The Blog Herald

Sarah Palin Blasts Media Not Just Bloggers

Lorelle VanFossen — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 18:59:59 +0000

When asked in an interview with Sarah Palin on FoxTV, her first public interview after the election, if there were false allegations made that needed to be addressed, and Sarah Palin blames the media, with a minor slap against bloggers that is making the rounds of the blogosphere.

…if the media had taken one step further and investigated a little bit, not just gone on some blogger - probably sitting there in their parent’s basement, wearing their pajamas, blogging some kind of gossip or lie regarding, for instance, the discussion of who is Trig’s real mom…and that was in mainstream media, the question that was asked, instead of just coming to me and setting the record straight. And when I tried to correct that - that yeah, I’m truly Trig’s mother - to take days for everything to have been corrected…

Rumors are flying around that she is attacking and judging bloggers. While she does make a sweeping generalization about bloggers, one that we bloggers deal with daily, her point is to actually take the media to task for using blogs as a source of fact and fiction.

Traditional Media Using Blog Content

While traditional media sources are losing traction economically as well as visibly, many are turning to blogs for their stories. If not for the facts, then for the entertainment value.

Why didn’t the media investigate thoroughly before reporting on a log of the various myths, gossips, and rumors that flew around the entire US election campaign, covered by mainstream media 24/7? It would be so easy to check a birth certificate, check with family and friends, or even check the hospital staff to verify the facts behind her son’s birth. Sure, privacy issues might get in the way, but they didn’t verify immediately before reporting, and if they did verify the facts, they let the attention-getting rumors fly around to drum up much needed business long before they reported on the truth.

When the truth was reported, it was third page news reporting not front page. The truth is often so much more boring than made up crap.

Why didn’t they? Why did the mainstream media deliver gossip and rumors instead of facts?

It’s Easy to Avoid Facts

First, it was easy to ask the same questions that blogger’s and others were asking. It’s naturally to be suspicious of a woman Palin’s age, especially with much older kids, to wonder why she would knowingly risk having another child. It’s natural to be curious, too, about why a woman, fresh from pregnancy with a special needs child, would accept the nomination of vice president of a very busy and huge country at a time when her child and family needed her more than her job. With such overwhelming responsibilities, maybe we could conclude that her bonds with the child aren’t as tight as they should be if she really gave birth. That’s human nature to ask yourself these things. This aren’t evil questions. They are natural.

When natural questions come up in the media as stories rather than questions, they aren’t facts. They are entertainment. Big entertainment. Let’s all muse together and avoid the truth because it’s juicer!

Actually, it’s is a truer statement that truth is stranger than fiction, and often more entertaining. Why didn’t someone do a story on the struggles Palin must have gone through after finding out her child had Down’s Syndrome, trying to make plans for the future and her family dealing with the responsibilities, and then getting the invite to be a vice presidential candidate and having to struggle with the decision and impact on her life as well as the life of her child and family. That’s a better story. It’s got heart and spirit and courage. Instead, we all groaned when she didn’t know some geographical or political information about Africa.

If the media followed the daily struggle by Palin to deal with the impact of being thrown from anonymity into the spotlight of the world instead of whether or not the Republican Party funded her wardrobe, the election might have gone a different direction. So why didn’t they? Why did they revel in the fiction instead of the facts?

Probably because it was easy.

It’s Expensive to Find the Truth

Second, it’s expensive to send out people to research the facts. The old journalist days of spending days or weeks working up a story to ensure that all the proof is in before reporting, to keep the journal’s bias out of the story, having the truth mean more than assumptions - those days are gone. Newspapers, magazines, television, cable, they can’t afford to have reporters and investigators investigating. What they can’t get in a few minutes on Google or other Internet research, they won’t get because they rarely send someone out in the field. It’s just too costly.

So what are they left with? Bloggers? The new in-the-field reporters.

There are a lot of rights and wrongs that come with relying upon citizen reporters. Some bloggers do uncover the truth long before the media does. Some ask the hard questions and find the answers. Some ask the hard questions, and wait for others to come up with the answers. Some also sit around in basements wearing pajamas and just wonder loudly enough, and with enough certainty in their wondering to make people believe their legitimacy. Some of those who wonder also sit in well lit rooms in office buildings wearing modern office attire.

And some bloggers ask the hard questions hoping the media, the source for truth in news, to do the research and give the world the right answers.

When the wonder becomes a story, and that story is taken for legitimate fact, that’s when things break down in the system and people get hurt. More importantly, the sources can also get hurt.

Part of the loss of integrity and trust in the news media is self-imposed. Do you trust the media any more? After years of mistrust, is it any wonder that people are turning from mainstream media towards other sources?

When did we stop trusting the news? We should have never fully trusted the news, but we had confidence it if for many years. It was the nightly news with the trustworthy white man with the comforting and strong voice who led us through the confusion of the world around us and made us feel safe. Right? When did it start falling apart?

Some blame CNN, the first 24 hour news source. With 24 hours to fill, and only so many news stories worth reporting on, they had to find filler. As more challengers to CNN’s reign rose up, they, too, had to find more filler, and competition to the dry news. News around the world today is now more entertainment based rather than factual just to fill in all the time slots and keep viewers returning for more fun - not always the truth.

We have more sources for information and news than at any time in history, available instantly via the Internet. The next ten years are going to prove very interesting to see how these shifts and changes in the news media, online and off, will go.

