are claims that the blogging phenomenon has peaked, at least in some countries. (The dynamics of new media in territories whose traditional authorities are distrusted and despised constitute an entirely different article.) But look over your shoulder, and here come the mobloggers (bloggers who post from mobile devices) and the podcasters.

The point is this: With technologies evolving as quickly as those of new media, it would seem wrongheaded to become overly fixated on the blogosphere as it currently exists. Today's professional communicator must keep one mindful eye on the simmering gateway of emergent blog content, that's for sure--but the other should just as carefully watch for what's coming next.

Blogging behaviors

Here are some key findings from comScore's "Behaviors of the Blogosphere" study, an examination of the behavior of consumers who visited top weblogs and blog hosting services during the first three months of 2005.

* Roughly 50 million U.S. Internet users visited blog sites in the first quarter of 2005.

* 30 percent of all U.S. Internet users and one in six of the total U.S. population visit blogs.

* Five hosting services for blogs each had more than S million unique visitors in that period, and four individual blogs had more than 1 million visitors each.

* Of 400 of the biggest blogs observed, segmented by seven (nonexclusive) categories, political blogs were the most popular, followed by "hipster" lifestyle blogs, tech blogs and blogs authored by women.

* Compared with the average Internet user, blog readers are significantly more likely to live in wealthier households, be younger and access the Web via high-speed connections.

* Blog readers also visit nearly twice as many web pages as the Internet average, and they are much more likely to shop online.

According to Technorati, a search engine that keeps track of what's going on in the world of blogs, this is the "state of the blogosphere" as of February 2006:

* The blogosphere doubles in size every five and a half months.

* It is now more than 60 times bigger than it was three years ago.

* On average, a new blog is created every second of every day.

* 13.7 million bloggers are still posting three months after their blogs were created.

* Technorati tracks about 1.2 million new blog posts each day, about 50,000 per hour.

Paul Miller is a senior consultant at Romeike, a U.K.-based provider of integrated communication management solutions