I think I have seen it all or in this case heard it all and then they come out with a Twitter song! This is awesome!

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I am behind the times on this one but I wanted to get it on my site to refer to it later.  This is a great video and worth the watch.

Some of the information in this video is already obsolete.  Social Media is moving at a rate that none of us can keep up with, and I for one sometimes must take a step back to look at the big picture to keep up with the rate of growth.

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I was just reading this morning on Techmeme the various sites that are discussing the closing down of the URL shortener service Tr.im.  I then came across a post written by Robert Scoble called, "Twitter’s platform shortcomings."  I have written a number of posts about Twitter here and we are seeing the company mature and grow before our eyes like a child.  Sometimes a child makes poor choices and sometimes they make us proud, but when I read things like the Twitter "blessing" and I have to cringe a little.  Blessing exerts some connotation of power, and with power comes great responsibility as we all know.  We see companies like Facebook with this same type of power and the same feeling of the hair standing on the back of my neck continues. I must echo Robert’s sentiment here when he states:

OK, most of you probably never have used tr.im to shorten your URLs so they fit into Twitter. But I did. I liked the URL better than bit.ly, which is the service that Twitter has “blessed.” Oh, how I hate Twitter’s “blessing.”

Pete Cashmore, of Mashable has another quote in his post that gives me the feeling all over again:

“…we just can’t justify further development since Twitter has all but annointed bit.ly the market winner.”

That from the Tr.im closing statement.  That is far too much power for one company, but I know that is part of doing business.  Google carries the same type of power and I have heard the likes of Michael Gray talk about the wielding of their power and how they can arbitrarily damn some sites and rise others to the heights of heaven.  I use that metaphor because that is nearly godlike in its functionality.  Google wants to be for good but not for evil and I suppose your definition of good and evil depend quite a bit on the way the ball bounces for you or against you.  In this case it seems that the ball has bounced against the folks at Tr.im.

We see applications come and go and in this particular instance it has implications that might hurt people in one camp over another.  To pick and choose who wins, who loses and how the game is played is far too much power in my opinion to give to companies.  The FTC is dabbling in the game with blogging and "sponsored conversations" and I would assume that some constituents will be contacting their authorities for some regulation of companies that have the power to bless.

Photo via polishamericancenter.org

Tags: Twitter, Techememe, Robert Scoble, Corporate Responsibility, Google

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I have been writing this blog post for the last 5 years.  No, I haven’t been actually writing this post for that long, but I have been preparing to write this post for nearly that long.  You see I have been a strategist a long time in Internet years.  I have put many of those strategies together, and I am happy to say that many of them actually worked, but I must also say unfortunately, some of them and I should say more than I care to admit have probably failed.  I tried most of these ideas and “campaigns” on my own company and used myself as the test subject.  I have always tried them in my own marketing, advertising and public relations and as I said, some work and some don’t. This post is not about the “try” or “the idea”, but the execution.

Many colleagues out there are expert strategists.  Many charge a pretty penny to come up with a strategy.  In fact, I too charge for that, and some would say (you know who you are) not nearly enough, but that is for a another post.  There are some great plans drawn out on the whiteboard of board rooms, and there are some bar napkins that I would like to have in a shadow box case as many of our greatest companies started there.  My company in fact was sort of started as a dare I think one night after having had too many drinks.  Having a good job and a stable company to work for, why would I ever jump into the entrepreneurial pool? I blame the alcohol.

“Build a better mousetrap and the world will beat a path to your door.” ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

All of us have the best mousetrap. That is our strategy.  We have the best way things can be done and the way that they should be done according to our extensive research and study. For my extensive study and research, (please see the archives here for a start) I have tried and failed and taken those ideas that have been most successful.  Some of it is still theory after all social media has been around less than some of my young children.  Given what we know of facts and how they are applied to each circumstance, all of the strategies seem to be close to the same Plan A or Plan B depending on which consultant or agency you happen to speak with about your company and needs.

