Archive for August, 2009
Some weekend notes
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How newspaper editors prefer to be linked to by bloggers
After the Washington Post’s Ian Shapira wrote a piece complaining of how Gawker repackaged and linked to one of his stories I went ahead and contacted several editors at major dailies and asked them that loaded question: How would you prefer to be linked? I detailed their response in this week’s MediaShift piece: Newspaper Editors Want Clear Credit When Bloggers Link to Them
Rotten Tomatoes editor doubts Twitter’s effect on box office
As someone who doesn’t go to a movie without first checking its Rotten Tomatoes score, it’s interesting to see its editor weigh in on all the stories touting claims that Twitter can make-or-break a movie’s opening weekend.
I think [Twitter's power is] overstated. It’s an interesting word of mouth, but I think only for a certain part of the audience. For the younger, more connected audience that may be true but for older audiences, I don’t know. Twitter probably has a larger influence in the media because they are all on Twitter. The average American sees less than 10 movies in the theaters per year. Do I think Twitter is affecting my cousins in Kansas City and what they see? If it’s a big enough movie, they are going to see it
How Perez Hilton and Blogads are monetizing Twitter
Yesterday afternoon, gossip blogger Perez Hilton, with his 1.3 million followers on Twitter, tweeted the words, “Sponsored: I love to mix bright colors with classic styles to shake things up! Tweet style tips to #gapstyletips to appear on CocoPerez.com!” A cursory search on Twitter shows hundreds of users issuing tweets using the suggested hashtag. And if you visit the CocoPerez site (a female-oriented blog that Perez recently launched) you’ll find a kind of talk box aggregating all these tweets with the GAP brand prominently displayed on top.
Blogads CEO Henry Copeland told me in a phone interview last night that his company prefers this kind of community approach to sponsored tweets rather than simply having Perez blast out a single link to a sponsor (although he said that the advertising company is also selling more straightforward Twitter links).
“It definitely helps to have someone like Perez to tweet to spark the thing,” he said. “We also find that it can sustain itself because if you’re a reader of Perez Hilton and you see a box and right above that is a message saying tweet your dating advice” — another ad campaign run on Perez’s site — “then you’re very likely to do it.”
The effectiveness of the campaign, he said, often depends on the size of the box, where it’s located, and how it’s “modulated.” In that sense, the advertising, though tied into Twitter, is very reliant on Perez’s popularity on his blog.
Copeland estimated that Perez can drive about 20,000 clicks on a sponsored tweet if it’s worded correctly. He said that he’s had no problem selling the Twitter component in ad deals, but so far it’s only been rolled into larger advertising packages.
“All the deals that we’ve had Perez tweeting for have been part of six figure deals,” he said.
I asked Copeland about the new FCC rules being talked about that will force bloggers to disclose any sponsored word-of-mouth marketing campaigns.
“Frankly, I think we’ve been going overboard,” he said. “Every tweet has the word ‘sponsored’ either before or after it, and I think it makes it pretty obvious. Basically a fifth of the message is disclosing … I certainly think it’s very imporatant to not only disclose, but to make prominent the fact that it’s sponsored.”
Blogads, a North Carolina company, currently represents hundreds of bloggers across all niches for advertising. So far, the sponsored Twitter campaigns have remained almost exclusively with Perez, one of the most widely-trafficked blogs in the Blogads network.
Dedicated Chicago crime blogger only 16 years old
Time Out Chicago has a piece on a 16-year-old autistic resident who obsessively live blogs next to a police scanner in his house.
For the past nine months, residents of Avondale and Logan Square have been reading about crime in their ’hoods as it happens: a gang disturbance on Drake Avenue at 12:33am, a person with a gun at 2400 North Monticello Avenue at 4:37pm. There’s even some news of the weird, like a report at 4:53pm of a drunk stumbling down Milwaukee Avenue asking passersby to pay $5 to see him eat a live goldfish.
It’s all thanks to a dauntless 16-year-old from Avondale known only as Timmy to the 300 or so devotees of his blog, Avondale and Logan Square Crime Blotter. Seven days a week, Timmy sits by a store-bought police scanner and live-blogs emergency calls—all from the confines of his bedroom in the house where he has lived all his life with his mother and 18-year-old sister.
Craigslist vs Ebay
Wired’s Epicenter has a piece detailing why Ebay, despite its abundant war chest, can’t catch up to Craigslist with its own classifieds site– arguing that this is one instance where smaller is better
