Brief Update

We've been pretty swamped over the past couple of weeks so here's a quick post. First, we updated the Zoundry Blog Writer to work with Blogger's updated Atom API. It now supports secure authentication over SSL. Use the Check for Updates sidebar in the Blog Writer to make sure you have the latest version. We're also working on some things that will make it easier for you to write product recommendations and earn commissions. Stay tuned. In the meantime, I encourage you to use our Blog Writer whether you're placing product links in your posts or not. It's a nice simple app to format posts, drop in images, and sync with an image host like Ripway. We also make it easy to do things like make links open in a new window - without having to edit HTML. Continue to send in your feedback (feedbackATzoundryDOTcom) and suggestions for new features - we love to hear from you!

Blogging 2.0 - The Power of the Post

I was reflecting on Fred Wilson's recent post about Blogging 2.0's improvements over the early days of blogging (Blogging 1.0):

The first is the notion of the post as the central piece of content. About.com had some of this in its DNA, but Geocities and Tripod did not. Posts drive freshness, frequency, and syndication and make Blogging 2.0 much more exciting than Bloggin 1.0 was.

The second is related to the first. Permalinks have changed the game fundamentally. Linking to content was not really possible until permalinks came along. Now each piece of content is a persistent object that has a unique identifier. This is a huge deal and this concept did not exist in Blogging 1.0.

The third is RSS. Blogging 1.0 was a web experience. Blogging 2.0 is a everywhere experience. Content was a solid in Blogging 1.0 and its a fluid in Blogging 2.0.

The fourth is CPC and contextual ad networks. In Blogging 1.0, the only way to monetize the business was with banners. And brand advertisers were not thrilled with paying high CPMs to advertise on "amateur content". With the arrival of CPC and contextual ad networks, this is no longer the case. Wherever advertisers can get clicks, they'll place their ads. The result is a huge increase in the potential revenues.

My partners and I were noting the same things when we started Zoundry. The concept of a post as a reusable content object is key for us and our users. For example, let's say you write a product review with an affiliate link so people can click through and buy the product. You publish it to your blog. In Blogging 1.0, that would be it - you would then have to get people to come to your blog and read your review. This works fine for people writing for only friends and family, but it's not so good if you want a wider audience. In Blogging 2.0, you can create an RSS feed to your blog so now your readers don't have to come to you. Instead they can subscribe to your feed and read your reviews in their newsreader or at web service like My Yahoo! or Bloglines. This provides convenience and more regular reading, but not necessarily more readers. The more interesting development is in syndication where your reviews exist independently from your blog. Services like Technorati can aggregate your product reviews with other product reviews and widen your audience. As I mentioned before, this doesn't guarantee you more revenue from your product links. But it's a good start, and more people can benefit from your product knowledge. The important thing is that you give readers an opportunity to transact within your post instead of relying on them to go back to your blog and click on Google ads or whatever else you're using to make money. We have some interesting things in the works around this idea - stay tuned. In the meantime, use our posting editor, the Zoundry Blog Writer (free download), to create an inventory of reviews of books, music, DVDs, electronics, baby gear, and other products that you've researched, purchased, and enjoyed. Remember that each review can exist as its own object, so format it appropriately, write disclosures if you want about your affiliate product links, and include pictures!

The Long Tail

I just read a couple of interesting posts by Chris Anderson of Wired at his The Long Tail blog. For those of you who don't know, his Long Tail theory is about the power of niche segments ("the Tail") that collectively form a large market. In his post Recommendations Rule!, Chris writes about how recommendations are important in finding products in the Tail, and how blogs are becoming important sources of recommendations:

Blogs are shaping up to be an equally powerful source of influential recommendations. There are independent enthusiast sites such as PVRblog and Horticultural (an organic gardening blog), commercial blogs such as Gizmodo and Joystiq, and then the random recommendations of whichever blogger you happen to read for any reason (there does seem to be a natural connection between mavens, who know a lot and like to share their knowledge, and blogging). What they may lack in polish and scope, they more than make up in credibility: their readers know that there is a real person there that they can trust.

I agree. There's clearly a Long Tail developing in blogs - where there are a few large blogs like Gizmodo, many maven blogs like PVRblog, and then millions of small blogs in the Tail that are read mostly by friends & family and loyal followers. And the level of readers' trust grows the further you go out the Tail. Chris writes further that he doesn't believe that friends are the best source of recommendations, specifically as it relates to social software ("Why Social Software Makes for Poor Recommendations"):

The problem with social software as a recommendation network has its roots in the problem of social software itself. "Friend" is a pretty blunt instrument when it comes to describing relationships, especially in matters of taste. The sad reality is that most of my friends have rotten taste in music (I don't hold it against them), while the music recommendations I actually follow are mostly from people I've never met, be they Rhapsody editors or MP3 blogs. Same for virtually every other narrow category where I need advice; odds are that the real subject matter experts aren't anyone I know.

I don't agree with him entirely here. True, some of my friends have different tastes than me and they're definitely not domain experts. But there are a great many that do share my tastes - in food, music, films, and books - and we give each other tips all the time. Regardless Chris misses a point, which is that even if I do not share the same tastes as a friend, I am still aware of his tastes. So as a good friend, I will pass along recommendations that I hear from other like-minded people (perhaps from an orthogonal group.) I think there's a great opportunity for friends to write a group blog in which they share product recommendations - not only of items each person likes but also things they know other group members will want. The more product links they post and buy collectively through their blog, the more money they can make for themselves or for charity.

We're On a Roll

I'm happy to report that we already have a new update available for the Zoundry Blog Writer. You can download it here. This is part of our new plan to offer incremental updates more often. The Check for Updates sidebar (go to Tools>Show Sidebar) will tell you if you have the most recent version. If your Blog Writer doesn't have a sidebar, then you should just go ahead and download this new version to update your older one. Don't worry, you'll keep all your current settings. The cool new feature in Build 61 is the improved Blog Entries Sidebar. In one view you can now see all of the previous posts in each blog in each of your blog accounts. This is really helpful if you have published the same post to multiple blogs - for example, a product review that's in both your public blog and your private blog for friends and family. This is another example of an advantage you can get in a client application versus a web-based editor at the blogging services. In your browser, you have to page from blog to blog to list all your posts. Our Blog Writer conveniently shows all your posts in one place. Our app also allows offline editing, drag & drop images and links, our patent-pending engine to search and place affiliate links automatically, and more. It doesn't mean you have to use one or the other. I use the analogy of email clients like Outlook versus web mail to illustrate the differences between our blog editor and a web-based blog editor. Outlook gives you a lot of rich features and offline reading and composing, but you can only use it on your PC. Web mail allows you to access your mail from anywhere but you have to be online. You also sacrifice some functionality due to limitations of the browser. Most people use a combination of both, and we see the same thing happening in blogging.