I have noticed a trend based on some of the ideas and strategies implemented.  When companies are happy with a certain strategy it is only after the execution stage.  Most of them are all excited and gung-ho when the strategy is discussed and laid out in front of them, but the truly satisfied are not such until after the plan has been put into place and the results come to fruition.  Be it as simple as starting a company blog, setting up a comment policy, providing a podcast, or research on community outreach and providing that service and seeing your first conversion, the elation comes when the plan is executed.  It can be even more rewarding when a multifaceted and long and expensive journey has been commenced.

I am known for providing a sports metaphor now and then and this is not much different so I apologize for this ahead of time if you hate those. If I draw a play in the sand and at the snap of the football all goes to hell in a hand basket, the best laid plan pf x’s and o’s is not going to get me points on the board.  But when you truly make a plan, draw out a play and then deliver the ball to the end zone, all are happy and we get to celebrate with high fives all around.  Seems pretty simple.  The problem has always been execution.  As consultants or strategist are you executing your plan?  When was the last time you were in the end zone?

Tags: Social Media, Better Mouse Trap, Emerson, Social Media Marketing, Social Media Consulting, New Media

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One of the things that most of the local people here discuss is its diversity.  Many of the differernt cultures all come together be it tahitian, polynesian, portugese, japanese, chinese or other ethnic backgrounds, they all have their own language, philosophy and look. The same goes for resorts, hotels and other places we have been staying at here in the Hawaiian Islands. 

Some resorts are more into amenities like soap and lotions and spas, whereas others are more into the resort itself with, where it is located and what things you can do while there?  It has been interesting to note the different corporate look and feel so far between the Royal Hawaiian we stayed at our first night, the Grand Hyatt and now the Marriott.  Each has its own corporate culture underlying the Hawaiian experience.  I have had some very nice things about each of the hotels and some not so nice things, but that is after all the diversity I speak of.

As bloggers we have a different approach to our experience.  We are not just here to relax and have a good time but weare also here to create and produce some qaulity content.  I for one have been trying to live stream my experience and have my viewers go along for the ride, but that has proven nearly impossible since I have not been able to stay connected to the Internet for more than about 10 minutes at a time.  I actually received a nasty note from the Marriott as it thought I might be producing questionable content using their lobby Wifi.  Huh?  I’m promoting your hotel and resort…questionable? Not everyone is into the experience of blogging yet but they will be soon enough.  After all the Marriott does have a blogger.

I am now thinking that bringing my own Wifi with a broadband card is the way I should have gone.  That is of course until we go today to visit a volcano where even "my network" cannot reach.

Photos Via:  NASA and USGS

Tags: HawaiiHTA, Marriott, Grand Hyatt, Royal Hawaiian, Travel, Connectivity, Diversity

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The one where I get you to decide what I will do in Hawaii and then hopefully you too can go along…virtually.

I am hoping to live stream the events on my site at Social Mediasphere TV! I will record as much as possible the events that unfold. You choose where and what I go do it and bring you the experience through the live blog account, the recordings and Twitter stream!

The first island is up. KAUA’I
Currently scheduled to arrive Thursday morning, May 28; depart Saturday morning, May 30.

Mountain Tubing Adventure
Kaua‘i Backcountry Zipline Adventure Tour
Kaua‘i Plantation Railway
Kipu Falls Zipline Trek
K?loa Heritage Trail
L?wa‘i International Center
Steelgrass Farm – Chocolate Farm Tour
Waimea Canyon

If you know of something fun to do on this island that you don’t see here, suggest it in the comments and I will make it a vote that counts! My only suggestion is make it lawful. My wife’s suggestion, make it safe enough I won’t get killed. (I wont tell if you don’t tell.)

Next Up we go to the island of MAUI
Currently scheduled to arrive Saturday morning, May 30; depart Monday morning, June 1.

