Monthly Archives: June 2006

What makes a blog successful?

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A new study from the University of Massachusetts attempts to answer the question that every aspiring blogger is asking - what makes a blog successful?

Dr Ganim Barnes surveyed 74 of the “biggest and best” blogs in the business to find out what makes a blog successful. Dr Barnes described the bloggers who participated in her study as the “most experienced, business savvy and respected bloggers who are at the forefront of innovation in the blogosphere.”

The survey discovered a number of “truths”, including:

  1. Blogs take time and commitment
  2. Blogs must be part of a plan
  3. A blog is a conversation
  4. Transparency, authenticity and focus are good. Bland is bad.

Doctor Barnes asked participants how they promoted their blogs, and one clear theme that came through was that commenting on other people’s blogs was a great way of generating interest in your own blog. Another strategy used by successful bloggers was to use “high visibility” key words so that their blogs were easy to find on search engines.

If you’re a blogger, or just interested in the blogosphere, I strongly recommend that you download the report – there’s plenty of interesting (and free) advice.

 

MySpace seeks search

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According to a report in Business Week, Fox Interactive Media is looking for a search partner for MySpace.

Fox Interactive sees search as an untapped revenue opportunity, and all the likely suspects – Google, Yahoo and MSN – are expected to compete fiercely to be the search engine of choice.

It will be interesting to see how such a deal affects the search preferences of MySpace members, and what contribution it makes to Fox Interactive’s bottom line.

Safe social networking for kids

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The dangers of social networking sites for kids are well known, with there being cases of sexual predators using sites such as MySpace to meet kids. Sure, kids aren’t meant to be using services such as MySpace, but it’s not hard for them to pretend to be older in order to sign up.

A US company, Industrious Kids, has launched a new social networking web site called Imbee.com, which is designed to provide a safe haven for kids aged between eight and 14. Before an account for a childen can be set up, a parent needs establish their own identity and to authorise the membership using a credit card. The child’s profile is only accessible by invited family and friends, and is not indexed by search engines such as google. Imbee costs $3.95 per month for one adult and two children.

It will be interesting to see whether the protected environment of Imbee.com will be as interesting to Tweens as MySpace.

Aussie blog search

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A new blog aggregator – gnoos – has been launched to make it easier for Internet users to find Australian blogs.

Currently it’s quite difficult to find blogs in a particular country using tools like Technorati or Google Blog Search.

Gnoos’s main page also tracks updates of Australian blogs, Australian media reports, and global blogs.

While gnoos is still a relatively basic tool, there’s a lot of potential for it to grow into something much bigger, especially if it can gain the support of the Australian blogging community.

However, I would speculate that gnoos only has a relatively narrow window of opportunity to gain the momentum it requires to prosper — after all, it wouldn’t be too difficult for Google Blog Search or Technorati to launch country-specific search filters, or indeed, country-specific blog search home pages, if they thought there was an opportunity.

Good luck gnoos!