Media Dictates Public Opinion

As Palin found out, the news media, hawking fact or fiction, does dictate public opinion.

In “Ellen DeGeneres: Here and Now,” she describes modern television and cable news as enough to make us want to take anti-depressants:

Was watching the news the other day…when I was a kid, the news was on once a day. You either caught it or you missed it. Now, the news is on 24 hours a day. And that’s not enough. They got a guy talking, they have a crawl down there…you’re online, you’re putting in your opinion on the poll - I said NO! …and if you stop paying attention to the crawl, you go back to the guy for a minute, and you go back to the crawl, and you catch the end of something - about Madonna’s left foot - what about Madonna’s left foot - what happened! You’re waiting for it to come back around again and it goes to commercial. There should be one crawl that goes around over and over again that says “Things are getting worse.”

There are a lot of people saying and thinking that the economy around the world wouldn’t be so bad if we could wake up in the morning and hear the news telling us that things were looking up - instead of being greeted with non-stop interviews with horrible bad news, assumptions, estimates, and predictions that things are indeed going to get worse. Worse sells.

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WordPress Wednesday News: Beta 3 Released, WordCamp Australia, No WordPress 2.6.4, and More

Lorelle VanFossen — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 17:22:48 +0000

WordPress 2.7 is at beta version 3 and the first Release Candidate is due any moment. I’ve collected tons of articles covering the next release of WordPress, expected to be one of the most exciting ever. WordCamp Australia is this weekend. Old versions of WordPress continue to be hacked, so please upgrade and not wait for WordPress 2.7. Be warned that if you are using WordPress 2.6.4, it could be fake. And more WordPress news.

WordPress News

WordPress 2.7 Development News: WordPress 2.7 Beta 3 fixed a lot of styles and design elements for the new interface, integrating 144 commits since beta 2. This version also includes an update for the first WordPress Plugin, “Hello Dolly.” The media upload buttons now have an “if available” option. They won’t show unless the ability to upload is available. QuickPress now features “Submit for Review” if the contributor can’t publish posts directly. They’ve added an API to the Administration Panels to make adding screen options easier. The Release Candidate One should be available any time now in final preparation for release by the end of the month if all continues on its right track. WordPress.com and WordPressMU will have WordPress 2.7 fully integrated a couple weeks later.

Jacob Santos has written “10 WordPress Features You’ll Never Care About”, a great list of some of the invisible features that helps make WordPress 2.7 even better, even if you can’t see or ever use them.

The WordPress 2.7: Project Icon for WordPress 2.7 is done and the winners are Ben Dunkle and Verena Segert. The two icon sets will be incorporated after some final adjustments into RC1.

Other articles and news about WordPress 2.7 include:

Will Automatic Upgrade Work With Your Web Host? WordPress 2.7 will feature the new Core Update automatic upgrading for WordPress, but can your server handle it? A article on the WordPress Codex, the online manual for WordPress Users, “Core Update Host Compatibility” explores whether or not the new feature will work with a specific web hosting company. NOTE: The upgrade feature may not work when updating to WordPress 2.7, but designed to work after upgrading.

Fake WordPress Malicious Site: Take care when searching for WordPress that you do not end up on a fake WordPress site. Wordpresz.org looks like the WordPress site but isn’t. The version of WordPress you download has malicious code in the download that opens a backdoor to your blog. If you upgraded WordPress to 2.6.4, you are running a fake version. There is no WordPress 2.6.4. The latest version is 2.6.3. This is just the first attempt and Automattic is looking at ways to keep users informed and warned, but pay attention to details and check the URL carefully before downloading WordPress. For more information see these articles, but please, do not click through to the fake WordPress site mentioned:

Learn the Jargon on WordPress: If you are new to WordPress, check out WordPress Semantics - Learning the Jargon, a great article on the WordPress Codex, the online manual for WordPress Users, that introduces you to the proper names for all those parts and pieces on WordPress. While people may call it the Dashboard, the Dashboard is just one panel within the WordPress Administration Panels. Using the right names for things helps when asking for help on the WordPress Support Forums or writing articles about using WordPress.

Don’t Let WordPress Get in Your Domain Name: A number of WordPress fan and “get-rich-quick-with-WordPress” sites have been starting up lately using “WordPress” in their domain name. This is in violation of the WordPress trademark. Before you do the same, reconsider. If you find a site using WordPress in their domain name, remind them of the trademark rules so they won’t be asked later to remove it.

Wall Street Journal Adds Another WordPress Blog: The WordPress Publisher Blog announced that the Wall Street Journal Magazine is now running as a CMS on WordPress.

LinkedIn Gets WordPressed: LinkedIn has added a variety of applications you can add to your LinkedIn page, including WordPress for LinkedIn. It works with full versions of WordPress and WordPress.com blogs to bring feed coverage of your blog to your Profile Page in a drag-and-drop module.

Showcasing the Best WordPress Blogs: The new WordPress Showcase highlights what are called the “best and brightest WordPress users who are using WordPress to do a lot more than blog.” Hosted on the WordPress.org site, they showcase screenshots and summary descriptions as examples of the possible with WordPress. For the next few weeks, I’ll feature some of the various blogs from different categories and tags to introduce you to the art of the possible with WordPress. This week showcases blogs tagged Music, which includes some very popular bands and singers.

