DISQUS

I will be posting an update about this very unhappy period on blognation. I will also deal directly with the post from Oliver. If Robert would like to do an interview tonight then I am more than happy to do so.

Finally I will confirm that Robert has never been approached for an role within blognation. Robet and I have spoken in the past and that is all about blognation, podtech.net and other networks.

Steve when you get back ping me sam.sethi [at] blgonation.com - I am not denying that editors have not been paid or that mistakes were not made. The deal was editors would blog and we would grow rapidly together to get funding and be back paid.

Sadly funding has taken longer but all the team bar two that were sacked are still involved and actively communicating with the VC to understand where we are in the process.

Ask yourself why Marc was still blogging on 1st Dec if he did not think this was working. I am far from pleased with how this has turned out but will see it through and respond at the right time on blognation.

Robert I will see you on Friday night in London and I am sure we will discuss this in full.

The other person who is very quiet on this is Mike Arrington who certainly was seen at all times next to Zuckerberg this summer glowing in the reflected glory having bigged up Facebook nearly everyday on TC.

Why is he not being his normal curmudgeon self and castigating FB. Why has been left to Duncan Riley to write pithy small posts about FB beacon?

Is Arrington scared of writing negatives on Zuckerberg?

I got the same friendly source as Mike Butcher (TCUK) for "this scoop" and have spoken again to the originating source. It is total conjecture right now and not substantiated.

Two blogs don't make a right!

Reading VentureBeat it is more hearsay not quotes, no valuation or quotable comments from Reid Hoffman or News Corp.

I think though if it does happen you maybe right in the idea that it will be new real-estate for adverts.

What confuses me more is the Google - Myspace advertising deal. When does that $900m sweetner run out so News Corp can run its own ads?

Like many bloggers - aka human aggregators - it takes a great deal of time and energy to stay on top of the noise, decipher it and distill it back in a post. It is therefore not surprising that blog networks (like my own) are cropping up with bloggers joining together to try and earn money. Of course the existing media networks are going to enter this space to compete for advertising dollars and audience.

As techmeme moves away from tracking the individual voices of bloggers it does create an opportunity for an alternative to appear which tracks only the indivdual 100. That is partly what we are trying to do on blognation but we are collating that alternative list now.

I agree that twitter has changed but I have created two twitter accounts. twitter.com/blognation for the publicity of blognation and twitter.com/ssethi for my personal interaction with my friends.

Twitterposter shows who is using twitter for publicity, often with the biggest audiences/friends.

Robert as an ex-microsoftee converted to Apple I must admit I do love my MAC Pro and find the ads funny but I think the honeymoon maybe coming to an end.

First the iphone upgrade/bricking did not go down well with developers. Reluctantly Apple Czar Jobs agreed to an SDK in Feb.

The recent Leopard upgrade has caused many friends problems with their Mac's even the recent upgrade fix. The latest seems to be the battery being rapidly drained.

The recent success of Apple is bringing it the same problems as Microsoft. As more people use it for varied things and as more applications are developed for it, the less stable the OS platform becomes or in other words the harder it is to upgrade/support.

Apple PR hard better get ready to earn their money. As you say the PR lady in the ad may soon be on the otherside soon.

From a personal experience the PR exec's representing Apple UK are amazingly arrogant. They remind me of the days when everyone loved Microsoft.

They think everyone loves Apple and thus they never return calls or emails. Pride comes before a fall!

Hi

I am blogging about a term I call CPF - cost per friend which might become a new social ad model.

Again if advertisers want to ask me for my time/attention/recommendation and then to pass that onto my social graph (friends) they need to pay me. But for advertisers what rate do they pay me. i.e my CPF rate?

My CPF rate will vary from others based on the size of my social graph and the influence/reputation I have.

Hi Nic

People fear losing their privacy right now. Ergo the backlash. What people need to do is get over privacy and manage it better and then get ready to sell it to advertisers for value or give it to trusted ID brokers who can aggregate multiple users.

IF my personal information carries value to advertisers who are willing to pay FB to reach me, then they must be willing to share some of that money with me if they want me to be part of their conversation.

Right now it seems unfair that all of my attention profile is given away by FB to advertisers and I make nothing which is why I consider it evil. Pay me something and I'll think less evil of you.

Ultimately social influencers will be paid more than others. The question is how do we start to measure social influence and/or reputation. In the real-world it is celebrity endorsement to a brand. In the digital world ...?

Hi Nic

Interesting thought but the reason people are ad-blind is because the ads are at best contextual or gender/geo specific.

Their relevancy is very low.

The point of social networks like FB is that they are lifestreams and/or attention streams i.e my status, my flickr photos etc all aggregated in my profile. But the person reading it is often someone else.

The ads that appear around MY profile should reflect THEIR attention/behaviour/interests. When and if FB and others ever do this then I think CPM rates will increase with every new page view

Well clearly it is not the Microsoft buys FB for $15bn announcement then ;-)

Thank you Peter for calling out this bullshit about certain sites numbers. For a longtime I have felt that their default position on sites has elevated their numbers beyond their actual reach and influence. This however is not a new phenomenon.

In Web 1.0 Microsoft MSN's portal homepage was for ages the default page on every PC browser. This made sure they got millions of default pageviews which they used to convince advertisers to pay higher rate cards for advertising on MSN.

Secondly as a publisher there is the double edged sword of wanting to have people read your content but also see your ads. I do not want use partial feeds, so I am looking to see if our ad server can add in adverts without using Feedburner FAN.

At blognation we will soon be announcing a new metric based on attention rather than feed numbers. Our attention solution will allow us to measure readers across the web, RSS, email, mobile etc.

We are also considering removing ourselves from Feedburner because of the lockin and serving our own RSS.

The NEW Plaxo is a great tool. I have used it to link my Mac Address book and Mail, I also have synched my LinkedIn, Gmail and other accounts into Plaxo and thus also my Mac Address Book.

I am pleased to say that unlike the past Plaxo has not spammed any of my contacts.

This online identity consolidator tool is a good attempt via XFN to consolidate all of my social accounts and identities. I will be testing this tool today.

The one tool I am using that is essential is the FaceBookSync app on the Mac so I can sync this to my Mac Address Book and then my Plaxo.

Robert

Until a few hours ago I was very much against the blackhole aka as Facebook and then I saw a chink of light.

I found Facebook badges which enable me to place my facebook status and details into my blog (about us). I also can get my facebook photos in Wordpress.

Now Facebook can be my lifestream app - aggregating all of my apps into one place. It can also replace my linkedin list.

I am not saying Facebook is perfect but it has certainly become more useful.

Sam