The NY Times published an interesting article yesterday highlighting (or rather comparing) the blogosphere and main stream media outlets when it came to breaking news to the world last year.
Although the overall emphasis was that the mainstream media (sometimes referred to as “old media”) was hours ahead of their “pajama buddies,” they did acknowledge that bloggers did once in a while establish the news trend (instead of vice versa).
Technorati wants to be in the middle of the traditional blogosphere, and Twitter. Hence they launch Twittorati, a Muck Rack powered Twitter mash of whatever the Technorati Top 100 blog’s bloggers twitter about.
We say this is where the Blogosphere meets the Twittersphere, but what does that mean? Twittorati shows what top bloggers are tweeting about, and how these trends compare to Blogosphere trends. You’ll be able to filter tweets by topic, see the most tweeted blog posts, and compare leading Blogosphere and twitter trends.
The site lets you “follow the highest authority bloggers”. More is to come, but for now, check it out. If nothing else, it helps cement the Technorati Top 100 blogs even further.
Earlier today, the Blog Herald interviewed Amanda Rose (Twitter: @amanda), founder and event organizer for Twestival (see earlier coverage), which gathers volunteer Twitter users everywhere this Thursday, February 12 to raise money and awareness for charity:water. Here you go.
How has Twitter helped the spread of the Twestival meme?
Twitter as a communications tool has enabled Twestival to happen. This type of global, grassroots events series could never have happened even 2 years ago. The immediacy of communication and the ability to tie communities together via Twitter has been crucial. We are also using Twitter as the foundation of many of our fundraising efforts; Tipjoy.com is a great way for people to ‘tweet’ their donation and spread the word to others.
In case you haven’t visited the Google homepage today (as if that were how you got all your news), it’s World AIDS Day today.
According to Google Blog Search, over 13,000 blogs have talked about World AIDS Day in the last 24 hours. That’s more than participated in Blog Action Day 2008, which focused on poverty.
Some indications of mass blog participation and the impact of social media on this event:
Reaching for your wallet? You might just have read a blog article.
On Tuesday, BuzzLogic released a report called Harnessing the Power of Blogs which concludes that the blogosphere has more power than online social networks when it comes to shaping consumer buying decisions.
The report analyzes the results of a survey, conducted by JupiterResearch and sponsored by BuzzLogic, that asked 2,210 online consumers in the US about the ways in which different kinds of websites influenced their purchasing choices.
One conclusion of the survey: “Frequent” blog readers – that is, those who read blogs once or more each month – actually depend more on blogs to find other blog content than on any search engine.
Another interesting find: the number of people who read at least one blog a month has quadrupled since 2004. [Read more…]
