For new breed, word of blog becomes new word of mouth
By Dean Takahashi
San Jose Mercury News

I could have been one of "The New Influencers," the term coined by Paul Gillin in his new book about the most influential bloggers. But after being laid off from Red Herring in 2002, I took a job in traditional media.

One of my Red Herring colleagues, meanwhile, entered the then-experimental blogosphere.
Pete Rojas started the blogs Gizmodo and, later, Engadget.
Both gained enormous momentum as online destinations for readers seeking information about tech gear.

When AOL bought the company he worked at, Weblogs, for $25 million, Rojas, then 31, got a payday in the millions of dollars, his reward for 10,000 posts and starting early in the blog gold rush.

So it goes. For those who are slow to catch on like me, Gillin introduces us to the impact of blogs and the new social media.

If you haven't immersed yourself in blogs or started one yourself, "The New Influencers" can tell you what is popular, what type of blogs work, and what kind of impact they're having across the consumer and corporate worlds. ( Gillin's own blog is www.paulgillin.com.)

Far beyond pioneers

Just like the Web itself, blogs — more than 70 million by one count — have moved from their pioneer days to a more mature phase where they command respect and huge mainstream followings.

Gillin argues that, rather than adding up to a vast wasteland, the addition of each new blogger improves the quality of discourse.
No longer will 30-second TV ads reach the right audiences. "Word of blog" is the new word of mouth.

In this era, Gillin advises public-relations practitioners who want to contain bad news and control messages in the age of blogging to give it up.
One-way corporate news releases no longer cut it.

As Gillin writes, "The shift to small markets served and influenced by an entirely new breed of opinion leaders is a sea change for marketers."

To influence the influencers, companies need to have two-way conversations with bloggers, whom Gillin terms "enthusiasts."

Disney courts John Frost, author of the DisneyBlog, for instance, because it knows his posts can inspire stories on mainstream TV shows and in news publications.
Such "conversation marketing" requires a completely different set of skills than those that marketers typically use.

When New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman criticized General Motors for fuel-inefficient cars, GM punched back just as hard with a post on its corporate blog, Fastlane.
Friedman fired back, and in the ensuing spotlight, GM got its points across to a big online audience.

Bloggers are forcing companies to be more transparent. Gillin opens his book with an anecdote about Vincent Ferrari, who recorded the painful conversation he had with America Online when he wanted to cancel his account.

When Ferrari posted the audio file on his blog, the resulting "blog swarm" brought down his servers and forced AOL to drop its hard-sell retention tactics.
Other bloggers exposed Sony's hidden software on music CDs, fanned the flames on AOL's inadvertent release of private search data and forced Dell to recall batteries on its "exploding laptops."

Gillin's book is useful for its practical advice on blogging etiquette and finding the influencers.

Engadget at top

He shows us how to decipher the shifting sands by taking us to www.technorati.com, where, at least today, you'll see that Engadget is No. 1 on the top 100 blogs.

The book also details stories of some quirky and unexpectedly popular blogs.
For instance, there's Blendtech, a Utah company whose "Will it blend?" blog shows videos of the company's CEO blending golf balls, marbles, Coke cans and rake handles in its high-end blender.
Inevitably, the stories focus on people with the right idea at the right time, like the "Mommycast" podcasters, Paige Heninger and Gretchen Vogelzang, two suburban mothers who started an early podcast, or a radiolike show for digital music players. They were picked up by Adam Curry's PodShow Network and now reach hundreds of thousands.

Gillin predicts media institutions will matter less and less, fears of a blogging bubble are overblown, the blogging trend is unstoppable and everyone is going to work extremely hard as this new medium takes shape.

Are you afraid you'll be left behind?

Fortunately for me, I did start blogging in May 2005. I didn't show up as one of the New Influencers. But there's hope.

Maybe all 70 million of us can make it into the second edition.