The WordPress Podcast: The WordPress Community, better known as the WordPress Podcast, has a new look and design. Two week’s ago, Episode 46: WordPress 2.7 preview, Automattic acquires PollDaddy, Podcasting for Dummies and Practical Web Design Magazine featured Amazon S3 WordPress Plugin Simple Storage Service, MobilePress, WordCamps, and WordPress Plugins, Themes and tips.

WordCast Podcast: The latest episode, WordCast 36: Matt Mullenweg, proud papa, covers the beta releases of WordPress 2.7, WordPress Plugin that discriminate against visitors, game site WordPress Themes, songs, and more.

WordPress Weekly Podcast: The latest episode, WordPress - An Icon Of Its Time, covers the WordPress 2.7 icon competition, IntenseDebate reopening, a drag and drop tutorial, stick posts in WordPress 2.7, optimization tips, displaying archived posts in a new way, and more WordPress tips, news, and Plugins.

Last Week’s WordPress Wednesday News: Can’t get enough WordPress news and tips? There is so much news coming out about the latest version, so you can catch up with the past news in last week’s WordPress Wednesday News: 2.7 Delayed, Sneak Peak Video, Help WordPress iPhone, WordCamps.

WordPress on Your Calendar

WordPress Meetup or WordCamp Near You? If you are putting together a WordPress event, please email me so I can publicize it here. If there is a WordCamp near you, go. If you are interested in setting up a WordCamp, stay tuned for news and information on to bring a WordCamp event near you.

Here are some WordPress-related dates and events to put on your calendarh.

Upcoming WordCamps not scheduled or confirmed:

WordCamp Indy (Indianapolis)
WordCamp Augusta
WordCamp Seattle (WordCamp Seattle Twitter
WordCamp Argentina
WordCamp Perú

Upcoming WordCamp and WordPress Event News

WordCamp Australia News: WordCamp Australia in Sydney is next weekend, November 29-30, 2008. Registration is heating up and may fill, so get signed up soon.

WordCamp Las Vegas: If you are heading to WordCamp Las Vegas, the hosting hotel, Palace Station Hotel & Casino, has a discount for lodging if you Book Online or by phone at 800.634.3101 and use the discount code PCIWCLV before December 10, 2008.

WordCamp Whistler: The latest WordCamp Whistler Update for the January 24, 2009, event of skiing, photography, and WordPress is set and there will be an admission for the event, though they are seeking sponsors to keep the prices down as low as possible. This unique WordCamp is expected to fill very fast as it is set in one of the most beautiful ski resorts in the world. There is now a Facebook event set for those wanting to sign up, as well as a WordCamp Whistler Barcamp Page.

WordCampNOLA: WordCampNOLA in New Orleans has been announced and a Twitter account set up to generate interest. They are looking at scheduling the event in March 2009.

Past WordCamp Events

WordCamp Charlotte: WordCamp Charlotte welcome and Mark Jaquith’s slide shows are up and available for viewing on the WordCamp Charlotte site, along with Promotion Panel - Corey Creed on SEO and Content is King - Sarah Aarthum. An amusing moment was had for many with a man stuck in an elevator during the WordCamp event.

WordCamp Israel: WordCamp Israel 2008 (English) was last week and had more than 500 attendees for a very successful event in Tel Aviv.

WordCamps and WordPress Meetups Everywhere

WordPress Meetup: A WordPress Meetup is a frequent meeting of WordPress fans. If you would like to start a WordPress Meetup group, find a meeting place and announce it among your friends, and add a listing to the Yahoo Upcoming events for WordPress and WordPress Meetups Upcoming Events and tag them “WordPress Events” and “WordPress”, as many track WordPress event announcements there.
WordCamp: A WordCamp is a day or two long event with sponsors and dozens if not hundreds of WordPress fans gathering annually. If you would like to sponsor or host a WordCamp, check out the new official site for tracking WordCamps is WordCamp Central, which includes instructions and guidelines for running a WordCamp. Get a Twitter account and add a listing to the Yahoo Upcoming events for WordPress and WordPress Meetups Upcoming Events and tag them “WordPress Events” and “WordCamp.
WordPress and WordCamp Event News: In addition to our weekly Blog Herald WordPress Wednesday News, you can learn more about the various WordPress and WordCamp Events on the official WordCamp Central site, The WordCamp Report, Yahoo Upcoming events for WordPress, WordPress Meetups Upcoming Events, and Upcoming: Public events tagged with “WordCamp”.

WordPress Plugins and Themes News

IntenseDebate WordPress Plugin: Intense Debate has a new user-friendly WordPress Plugin available.

Understanding WordPress Nounces: Vladimir Prelovac offers “Improving security in WordPress Plugins using Nonces” as a guide to help you understand how WordPress uses nonces (number used once) to protect Plugins against cross-site request forgery (CSRF) hacker-attacks. If you are a WordPress Plugin developer, especially using AJAX, it’s important you understand the security risks involved in using nounces.

Twitter Tools Digest WordPress Plugin: Alex King reports problems with his Twitter Tools Digest WordPress Plugin and offers a fix to solve the issue with duplicate digests.

Interesting WordPress Plugins:

MyADManager WordPress Plugin sets up 125 pixel ads on a WordPress blog with direct purchase and payments through PayPal.
pingPressFM WordPress Plugin gives users of Ping.fm the ability to post to the service from your WordPress blog, which then releases update information and social media and microblogging posts across your social networks.
PHPInclusion WordPress Plugin permits PHP commands to be used in posts and Pages.
Thumbnail For Excerpts WordPress Plugin adds thumbnail images wherever you show experts of your blog post.

