Arianna Huffington on blogging on The Daily Show

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I have just been watching the December 3 edition of The Daily Show with John Stewart. His guest was Arianna Huffington, the co-founder of the Huffington Post. She was there to promote her book The Huffington Post Complete Guide to Blogging (which is authored by may, so is probably more a wiki then a blog - but you may wish to contest this interpretation).

However, her interview was interesting and amusing. Her view that blogs are the first draft of history seemed to make sense. And that blogs are best when they are fresh and unexpurgated. Write about your passions she says - your hidden passions even.

Stewart, quite rightly, points the fact that he has no need of blogging because he has an audience for his television show. Hard to argue with that. But for the rest of us the unmediated blogosphere gives us access to an audience which might otherwise not know we existed - if indeed we can find an audience online. Huffington says 50,000 new blogs are started every day. At that rate there will be more blogs than readers.

Then there are blogs like ThoughtSpurs, which simply record the trivial, the absurd and, yes, the thought provoking. In the years I have been adding to the archive I have covered terrain that I might otherwise have simply forgotten and in this respect I, like many others, may simply be my own audience (or, in the words of Neil Roberts) - the audient.

When my copy of the book arrives from Fishpond (NZ) I will deliver a full review.
If you are closer to the US the Amazon edition is here.

This from the, as yet, solitary review (5 stars) on Amazon:

The "Complete Guide to Blogging" is A FANTASTIC BOOK! Though it's hard for me to whittle down my list of favorite chapters to a choice few, I'll GIVE IT A TRY anyway:

3. You Can't Be Too Angry: "Think of something that makes you irrationally furious. If what results is something you'd never say to someone's face for fear of getting the living s**t kicked out of you, then IT'S PERFECT BLOGGING MATERIAL!!!!"

7. These. Are. Four. Sentences.

11. No Barriers to Entry: "Why be a low-paid hack banging out endless copy when you CAN DO IT FOR FREE?"

You can check out any time you like…

I was discussing a project with a client the other day. He runs luxury limousine transfers from Auckland Airport to the city and further afield. I suggested that starting a blog might be a useful companion for the web site we will build. The subject would be what is happening on his patch - in effect, while customers are aboard the driver is a mobile concierge.

I came across the blog of a boutique hotel in Portland Oregon. The Deluxe. Their blog is well written and full of interesting things to see and do in Portland.

To tell you the honest truth I'd never contemplated visiting Portland before but the blog has a charming way of inviting visitors.

Nicely done.

I'll refer it to my client.

(There are other hotels in the group that blog too … check them out:

Hotel deLuxe;
Hotel Murano;
Hotel Preston;
plus a Facebook page for Hotel Lucia. ).

Via AdPulp

Vanity Fair Blogopticon

Vanity Fair have published a 'blogopticon' that offers an interesting guide to blogosphere.

"Navigating the blogosphere can be trying, what with everyone from Al Roker to your Wiccan cousin out in New Mexico vying for the attention of the world’s billion-plus Web surfers. In an effort to make some sense of it all, Vanity Fair has charted the most influential or amusing blogs about politics, gossip, Hollywood, media, and miscellany, and located them on two basic continuums: tone and content."

While you're there read James Woolcott's blog. Very savvy.

The CEO blogger - Kevin Roberts, Saatchi & Saatchi

Kevin Roberts is the CEO of ad agency Saatchi & Saatchi. He is probably the most switched on senior executive in the advertising world in that he has embraced blogging. He recently posted these remarks about blogging that I thought were interesting.

Researchers asked 6,000 women:

"…Assuming you had to make the choice, would you rather blog or eat chocolate?”

Ok, they did ask other questions too. That’s how they also discovered that 55 percent would give up alcohol rather than lose the right to blog, 42 percent (the musically challenged, I imagine) would give up their iPod, and in an alarm bell for the women’s magazine industry, 43 percent would give up newspapers and magazines. As I have already flagged, only 20 percent would give up chocolate. So what does this tell us, apart from the fact that chocolate is irresistible? (especially Cadbury’s Dairy Milk - a Lovemark for gorillas everywhere!) To me, it says that these women are finding the sense of community and identity they need in blogging, which should be worrying for the people who market magazines and newspapers as this is something they once owned.

As I have found with my own blog, the ability to exchange ideas and experiences with a global community is both exhilarating and fruitful. It is a world where you can float an idea or an opinion in your own time, at your own speed, and to an audience that grows or diminishes on nothing more than your powers of attraction. Blogging is revealing itself as deeply emotional and an important way to unleash communities and passions, commitment and truth. Newspapers and magazines have already dipped their toes into this world, but their next reinvention will have to take blogging from their readers far more seriously. Selected columnists blogging is not the same as readers becoming activists, creators, connectors. Magazines and newspapers need even more audience participation. If they do it right, women night even sacrifice their beloved chocolate now and then."

Go to Kevin Roberts' blog.