Outline Who, what, why of the blogosphere –Examples to get you thinking about how you might use them. What blogs aren’t (inappropriate use) What blogs should be (appropriate use) Where is all this taking us?

The State of Blogging Blog readership jumped 58% in 2004 to 27% 23,000 new weblogs are created every day

Who Blogs? "Bloggers are navel-gazers," said Elizabeth Osder, a visiting professor at The University of Southern California's School of Journalism. "And they're about as interesting as friends who make you look at their scrap books." The blogosphere "is the international waters of the Internet age -- a lawless area where anything goes," said Matthew Felling, media director for the nonpartisan Center for Media and Public Affairs.

Behind the mask A softer human side A softer human side It's all about openness," says chairman Bill Gates of Microsoft's public blogs like Scobleizer. "People see them as a reflection of an open, communicative culture that isn't afraid to be self-critical."

Microsoft in Blogosphere Scobles Blog Microsoft Community of Blogs

Who Blogs? Apple / Sun / IBM / Microsoft / HP Intuit / Macromedia GM Washington post / Baltimore sun eWeek and InfoWorld, FODORS Travel AOL

WHO ELSE? UNC UCLA Wayne State Oxford Harvard Univ. of Minn. Scholarly Blogs

EVEN FEDS? U.S. Patents and Trademarks NIH (news and events) Dept. of State (Highlights) USDA/ARS (IT info feed) NASA (breaking news) NNLM (technology notes) NOAA (hurricane notices) USGS (earthquake notices) US-CERT(cyber-security alerts)

Value Added Patent Assignment - Daily XML latest published US patent applications each week converted to RSS at: Hubmed.org

What Blogs Represent… first simple personal web-based publishing tools to be widely adopted first set of tools supporting simple creation of XML-based content (e.g. content separate from its presentation which can be displayed many places) creation of a set of practices and conventions around a new form of social ‘network writing’ that includes both the reading and writing

WHY Blog? OMB Circular A-130 encourages public feedback and comments by requiring agencies to communicate with the public when implementing information dissemination programs.

What to Publish? News & Announcements - headlines, notices and any list of announcements that are added to over time Search results / to let people track changing or new results to their searches Databases / job listings, software releases, etc.

Document listings - lists of added or changed pages, so that people don't need to constantly check for different content Bookmarks and other external links - while most people use RSS for sharing links from their own sites, it's a natural fit for sharing lists of external links Calendars - listings of past or upcoming events, deadlines or holidays What Else?

What Blogging Isn’t Blogging is NOT a replacement for threaded discussion or mailing lists –They represent an improved means to establish personal ‘voice’ and identity on the network, but a diminished means of having a focused ‘back and forth’ discussion Blogs are not a replacement for CMS or KM tools –The purposely lack tools for assessment, management/version control, and user tracking

Next Steps attention.xml enclosures Technorati tags Firefox reader