Finding WordPress Plugins: For more WordPress Plugins see the official WordPress Plugin Directory, the WordPress Plugins Database, and Weblog Tools Collection Plugin and Theme announcements.

WordPress Techniques and Tips

Here are some interesting WordPress tips I’ve found as I explore the web looking for WordPress resources:

WordPress Tips on Twitter: I’ve started sharing WordPress Tips I’ve collected over the past couple years on Twitter at @lorelleonwp. I’ll be posting one WordPress tip link every morning (PST) covering recent versions of WordPress and WordPress usages and features.

Want to Write a WordPress Tip and See It Here? If you would like your WordPress tip and technique included in this list, see Tips For Writing Good WordPress Tips and Writing and Publishing Code In Your WordPress Blog Posts. When its ready, contact me at lorelleonwordpress@gmail.com.

WordPress.com News

Prepare for WordPress 2.7: Within the next month, WordPress 2.7 features will begin appearing on WordPress.com. For most people, the biggest changes will be in the Administration Panel interface. Under the hood, you will see improvements in speed, multimedia uploading, and Google Gears integration. Watch your WordPress Dashboard panel for updates and news. Expect the new interface to make your WordPress blogging experience easier and faster.

WordPress Community News

WordPress and Education: Matt Mullenweg reports there is a new mailing list for discussion of WordPress and education on the WordPress mailing lists.

WordPress Logos: The official WordPress logos are available on WordPress as are WordPress fan art featuring variations on the WordPress logo and artwork.

Things You Need to Know in the WordPress Community:

WordPress Facebook Community: WordPress on Facebook
WordPress Schwag for Sale: WordPress Shop
WordPress Bugs: Reporting Bugs in WordPress
Online WordPress Manual: WordPress Codex
Have Your Say: WordPress Ideas
WordPress Experts Found: Automattic WordPress Consultants List, WordPress Jobs, and the WP-Pro mailing list
Help Installing WordPress: Installing WordPress for Free
WordPress is Trademarked: You are not allowed to use WordPress in your domain name
WordPress is WordPress: It’s spelled “WordPress” not “Wordpress”. Oh, and Plugin is Plugin, not plug-in (what you put into a wall electrical socket).

Past WordPress Wednesday News Reports

WordPress News Sources

If You Are Reading This: If you are reading this blog post NOT on the Blog Herald or from within your feed reader, it is being used against the copyright policy of the copyright owners. Please report it immediately so action may be taken to break some heads and feed scraping blogs.

Each Wednesday on Blog Herald is WordPress Wednesday, featuring the news around the WordPress Community. If you have a WordPress news item or tip to suggest, please contact me at this special email address: lorelleonwordpress@gmail.com

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Interview with Adii of WooThemes Fame

Thord Daniel Hedengren — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 13:00:33 +0000

Adii, or Adriaan Pienaar as his real name is, calls himself a WordPress rockstar and sells premium WordPress themes on WooThemes. You’ve probably came across him one time or another if you’ve been looking for a theme designer, or if you’re interested in premium themes.

Since the small controversy with WooThemes giving away a premium theme for free, much like Brian Gardner did with Revolution, I’ve been meaning to do an interview with Adii to get to know a little more on what he thinks about premium themes. So read on for a freshly pressed interview!

First of all, tell us a little about yourself?

Well, I’m a web designer and entrepreneur based in the beautiful city of Cape Town, South Africa. I’ve got a keen eye for all things pretty and because of that I’ve been attracted to design; even though I’m definitely not an artist by nature. I do however believe that my business studies has allowed me to bring a strategic approach to design and everything else I do online.

So this has lead me to establish both my own online, creative agency - {radiiate} - where I collaborate with the awesome members on my team; as well as WooThemes (which I set up with my partners - Magnus Jepson & Mark Forrester), where we sell commercial WordPress templates. Founding & running these businesses stimulates me immensely and this is probably more inline with what I see myself doing in future (i.e. investing more in the business-aspects of my future career).

I’ve always wondered, what’s with the “rockstar” thing these days? It seems designer loves to call themselves rockstars (or ninjas), but I doubt many play guitar better than I do!

I don’t know to be honest… Maybe it’s got something to do with our primeval need to be a rockstar with all the subsequent fame and superficial benefits that go along with it… :) But in all honesty, I never planned on using the term “rockstar” in my online branding - it just kinda happened when I decided to call myself a “WordPress Rockstar” in the latter parts of 2007. I do however think that I was at least one of the first bloggers / designers to do this (not taking credit for the term at all - since I first heard it from someone else) and it has just pretty much stuck from there.

Plus, I’m not too bad on Guitar Hero if that changes anything…

Rock Band maybe… Do you think designers use terms like rockstars or ninjas in their branding to make up for the fact that they aren’t as cool as, say, firefighters? Or is it just a novelty thing, something funny that stuck?
Guitar Hero is better than Rock Band… :)

I think the “rockstar” convention is probably a little bit of both… I don’t see designers & developers (especially the online kind) as the most sociable people ever and perhaps it is a case of giving themselves a bit of an ego boost via that naming convention.

But I also believe that it is just something that started somewhere and then loads of people jumped on the band wagon thereafter.

How is business for WooThemes, your premium WordPress theme marketplace?