Hawai‘i Ocean Rafting
Hula Girl Pacific Rim Dinner Cruise
Kahoma Ranch Tours
Lahaina K?‘anapali Railroad – Sugar Cane Train
Maui Cave Adventures
Maui Horseback Tours
Nightly Hula Show at K?‘anapali Beach Hotel
Proflyght Paragliding
Tour of the Stars
Volcano Maui Air Tours

Next up we have HAWAI’I ISLAND
Currently scheduled to arrive Monday morning, June 1; depart Tuesday evening, June 2.

Dolphin Quest
Firenesia
Hawai‘i Pack and Paddle
Hawaii Volcanoes National Park
Hilo Pana‘ewa Rainforest Zoo and Gardens
K?lauea
Kona Coffee Tour
Lava Tube Cave Adventure: K?lauea Caverns of Fire
Native Guide Hawai‘i
Stargazing:
*Arnotts Lodge
*Bigti
*Hawai‘i Forest & Trail
*Mauna Kea Summit Adventures

Windward Coast and Waterfalls Tour

Next up we have the Island of O’AHU
Currently scheduled to arrive Tuesday evening, June 2; depart Weds/Thurs evening, June 3/4.

Battleship Missouri Memorial 10th Anniversary Celebration
Bike Hawai‘i
The Contemporary Museum
Dunebuggy Adventures
Ghost Tours of Old Honolulu
Hans Hedemann Surf School
Hawai‘i’s Plantation Village
Honolulu Soaring
North Shore
North Shore Surf Girls Surf School
O‘ahu Ghost Tours
Paddle Core Fitness
Waimea Valley Park
Wildside Specialty Tours

That is the four islands that we are visiting. I will have another post up about what I’ll be doing and when and where and how. I want to have you experience with me this social media trip! ALOHA!

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Perhaps that is not as much of a migration as it is a business trip for me.  I am headed to Miami tomorrow to speak at Wordcamp Miami and attend BarCamp Miami and Future of Web Apps ‘09.

I will be speaking at Wordcamp Miami as I did in Las Vegas on "Blogging for A Living", it is a presentation that I have given a number of times and therefore I wont have to prepare more than my usual, but more importantly, and perhaps more fun I will be doing a live radio show from BarCamp Miami courtesy of my client i-Lighter. 

You can follow along and be a part of things as well.  My show Social Mediasphere via Blog Talk Radio will have the live coverage of the event.  This is my first try at doing a live radio show, although I have been on Blog Talk Radio live while I was at Blog World Expo last year.

I’ll be interviewing attendees, speakers and whoever might happen by the table.  I have been sent some podcasting equipment and I will be hopefully not embarrassing myself with my non-technical skills.  You can join in on the fun.  I want to have as many people participate as possible.

After the fun on Sunday at Barcamp Miami, I’ll be attending the fun at FOWA ‘09 or the Future of Web Apps.  This event has some real dynamite personalities that are speaking at the event and hopefully I will get a few of them to stop by and be a part of the live radio show as well.  This show will be done on Blog World Expo Radio via the Blog Talk application as well so I would really enjoy it if you participated.  I will be live blogging the event as I can via the Blog World Expo Blog so stay tuned.

Tags: Barcamp Miami, Wordcamp Miami, FOWA ‘09, Future of Web Apps, i-Lighter, Blog Talk Radio, Blog World Expo, Blogging, Social Mediasphere, Blog World Expo Radio

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I have contributed to a really cool project that is being led to help the Susan G. Komen Foundation called the Project 100.  This is a book that is being written by 100 great social media minds and people that understand social media marketing.  The name of the book is going to be: Connect!  Marketing in the Social Media Era

I am embedding a Slideshare presentation as a teaser as what is to come.  I wanted to thank Jeff Caswell for the opportuynity for helping a great cause. You can get more information on the book and what is being done at The Project 100 site.

