American Madness

There is an ever expanding array of new tools that claim to help bloggers and media junkie’s track down the relevant information coming off The Net, and most importantly, keep track of it all. However, there are only a few tools that really matter: your email program, your feed reader, and your ability to filter the information.

I use Thunderbird to check both my mail and feeds (Hat tip to Eric Skiff). In regard to filtering, I have found that it pays to be purposefully lazy about reading through all the info that comes through my news reader. It is much more helpful to focus on a few blogs that I like, while letting the meta blog engines like Technorati and social bookmark sites like Delicious, send me the other top ranked posts that are out there.

To get a Technorati Meta RSS Feed you just click the tags link, select a topic specific tag, and scroll to the end of the page where there is an subscribe to RSS link. The process for Delicious is similar. I subcribe to the media and marketing tags.

Kinja, being part of the Gawker empire, naturally has a great collection of recent media related posts under the editor’s digest, but there is no RSS feed for this. Google, Yahoo, and MSN are good for tracking news from traditional sources, but I have not found them very helpful in tracking blogs. Rumors keep circulating that they are working on something big in the blogspace.

Any suggestions on tracking news and blogs would be much appreciated. I’ll posted additional tips on tricks as I find them.

Lately it seems that New York City focused regional blog is busting at the seams with new blogs. Long known for its carefully selected list of qualified and on point bloggers, Corante seems to be undergoing an interesting expansion that involves adding about one blog every day or so. Being a New Yorker myself, the New York City focused regional blog was the first to catch my attention. It started out small with just a few posts per day by Corante’s Senior Editor Dominic Basulto. Now Dominic seems to be in hyperdrive, with 6 fresh posts a day, all of them interesting.

Just launched July 7th at Corante is a new blog called Rebuilding Media. By Vin Crosbie and Bob Cauthorn, it focuses on the disruptive changes afoot in media today. You can guarantee that I will be watching this blog closely. It looks mondo interesting for anyone who wants to be a part of the new media world that is fast taking hold.

Rebuilding Media gives us a little taste of what is in store with their salvo post, “New Media From The Horse’s Mouth.”

“I see a need for a group that acknowledges that, in today’s media landscape, we need to look at and understand both, simultaneously. The people who manage and produce the content are now also concerned about making money from it.”

“I propose forming a group that will fill this gap. Call it the Digital Media Business Association, or anything else appropriate. The group will be for thinkers who are able to simultaneously hold both editorial and business ideas in their heads. Its purpose is to find a forum for people who find themselves either ahead of the curve or sometimes feeling off the track ? jumping between or among worlds, and having to go to all these different realms to bolster their expertise.”

Dear Byron,

I just read " On the Web, Fearlessness Meets Frivolousness by Sarah Boxer, and I am wondering where she is coming from in saying the following about werenotafraid.com.

“We’re Not Afraid, set up to show solidarity with London, seems to be turning into a place where the haves of the world can show that they’re not afraid of the have-nots.”

I read the article and visited the website thinking that I was going to see some hideous displays of hedonism. I am no fan of the largess I see in New York and around the world.  However, all I found on the website was a bunch of goofy pictures and people having fun.

Sure, werenotafraid.com is a little defiant, that’s its purpose, to say, "We Live!" in the face of death and destruction.

“The first night out was fitful, scary even. After putting in at Helena, Ark., the homemade raft got caught up in the wash of the massive towboats that surrounded it on the Mississippi. The craft bounced along in the inky black, and then searing beams of light from the towboats began to strafe it, the captains wanting to see what manner of contraption was before them. The ragtag crew slept in terrified shifts, dodging the tugs and avoiding a ledge formed by a dike that threatened to pitch them into the mud, water and mayhem.” nytimes

Market researchers who want immediate insights into into the consumer zietgiest are blog watching.WSJ

Interesting contest from Contagious Media Turns up interesting rules of Meme propogation on the internet in a 22 day contest to create the most popular website from scratch.

The term ?Guerilla marketing? has recently become a catchall designation for creative and effective marketing and public relations that reaches out to target audiences through direct person to person interactions and street promotion. In truth, most good marketing is now forced to employ some potent guerilla aspect in addition to historically useful methods of garnering public awareness, such as press releases, advertising or product promotions.

When the product is an idea, as so many are as the U.S. economy continues shifting to intellectual from industrial output, creative techniques are becoming more important as a means of capturing imaginations.
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