This is not generally something that we (at WooThemes) like talking about, as we’re obviously not obliged to share financial details etc. since we’re a privately-held company. I can however confirm that the last 12 months (from the Premium News Theme days to the rebranding to WooThemes) has been a major journey (and adventure) and we’re still experiencing growth within the commercial themes market. So business is going well and we’re definitely satisfied with the fact that we’ve built an established and sustainable business.

I do however think that all 3 of the WooThemes partners would agree that we don’t measure the success or performance of the business based on profit or sales… I think all 3 of us are enjoying what we’re doing and because of that love we’re trying to move away from the expected. Just as an example - the recently finished WooThemes Design Contest & the WooThemes Survey that is currently running - are two projects that does not affect the financial performance of the business and we’re thus “investing” in these to try some new things, whilst diversifying our approach to doing business. So these are the things that currently excites us and based on this business is going extremely well.

You released a former premium theme for free a month ago. Do you think it is right to release themes that people have paid to use, for free after a period of time? Don’t you think that hurts the credibility of premium themes themselves?

Yes, maybe.

I’d like to think that I’m in the business of trying new things and exactly for that reason I’m not scared to venture out and release a year-old theme for free. I can admit that the release has been met with differing opinions, but by far the majority reaction has been a positive one. I also believe that our transparency in this regard (towards our users) helped immensely in navigating a potentially tricky situation.

That said, we’re still undecided on whether we’ll do it again. So I don’t think that a once-off thing (at this stage anyway) we did to celebrate our 1 year birthday should be representative of our policies in this regard.

Some claim that selling premium themes is against the WordPress license in particular, and not very open source-ish in general. What do you think about that?

They may just be right in saying that… Again, this is not something that I like to comment on, since there’s just to much subjectivity and bias going around the “community” to talk openly and objectively about the implication of these claims. So without rehashing the main points that I have made in various other discussions around the interwebs (with regards to commercial WP themes, the GPL licensing claims & open source in general), I’d like to point out the following:

I don’t believe that Open Source in its current form is a sustainable business model. I come from a traditional business background (read: academically) and I believe that a hybrid of traditional business practices (i.e. those which have been successful for the past 100 years) and Open Source / Web 2.0-related models is the way to go in the future. I’m a firm believer in Open Source (in the way that it democratizes access to resources), but in the end someone needs to be paid for that, because the bread and milk from your local cafe will unfortunately never be available for free.

Open Source (in the WordPress “community”) comes down to contributing back and improving the “community” as a whole. From this viewpoint, WooThemes probably does more than most other WP users / contributors, considering that about 50% of our users had never used WordPress as their CMS of choice prior to finding our website and themes.

If our themes are GPL licensed, then every other WordPress design ever made is GPL licensed. So according to me this means that anyone can download the HTML & CSS from The Blog Herald’s source code, turn it into a WP theme again and do with that what I want (release it for free for example). I don’t seem to think that anyone with the “community” would like it when their great, unique designs starts to get ripped and released to the masses!?

So that said, I don’t believe that we’re in the wrong. Everyone has their own opinions in this regard and as long as these supposed “issues” aren’t resolved (and turned into black and white from their current grey area status), we’ll just be discussing these same things this time next year.

Well, I’m no lawyer, but the way I understand it GPL only applies when you offer something widely, but you can hack away and do what you want for yourself. So the Blog Herald design made by yours truly for Splashpress would fall under that. Do you think the unclear licensing terms is an issue today?

I’m no intellectual property lawyer either and neither is 99,9% of the people that has an opinion on this matter. So that just proves my points in this regard: we’re just part of this never-ending discussion of grey areas and complex issues.

BUT - this doesn’t have to be an issue at all in my opinion… Who really has an issue with this? I’ll be convinced that this is an issue when the majority of WordPress users worldwide votes to that extent.

Is premium themes the future for WordPress designers? What about premium plugins?

Not necessarily no… Personally I got into commercial WP themes, because it allowed me to generate a more passive income that was not linked to the amount of time that I have available in a day. I do however think that all designers will start focusing on generating a passive income of sorts via ebooks, paid tutorials, advertising models etc, as there’s only that much a designer can earn in a day / month / year from client work.

As for premium plugins - I don’t know whether there’s a market for it within the current situation, where there’s an incredible amount of top-notch plugins available for free. So a commercial plugin would need to offer something differently (with regards to anything related to that plugin) to the plugins currently available, for it to be a viable approach. As the WordPress market grows however, you’ll find that this might become the next big thing…

I’d like to thank Adii for taking the time and doing this interview. Check out his website, as well as WooThemes if you’re interested in premium themes.

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New Blogger Revenue Stream: InLinks (If You Dare!)

Andrew G.R. — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 19:51:28 +0000

Bloggers who are looking for a way to generate revenue for their blogs might be interested in a new service that launched today. Coined InLinks, the ad network sells spots within your posts to paying advertisers. As a content owner, you have the right to accept or reject any campaign.

The nice part is that the ads are pop-up free and relatively easy on the eyes.

There are of course ethical issues that must be tackled when it comes to notifying your readers what these ‘InLinks’ are all about. Plus, you might awaken the mighty Google giant, and as someone who has been spanked by them before, I would do your homework before you sign up.

I will say that in this economic climate, this blogger, and many that I know, are looking for new revenue streams.

Here’s more info directly from the source.