Tags: Project 100, Susan G. Komen Foundation, Social Media, Social Media Marketing, Jeff Caswell

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I am constantly finding reasons why I am not a proponent of hosting blogging plans. I am a Wordpress supporter yet I don’t recommend hosting your blog on Wordpress.com, and in spite of the Google mantra of doing no evil, I tell many to run away from Google’s application Blogger. In a recent article by Tech Dirt regarding Google’s unilateral deletion of blog posts I get another piece of the puzzle that causes me to continue my preaching. In the post, they indicate:

An RIAA source says that the group sends Google a list of URLs it doesn’t like, and Google “then deals with the problem.” Google says that it notifies bloggers after their posts have been taken down, in accordance with the DMCA. But it should hardly be surprising that many of those affected say they’ve gotten no such notice, nor that the offending material was either legally posted and/or supplied by the labels themselves.

I have always been a strong advocate for owning my own content. Be it good or bad content it is still mine. I have heard the stories of whole blogs being deleted that were around for years and all of the data that was in that blog being lost to a black hole never to be seen. I am just not that trusting of others with my blog. I am not keen on the idea of Google being able to subjectively judge a post and remove it without any due process other than an alleged email or notice they sent. Sure it costs a little extra than just the URL and some specialty template, but paying for hosting and controlling your own destiny is something that is worth the price.

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I was multitasking when it happened. When I mention the idea of multitasking, I mean serious business. I was once looked at by my old boss as someone that could teach ADD to a rock.

I was looking over my emails for the day and saw I had an inordinate amount of Twitter followers. I attributed the large amount of people recently using Mr. Tweet. I knew when I left the house to spend Sunday afternoon with the family at the pool I would have a number of emails to respond to when I got home. After supper I logged in and saw a few emails from people that told me the bad news. My Twitter account had been compromised. I had looked at my Tweetdeck and tried to send a message, it was also not working. The password changed on my account and the ability to send messages stopped. I had been hacked by a spammer. The irony of this was, I was on the lookout for spammers as earlier in the day I had tweeted about this very thing.

I tried logging into Twitter from the regular account on the application itself. I couldn’t. I needed to reset the password. Then I noticed that twitter themselves had indicated that the spammers had attacked many other people as well. The picture you must be wary of is on the Twitter blog and a copy of that I have posted below.

I had fallen prey to this because I wasn’t paying attention to what was happening. I was entering new followers from email and didn’t pay attention to what I was doing and found that I had fallen for one of the oldest tricks in the book. I gave someone my password and login not realizing I had done so. Then I had left my house giving them access for a long time. The worst thing that could have happened. I always suggest people change their passwords on a regular basis just for this purpose. I’m the last guy that should be in charge of passwords. Just ask my assistant. She always gives me a hard time. Actually if she wanted she could probably hack my bank account and everything else I have that requires a password. I’m hoping we can come up with a new way of logging in to our accounts in the future. I am ready to install the retinal scan after this last episode.

In the meantime, if you find that you have been compromised like I have, please change your passwords immediately. Then when you feel safe and that your accounts are okay, change your password again. To those of you that had to deal with my account being hacked by these bad guys, I apologize. I hope that my Twitter credibility will hold up after this latest craziness. My thanks to the folks at Twitter for the quick response to this and for making it so we victims of this can keep things going. They responded quickly to this and should be commended. This was accomplished on a Sunday following a holiday. That is customer service at its best, and protection of their customers at its finest.

As of the time that I posted this they are still trying to work the scam and they will be getting into more and more accounts. I am not sure what is being done to help prevent this other than getting suers to recognize when there is a problem. I hope that they can get that taken care of. In the meantime, if you see a message from anyone with a twitter login page, please ignore it.
UPDATE: Pete Cashmore seems to think this is a rite of passage for Twitter. You have made it when your site gets Phished.
Update 2: Here is a picture of the screen shot taken from a follower that received a message from me. Thanks @ghozali at http://andyghozali.info/

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Technorati has been an icon of the blogosphere since Dave Sifry began the company to track blogs and provide bloggers with statistics and search.  It was the first thing people downloaded to their blogs, and the first part of setting up a blog.  They seem to have lost that celebrity status.  There are so many companies that have been cracking away at that Technorati keystone that it appears they may crumble.  I have been waiting to hear some news from the Technorati camp and it appears that news is bubbling up as reported by TechCrunch.

