I understand Dan Rather << http://www.rathergate.com/ >> may be in danger of
losing his job at See B.S. News over this story.

LOL

----- Original Message -----
From: "David F. Prenatt, Jr." <netesq@...>
To: <xodp@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Tuesday, September 28, 2004 10:27 AM
Subject: [xodp] Blogs - Quietly Moving from Noise to Signal


> 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
>
>