(We) pay 10% of all revenue earned by publishers that you refer to us! This 10% of revenue earned from publishers you refer is good for a full two years after the publisher joins inLinks. We also offer you the ability to earn up to 15% of all revenue publishers you refer earn us, check out the tiered system below:

1. 10% for first two years of referred publisher life.

2. 11% if blogger refers over $1,000 per month of revenue.

3. 12% if blogger refers over $2,000 per month of revenue.

4. 13% if blogger refers over $3,000 per month of revenue.

5. 14% if blogger refers over $4,000 per month of revenue.

6. 15% if blogger refers over $5,000 per month of revenue.

If anyone gives this a whirl, let us know!

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Six Apart Gives Journalists TypePad Pro Accounts for Free

Thord Daniel Hedengren — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 08:29:15 +0000

Six Apart has a clever “program” up to get recently laid off journalists to start blogging. They’re calling it the TypePad Journalist Bailout Program. Basically, it gives journalists these things for free:

A TypePad Pro account for free. Usually costs $14,95/month.
Enrollment in the Six Apart Media advertising program, to get the ad dollars rolling.
An extra push on blogs.com.

They also offer support and whatnot, all for free. The only thing the journos need to do is send a link to their last piece for a newspaper or similar. And according to the post, there’s been an overwhelming interest in this, so they’re lagging a bit behind on setting the accounts up, but no word on closing the program.

You know what? This is brilliant!

My hat’s off to whoever on Six Apart that came up with this idea. It’s a great way to get journalists blogging, since most of them (or us, in some cases) just need an economic incentive and a set platform to get started. The pure notion that you’ve got everything set up, and ads rolling right away, well, that’s bound to attract a lot of people.

Me included, actually. I’m a bit curious to this, but since I haven’t been sacked from any of my writing gigs yet, I don’t think I can apply. Too bad.

Great work, Six Apart, and a great PR stunt as well!

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nextMEDIA: Immersive Branded Entertainment

David Peralty — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 18:34:09 +0000

Introduction for Day Two

As always, if you want to see everything I am writing about nextMEDIA, please check out BrandingDavid.com where I’ve placed an index for all of the posts I am doing around the Splashpress Media network.

Only about 25% of people from last years nextMEDIA came to this years. The conversation has changed from definitions, to getting the big money through community models.

People want a $40CPM, does it exist and is it sustainable? Probably not, but they can be achieved through multiple revenue sources. Advertising, branded entertainment, e-commerce, pay per use, and licensing as a mix can earn more than direct ad sales or sponsorships alone.

Today we will hear more about engagement and reputation. There will be less about online video today, and more about immersive entertainment.

Immersive Branded Entertainment

As the introduction for day two ended, we were then introduced to Susan Bonds, CEO of 42 Entertainment. Who started by saying that there is a way to measure engagement, though not standardized, everyone keeps trying to push that there is engagement metrics.

“Let’s create entertainment that is native for today’s audience.” - Susan Bonds

You need to tell a good story to gain engagement, and using the tools and mediums we have today, people can increase engagement.

She also let us know how great it is that people enjoy creating content and contributing it to “your” stories or brands through a community and collaboration that ignores borders, and boundaries, creating a powerful hive mind.

Susan then went over ARG’s, alternate reality game, which is an interactive experience that immerses audiences in story via content platforms that intersect their daily lives.

The audience has a central role: collect, solve, and piece together the story, and thus they influence the direction of the story.

It brings us towards social entertainment, and gives players ownership over the experience.

She showed a bunch of clips regarding alternate realty gaming. Most of them are branded in such a way that they promote a concept, movie, software, or other brand.

“The idea is that you really bring a story to life.” - Susan Bonds

Viral videos are hit or miss, and don’t really work well for building brands or gaining attention for a brand and so ARG’s can have a stronger, longer connection with people.

She mistakenly focused in on Microsoft as a company that creates experiences that aren’t always branded, and show only that the company cares for the various potential customers by providing themselves with something entertaining.

I don’t think Microsoft, and especially not their promotion of Vista should have been mentioned today, but it looks like 42 Entertainment has worked with them on a few project including working on IloveBees for Halo 2 which had 2.5M unique participants.

She also said that the hive mind of the people involved are able to come up with really advanced ways of finding the next clue. She gave an example of how a spectrograph on a song gave a clue, and the audience found it using their “hive mind”.

They even held a secret concert for those able to follow the clues to their conclusion, which was part of the “Year Zero” album for Nine Inch Nails which was even broken up by a fake S.W.A.T. team so they could really live the experience they were involved in.

The whole experience made me think “people are sheep”, as hundreds of people fallow these ARG’s blindly in order to have some sort of fun or access to an experience or event. Will this be the future of interactive advertising, and if so, will it be annoying?

Should be interesting.

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Tip’d Launch Progress

Chris Garrett — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 11:29:54 +0000

I just heard from Muhammad Saleem (he of the Digg-guru-ness) about his Digg for finance niche, Tip’d. It just turned version 1.0 which is a big milestone and shows they are confident in the platform they are building. I am always interested to hear about site launches and startups stories, not only because I find them fascinating but it helps to learn from others’ successes and goofs.

Muhammad tells me they have been in public beta for a month and are already attracting 3k views a day to the site, with 24,000 tips from 1,800 members. In only 30 days they are healthily competing with other already estabilished social bookmarking sites.

Can they compete with Digg and Reddit? Good question, but the wrong one I think!