When I talked with Richard Jalinchandra in Las Vegas at the Blog World Expo in November, he mentioned then that Technorati was in for some changes and that he wanted to lead the company back to its glory days.  He couldn’t talk then about what he was doing but it seems that the cool stuff I expected and the things the head of marketing, Aaron Krane,  talked about on my Social Mediapshere radio show would make them a shining star again.  I didnt expect them to enter the advertising arena.

Tris an I questioned them on why they were not indexing search results past six months and it looks like they may be rethinking that with adding an advertising component to their search.  Arrington states:

Technorati will certainly be competing head to head with FM, although sources say they’ll focus on the long tail of the market as well (FM only takes larger sites). The network will be a self-serve exchange for bloggers (and other publishers) as well as advertisers. Ad units will include both display and text ads, and will allow units to be charged on both a CPM and CPC basis. (emphasis added)

I was hoping that Technorati would be adding some features that would be more than just another way for bloggers to add a revenue component to their blogs.  I want to see them return to an application I would run to five times a day because they offered a way to see stats and a something that was cool to experience as I did back in the day.

This is part of the reason I have hooked my wagon to the folks at Lijit*.  I certainly see that they have ideas to make their “wijit” something that is a first add-on to a blog.  I am not sensing that Technorati has that coolness factor in mind.  I certainly understand that after raising $20M in funding you might want to start thinking of making money and perhaps they will change the way they run their business and we have only seen the beginning of their new glory days.  It appears Richard is doing his job of CEO and is running the company in the best interest of those investors, but I for one want to see them do some things they used to do, only better.  Don’t make it about the page views make it about the blogger and a company that every blogger loves to use.

[photo via Brian Solis]

*Lijit is a client and I do some evangelism for them.

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My friend and mentor Paul Chaney recently asked a question on Facebook about the writing on the wall of the possibility of blogs exiting stage right.  His question:

Two things happened this month that are of significance where business blogging is concerned. Rick Bruner offered up the BBC domain for sale and BBS Chicago was canceled. What do you think that says about the state of business blogging as a trend?

Paul has been around long enough to see the rise of blogging, and the now plateau we seem to be seeing in the area of business blogging.  I responded with a short answer:

I think the shine has left the tool, and we are seeing a bit of a paradigm shift in the tech industry to newer applications. As far as businesses are concerned we have seen the early adopters, now we are beginning to see others see what it’s all about.

My idea is that in the tech industry and the early adopters, blogging is old news.  Who was attending blogging conferences and reading about business blogging?  The tech industry and those early adopters.  Now it’s time to start selling the idea to those that have not already had a taste of the Kool-Aide, or are savvy to what blogs can accomplish.  This is the hard sell era. 

Paul assured me in a conversation he and I had about his question:

I think blogging has matured as a marketing and business communications practice and found it’s place in the overall spectrum. It will still continue to grow, though at a more measured pace than before.

Paul is working on his own plans for his new role at Bizzuka, Inc., as its new Internet Marketing Director.  I hope the company knows what an asset they have hired in Paul to run their Internet marketing.  As soon as Paul gets that company’s blog up and running I can assure you it will be on top of my subscribed feeds and must reads.

A timely post about the blogging slide, is a post by Richard called Is Blogging in “The Dip”? Are we Throwing The Blogging Baby and Bathwater out?  I dont want to steal his entire post but he makes a very good point I would like to direct you to:

From where I sit, business blogging is just starting, so the future has not arrived. It is just emerging. As for those valuable ?Naked Conversations? between businesses and people, I sense they are also just in their infancy. And those conversations are found in blogs ? every day, hundreds of them, good, bad, fun and serious. Real people conversing among themselves, and sometimes with businesses. I am not seeing these real conversations at YouTube or using video. Nor do I see those connections at MySpace or FaceBook. Certainly not to the same and open extent I see them in blogs. Are we leaving the promise of blogging behind to pursue the next big thing, without ever realizing its potential?

