As most people who follow the news know, CBS aired a story about President
George W. Bush recently on _60 Minutes_. (<
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/09/20/politics/main644539.shtml >.) The
story was supposed to be about Bush's service record in the National Guard.
However, once the story aired, the spin quickly began to gravitate around the
dubious authenticity of certain documents used by CBS to prove its allegations
against Bush. Presidents come, and presidents go, and the impact that this
particular _60 Minutes_ story may end up having on the presidential election is
not the real story. The real story is the medium by which the negative spin
over _60 Minutes_ was propagated over the Internet. To wit, while most Internet
consultants and Web designers have been obsessing over keyword density and
Google PageRank, the ever-growing community of bloggers have quietly become a
force to be reckoned with.

The efficacy of blogs in creating and spreading media buzz is not a new
phenomenon. Since their inception about five years ago, blogs have been
recognized for their ability to generate all sorts of noise, particularly on
search engines. However, few people outside the blogging community realized
that the noise could become the signal.

The term "blog" first entered the unofficial Internet lexicon in May of 1999
when it was coined by Peter Merholz (< http://www.peterme.com/ >) as a
contraction of the term "weblog." Shortly thereafter, in August of 1999, Pyra
Labs released the Blogger blogging tool (< http://www.blogger.com/start >), and
blogs quickly became a full-blown online megatrend. However, for the
uninitiated, the question remains, "What, exactly, is a blog?"

Decades ago, a friend of mine graduated from college with a degree in electrical
engineering, and he was offered a job starting on the ground floor in a new
field called "computers." He declined, explaining, "On/off switches . . . How
far can it go?" He ended up working for a defense contractor and had a notable
career as a project manager. Even so, had my friend recognized the enormous
potential of digital technology, I have no doubt that he would have gone much,
much further.

To be clear, blogs are more than just online journals. First and foremost,
blogs are the medium for a new type of technology, what marketing people refer
to as a "disruptive technology," and blogs themselves are a "killer application"
that is the most significant killer application since the advent of the World
Wide Web. Moreover, as noted above, the community of bloggers have become a
force to be reckoned with on the World Wide Web, a force that can blow
established media properties out of the water when they fail to verify their
sources, and game search engine algorithms without even trying.

Ignore the phenomenon of blogs at your own risk.

Humbly Yours,

XODP Moderator netesq