They are already competing with Digg and Reddit, because part of the reason for their site to exist is the particular niche they are playing in is under served by the big boys.

Niche is where it is at for the future of social bookmarking I believe. Just like inetnet marketing was spurned by the big social sites so Sphinn was created, finance topics have a home in Tip’d.

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New York Times Launches Gadget Blog

Thord Daniel Hedengren — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 10:06:09 +0000

The New York Times is launching Gadgetwise, a gadget blog that goes head to head with the likes of Gizmodo and Engadget (first and foremost), but so far in a less quirky and introvert style. Like you’d expect from the publisher, of course. The welcome post describes it like this:

A new personal-tech blog, Gadgetwise is currently organized around four product categories (digital photography, home entertainment, mobile technology and personal computing), each with a dedicated contributor.

If you want to know who’s writing, there’s an introduction to the five man team as well.

The New York Times already publish the technology blog Bits, which is frequently linked, and a good read really. In that sense, they are not new to the scene. In fact, their blog index is huge, although it looks better than it is.

I don’t doubt that Gadgetwise will find some readers, but compared to the likes of Engadget and Gizmodo, as well as a wealth of smaller gadget blogs, it looks a bit thin at the moment. That might and will probably change, and there’s the possibility of finding their own reader niche just by the fact that they are located at the New York Times, and the push it can get from there, but my guess is that Gadgetwise won’t be the official CES blog partner for years to come…

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Exploring Social Media: Social Means Personal

Lorelle VanFossen — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 02:43:58 +0000

In “Duke DesRochers: Future Social Media Renaissance Man,” I introduced my cousin, Duke DesRochers, highlighting his fun cooking show audition tape as a great example of how to market with social media in mind.

With the advent of blogs, YouTube, podcasts, and online social media tools that allow anyone to publish anything they want within the law, everyone could become their own entertainment production company, putting the masses in charge of not only being the entertainment, but providing it.

With inexpensive video equipment and software, and an innate sense of comedy, drama, and style, Duke DesRochers has an intuitive way of bringing the “common man” into his audition video that I hope will gain the attention of the judges. It’s time to go back to the real people, rather than the exaggerated people, to find the humility and fun in entertainment. We need to get people thinking, “Hey, that’s me! I can do that!”

Another part of Duke DesRochers I want to celebrate with you is how he took two fairly diverse passions, and molded them into one specialty to totally redefine himself for this video audition for the Food Network: handyman in the kitchen.

As part of this ongoing series on Exploring Social Media, I want to talk a little more about the important points that Duke’s Food Network audition efforts brought up: getting personal and brand identity.

Social Media is About the Social

They key to social media is the personal. It’s about being personable, getting personal, and being a person - a real person.

Duke’s video could have been just like all the rest of the auditions for The Next Food Network Star. He could have dressed up pretty, made something pretty, been wacky and silly, exaggerated and dramatic. Instead, his video works because he is “every man” and we know him. He is our next door neighbor or relative.

And he’s a rule breaker without being a wacko. In the video, he uses common woodworking tools like the lathe and a drill to carve up vegetables into beautiful arrangements and dishes you can eat. He leaves the audience laughing but thinking, “I can do that!”

He’s accessible. He’s real.

As you establish your brand identity on the web through your blog and social media tools, it’s important that you remember to be real. To be accessible.

You want to attract people who are like you and think like you.

This doesn’t mean share your personal life. It means you have to be a real person, someone we can trust and feel like we know. The next version of the web and the economy is going to be the global village feel. We want to work with people we know and have a relationship with, not the stranger in another city.

The cute CB Radio handle name like “SEO Guru” or “Sexy Blogger Chick” doesn’t work any more. We want to know there is a real person behind the blog.

As mentioned in Exploring Social Media: It Starts With One, people want to talk to someone directly. They don’t want to talk to the “man behind the curtain.” They want direct access to those who can make things happen, people who listen and respond. People who are real. People who are just like them. People who understand.

Is your online identity in line with being a real person and not a brand? What are you hiding behind?

Exploring Social Media Series

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nextMEDIA - Online is the New Primetime

David Peralty — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 18:59:27 +0000

I am currently reporting from the nextMEDIA conference in Toronto, Ontario Canada, and if you want to find all of the posts related to the conference, please look for the index on BrandingDavid.com.

Bryan Segal from ComScore came out swinging with many stats, facts, graphs, and badly animated presentation slides. His information was absolutely startling, including the growth of the amount of weekly time spent alone was an interesting trend.

With almost twenty-four million Canadians aged two and up are online in any given month with each person spending upwards of 46 hours in that same period of time.

“We are seeing a shift in how people are using media” - Bryan Segal

The Internet is the third longest time spent regarding media today, though in those ages 18 to 24, it is number one.

The reach of the Internet is growing faster than the population growth of Canada. This means that eventually, access to the web could reach a saturation point of nearly one hundred percent. There was 66% growth in how many people have access to the Internet in Canada.

And as penetration grows, so does online video, social media, and blogging. The average Canadian looks at over 4,000 web pages in a single month.

There were three billion videos watched online in Canada in the last twelve months. The average 18-24 year old in canada watches 195 videos per month. While the 55-65 year olds watched around 95 videos per month.

“Canada is a Facebook and YouTube Nation” - Bryan Segal

The average woman spends an average of two hours more and goes through 211 more pages on social networking sites per month and is currently trending higher.