I?m even wondering if blogging is in Seth Godin?s ?The Dip? and is going to need that focus and attention to get it through the dip, to realize all it could be. From my travels around the web, blogging is still producing the most genuine conversations between a business and people who want to talk about that business. But maybe I just don?t get it all yet either?

As Shel Israel recently noted (and reminded me personally, for which I say “Thanks Shel!”) ?Naked Conversations was essentially about conversations replacing messages because of the internet. We called that part a revolution and we still do. We talked almost exclusively about blogs because they were the only power tool of the conversational revolution at the time. What has changed is that there are now a great many tools and anyone can use any combination of them.? In this vein, Hugh ,over at Gaping Void, made it clear that ?Bogging isn?t for everybody, Web 2.0 is for everybody

I just think we need to be careful. Facebook has great features for sure. There are lots of sexy Web 2.0 applications, but let?s not throw baby blogging out with the bathwater. That is where I still see real conversations emerging.

I agree with Richard’s thoughts here.  Business blogging is not yet made it to mainstream.  It has been looked at played with, used, abused, and tested and tried by those that do that sort of thing and been given its stamp of approval.  Now it has moved on.  It is seen now by that early group as approved, adopted, and sold as a tool that has passed muster.  It now is entering the next phase which is implementation by all.  It used to be that if you didn’t have a website, you were dead.  Now since you are living with your website, if you don’t already have a blog, “your’e dead”.

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As I finished up the three part video series that Robert Scoble produced, I had to chuckle somewhat at what appeared to be the beginning of a battle not too unlike the recent movie 300 regarding the Xerxes battle with King Leonidas. I have been reading the responses throughout the blogosphere and I have a feeling the arrows being sent in his direction will virtually blot out the sun.  As in the movie, I’m sure Robert would reply with the fact that he will just have to fight in the shade.

Why is he so outnumbered in this battle?  He is taking on the almighty dollar, and the master of all things monetary, Google.  I have not had an opportunity to re-watch the videos and take notes, but I wrote a few things down as Robert uncovered his revelation of the death of Google.  What it seems he was getting at was the destruction of paid search.  This of course is the core of Google and how they became King Xerxes, eating up and devouring everything in their path to the search world domination. He preaches of a land of milk and honey that we would all consider “organic search”.  The perfect results of each query, without the “noise” of spam or paid search. 

His champions in the fight seem to be Techmeme, Facebook and Mahalo.  These three fighting side by side may be the answer to his call, but unlikely to be the final answer to the new age of search. 

Techmeme is difficult to understand somewhat as it relates to the search world, but I do tend to get my news in the tech industry from this site.  I do trust its results but don’t always find that it is all-inclusive of the things I might find important.  I have to go outside the realm of Techmeme to get more in depth of what I’m looking for in information.

Facebook is still to young  and too untested for me to really put mush stock in it as a search tool, but we did discuss Facebook at length in our show today.

Mahalo?  This seems to me to be a little too controlled by the man behind the mask in Jason Calacanis.  He discussed the idea of bias at Gnomedex, but until I can filter out the human filter side of things, I really don’t want to have 100 people dictating what I can find on search.  It will take a while for this application to really show promise, but it might be one of the better ways to eliminate the paid search noise discussed by Robert in his video.  The only thing I don’t have an answer to is when will Jason Calacanis throw the switch and create his own noise?

I have some reservations about Human whisper and the Computer noise, but I think we are early in the war.  I like the idea of mashing the above models together for the perfect search tool.  At this point I’ll stand behind Robert and fight the spammers, the sploggers, and the noise he identifies.  Where I don’t stand is next to him when he lumps the likes of Danny Sullivan and the rest of the SEO world into the spam world.  I think there is room for the technology types to help shape the tool he discusses.

