I started blogging on a lark in late '05 and have been pretty consistant with it since then. Granted I was writing before, but that was mostly on forums and I was always better with one on my long rants rather than a quicky supportive hug kind of thing.  The blog concept was just perfect for me...my own public soapbox...ahhh. But, I have to face the fact that I am a niche blogger. A small niche blogger..more a niche in a niche. And even if now, I am a well known respected Blogger, it is still in my tiny Adoption Blog niche. Not even the general "Adoption" blogs, as most of them are written by adoptive parents or wanna be adoptive parents who sign the glories of Adoption, but the contoversial and often ugly "Adoption Truth" bloggers where we expose the ugly side of it all. And while I know like *all* the big names in Adoption world...it's a tiny world and unless you are somehow interested in Adoption Issues, you don't know me.

The other side of this is that I have hardly paid any attention at all to Bloggers outside the Adoption Community. Of course, that all changed these last few weeks. Now it's my job to know and wow, I have been living in a tiny little bubble! My eyes are opened and they smart from all this big city smog while my neck is cramped from looking at these huge tall buildings....Lordy, the Blogosphere is much huger than I thought, but still somehow, just through the nature of blogging, I feel like I know some of the big dogs already.

I don't necessarily "get" all the big deals in the blogosphere.  The whole gadet thing alludes me, but then again, I am a girl..hence no special tool..so the grown up toy..aka gaget.. thing leaves me flat. Of course I cannot use my gentle sex as an excuse, as the gossip/Holloywood blogs are sleepers to me as well, I don't get the cute cat giggkes and I have been confused by the knitting craze for years new. Knitters obviously cross many borders as Wooly Bloggers have been duel idenified as Adoption Bloggers a long time ago now.  Then again, I get all wrapped up sometimes with visions of grand uniqueness...a hold over I fear from being a "special" birth mother... so I want to think that I am just *too cool* to get interested in what the *typical* American blog reader likes. In any case, I better get over myself real quick!

On the upside, I have really been learning all kinds of new things this week besides finding out who the Kings of Blog World are. There is even a colorized map of it! Who knew! And Adoption Blogs are NOT mentioned at all....sniff sniff.

So I am feeling ready to get out from behind my little snow globe and say hi to everyone else. So while I do feel like the small town girl in a huge big city, I am not afraid of getting mugged. Heck, I have never been mugged for real and that even was true when I was a little 17 year old chickie running around Mannhatten. Plus that's one thing good about growing up in Adoption land......there ain't nobody who is gonna get under my thick skin.

I love this job right now. I get into the office, and on a cold, wet, snowy icy day like today, it is absurdly quiet here as it seems half our office has not trekked in. I sit in my quiet corner and think about where in the World Wide Web I choose to go to today.  That opens up a huge quotient of possibilities even if I keep within my work parameter, which I do.  So I think of some key words that might bring me to a new area that I should involved in and away I go with just a few key strokes of my handy Google box. It’s better than a magic carpet since I am afraid of heights and I get to stay in my chair with my coffee.

As yesterday I hit up “monetize blogs”, today I went for “blogs press releases” which brought me back in time to June 2005. It’s actually funny to read what some people were saying or predicting what would be happening now.  According to the number of comments and track backs, I guess back in 2005, Steve Rubel predicting that “Blogs are the New Press Release” made people all but freak out.

Steve made some interesting predictions and I wonder if he does have dibs on a real crystal ball because he was dead on about RSS being everywhere by 2007. There were defiantly doubts, I guess, back then, about RSS. I have to admit that if I even knew what an RSS feed was back in 2005 (and I did not) I would also have doubted it’s power but now, reading this, “I’m also not sure whether companies would be willing to trust - hope - that journalists will be sure to hook up their RSS feed, that they will check their RSS reader regularly” is almost hysterical.  Ah, hind sight, I had to control myself not to laugh out loud when one commenter proclaimed, “And in Australia I know of one (count one) major league journalist who uses an RSS aggregator.”  I bet you that number sure has changed. Now it should probably read, “And in Australia I don’t know of one (count one) major league journalist who does not use an RSS aggregator.”

Back in my real chair, in real 2008, I ponder the thoughts of 2005.  No, the press release is not yet dead, but you got to adore some of the mindsets:

·         The only problem that I personally see with that there is still a certain level of uncrediblity with the blog

·         In that sense, blogs and RSS are no different than advertising; companies can use these means to bypass the journalist's filter and go straight to their ultimate target audience, but that audience knows it's only getting part of the story.

·         I just think that bloggers are just amateurs, there do their thing with whatever devices available at the time when the news is happening, it is a 21 century phenomenon, and will never replace real historic journalism.

Now, with all due respect to the posters above, I do believe that the overall thought was that these “amateur, non journalistic blogs” were ones put out BY the corporations.  As if instead or a traditional press release being given out to the news wires, a corporate head would have their own blog and out the information out there. This is supported by quotes like these:

·         If you are keeping just a blog and updating it quite frequently, you will be losing the important blog posts (which are sort of press releases) in the posts clutter. You would have to highlight these important posts separately.

·         From the readers’ point of view, imagine the result of going through hundreds of blogs posts and trying to reach particular important information.

There were also questions referring to the corporate suit not having the time or dedication to updating a blog regularly, more doubts about the quality of writing and the bias of that information.  I guess the real independent, true journalism type blog was still off the radar? Obviously, the importance of blogging was underestimated just as the professionalism that is shown by bloggers was also underestimated.  I can see how the idea of a company generated blog being the only source for a news release would not fly, but that is not at all what the blog has turned out to be.

Now, with the blog fully embraced by the world even the most trusted hallmarks of professional journalism have gotten involved. The New York Times has regular and guest bloggers about a wide variety of subjects. I have seen well known bloggers as guests on CNN and other news channels where their opinions and expertise are considered invaluable.  What was not seen in 2005 is the importance and trust that America has but into the unbiased, free voice of the average citizen on the other side of a computer monitor nor the power that that voice can wield when influencing popular opinion.  No Blogs have not replaced real historic journalism, but rather have become part and parcel of real historic journalism.

Now we have the desire, rather the real need, of the traditional press release to be released to the blogging community with the hope that it will be picked up and written about. When companies such as Nikon come up with “Blogger Outreach Programs” then it’s pretty obvious that corporate America has figured out that Blogs need to somehow be harnessed and that their placement in the SEO market is greatly assisted by the participation of blogs. And that, of course, brings me back to why Blogg.io is a good idea whose time has come.

I wonder if Steve saw that in his crystal ball.