Seventy-nine percent of all searches in Canada are pushed through Google.

It is amazing at how Canada, as a country, leads the way in many things online, but we don’t have the fastest, nor cheapest broadband connections, or multimedia cellular phone connections. It is a testament, to me, on how things have evolved and our love of technology.

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LiveJournal Grows Up: Moving Off Of Six Apart’s Servers

Darnell Clayton — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 18:48:57 +0000

After being trained in “the ways of the blog” by Six Apart, LiveJournal is now finally migrating off of its former parents servers and is setting up shop in the middle of Montanna.

(LiveJournal News) The long-awaited server move takes place this Tuesday, November 18, at 8:00 a.m. PST. We’re moving the site from servers based in San Francisco to the servers in our new data center in Montana. A massive data move like this takes a lot of heavy lifting, and to haul all that data from San Francisco to Montana, we have to take the site down, starting at 8:00 a.m. PST on Tuesday morning. [...]

During the downtime, nothing on LJ will be available—no posting, no Friends page, no LJ mail, nada. When we bring the site back up, we’re going to ease into it rather than open up a floodgate of traffic. Posting might not be immediately available or the site could be slow to load for a while.

LiveJournal was previously sold to SUP (a media company from Russia) last year, although for some reason they remained on Six Apart’s servers.

LiveJournal expects the migration to last approximately four hours, although it may take longer for most of their services to come back online.

It will be interesting to see whether this move improves LiveJournal outside of Russia (where it is extremly popular) in the face of international competiton from platform hosted services like Blogger, WordPress and TypePad (owned by Six Apart).

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Blogging and that Anonymous Thing

Thord Daniel Hedengren — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 08:05:56 +0000

Blogging. What does that even mean? I read David Risley’s post about his wife wanting to maintain an anonymity on a new blog she was doing, and his reaction is that it won’t work.

A lot of people have the instinct of clamming up. They don’t want to share details of their lives. They want to remain super private. They want to hide. If that’s you, fine! But don’t try to be a big-time blogger.

That’s probably true if she planned on doing WifeOfDavidRisley.com, but what if it is a gadget blog with several writers? Do anyone care about Ryan Block? In fact, how many here even know who he is?

The thing is, blogging as a concept is too wide to have rules like this. You can be totally anonymous and blog anyway, and get a crowd. It might be harder, since there’ll be natural credibility issues and so on, but it is by all means possible. Think about those columnists in magazines who hide behind pseudonyms, or authors for that matter.

I say it is more a matter of what kind of site you’re publishing, rather than how much of you that gets poured into it. That doesn’t mean that it won’t be easier if you let the readers know a little something about you, at least if you’re an interesting fellow to start with, but if you do so without it really being something that is meriting the blog, then it just doesn’t matter.

What do you think? How important is it to be up front with who you are and share your personality? And how much does the actual blog/site you’re doing it on matter?

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Exploring Social Media: The Motrin Moment Impact of Social Media

Lorelle VanFossen — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 06:26:09 +0000

Have you heard of Motrin? The pain reliever? If you hadn’t before this weekend, you probably have heard plenty about it now, especially on Twitter this weekend.

The debacle is described best in the article Advertising Age, “How Twittering Critics Brought Down Motrin Mom Campaign,” which explains how the Johnson & Johnson product offended mothers and fathers with an online and print ad for Motrin which claimed that some moms carry their babies around with baby body carriers as a “fashion statement” and summed it up with “Supposedly it’s a real bonding experience, but what about me?”

The outrage rocked the social media world. Twitter tweets on Motrin went berserk as people were outraged at this slam against parenthood and parent/child bonding. Within two days of mass online social outrage, the ad campaign was pulled and the Motrin’s website featured an apology saying:

With regard to the recent Motrin advertisement, we have heard you.

On behalf of McNeil Consumer Healthcare and all of us who work on the Mortin Brand, please accept our sincere apology.

We have heard your concerns about the ad that was featured on our website. We are parents ourselves and we take feedback from moms very seriously…

The Advertising Age article summarized it as:

The campaign has been online since Sept. 30 and has been circulating in several magazines for weeks, but it finally caught the attention — and ire — of some influential bloggers Friday night before blowing up into a full-fledged cause celebre on Twitter over the weekend.

The ultimate demise of the campaign demonstrates either how quickly social media can galvanize a groundswell of opinion or how much power over online discourse they can give a few vocal tastemakers with outsize weight.

The beginning of the end for the Motrin push probably came Friday night, when Los Angeles blogger Jessica Gottlieb said she was tipped off to the ads and started expressing her outrage over the campaign on Twitter, where she has 1,018 followers.

From blogger to blogger, then Twitter to Twitter, word spread proving, “Many people with small networks have just as much influence as a few people with large networks,” explained David Armano, VP at marketing firm Critical Mass, in the article.

Elisa Camahort Page of BlogHer was also quoted in the article:

We now have indisputable proof that online marketing, YouTube and Twitter and all that it encompasses is meaningful and has arrived,” said Gene Grabowsk, chair of the crisis and litigation practice at Levick Strategic Communications. “We are seeing real consequences to a mistake. If [social networks] didn’t matter, you wouldn’t see this type of reaction from J&J or consumers.

While you might not have known about Motrin before this weekend, the impact of the Motrin ad campaign on the online social media networks will be remembered for a long time to come. A Motrin Moment in the new social order.