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It’s not often we get to toot our horn around here, but when we can, I like to play it loud and play it often.  I was reading through the comments section of the blog and noticed that Alex has given us a link to a Wall Street Journal article by Sarah Needleman entitled Blog It and They May Come. The article discusses small businesses and their blogging campaigns.  It was a nicely written article and it does point our some of the problems we see from small businesses, this blogging thing is work.

To my pleasant surprise, about half way through the article I saw a familiar name.  I was looking at a past client that used our services and is now being interviewed and quoted in the Wall Street Journal!

Making the Link

Ty’s Toy Box Inc., an online retailer based in Erlanger, Ky., has lured people to its blog about trends in the toy-licensing industry by having other blogs and Web sites link to it. The company arranged a link-exchange agreement in April with TheToyGuy.com, a Web site from toy-industry expert Chris Byrne that features news and product reviews.

“We coordinated it so that occasionally our blog and Chris’s blog are about the same issue, but from different perspectives,” says George Stolpe, vice president of business development and media relations for Ty’s Toy Box. The two blogs link to each other in each post, he says.

Ms. Melberg says the links help boost a company’s search-engines ranking because blogs recommended by external sources rank higher than ones without link referrals.

According to Mr. Stolpe, Ty’s Toy Box pays a free-lance writer to maintain its blog and says the total cost for it is “a very minimal amount.” He says while he can’t quantify the blog’s role in the near-triple-digit average growth in sales every year since its start, he has no doubt it has played an important part.

After seeing that I was proud of Ty Simpson and George Stolpe for sticking it out and seeing the power of blogging.  They paid one of our bloggers for a while and decided on a different path but finally stuck to it in the long run and now they are a feature in the Wall Street Journal.  I’m not saying all of our client’s will be this much of a success, but if I have anything to do with it you can bet I’ll try!

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I read via my friend David Krug at Telegraphik that bloggers in the political arena are wanting to start their own Blogger’s Union.  Ashley M Heher of Fox News is reporting that:

In a move that might make some people scratch their heads, a loosely formed coalition of left-leaning bloggers are trying to band together to form a labor union they hope will help them receive health insurance, conduct collective bargaining or even set professional standards.

This could only be coming from the left of course.  Oh sorry Tris, I said I wouldn’t do that!

I’m having a difficult time seeing Susie Blogger breaking kneecaps on a virtual picket line, or how this union would gather enough strength to actually be viable.  The article goes on to state:

Few bloggers are paid for their posts, and even fewer are able to make a living doing the work. But many say they often devote as much energy and time to their online musings as they do to their salaried careers.

While bloggers work to organize their own labor movement, their growing numbers are already being courted by some unions.

I’m wondering what companies like ours would do if a union system would be formed.  I’m certainly not a fan of unions, and I would not be adopting their charter or bylaws into my own organization.  Yes, I can see where it might make it better for private companies to get better paying blogging jobs, but I don’t think we are at that point yet with the adoption of blogging as a viable career in most companies.  Companies contact me everyday for wanting to hire a blogger, and when I give them a price, they usually get sticker shock.  They are not yet ready to pay full salaries and in most cases are not even ready to adopt what would even be close to minimum wages for the amount of time put into a blog post.

It seems that the Writer’s Unions is courting bloggers to join their ranks.  I’m not sure if this is in response to the latest debate of credentials for bloggers like journalists, but it seems that blogging is getting to be more of a mainstream idea in that arena.

The idea of a union may appeal to the ones looking for benefits, and other things unions bring, but I can see no way that they would compete with the free lancer, and the outsourcing taking place in corporations today.  I will definitely be watching the talk on this issue.  I will let you know now I would pay any of my bloggers the going union rate, but first we have to find companies willing to pay that amount.  Good luck to them.

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