ReadWriteWeb

Blogging is a fast medium, that's one of its advantages over traditional media. There are bloggers who specialize in reporting fast about breaking news on a wide variety of topics. Most of those bloggers use Google's RSS publishing technology FeedBurner as a middleman to deliver their posts to subscribers and capture analytics.

If FeedBurner decides to take its sweet time in delivering the news, that's bad for bloggers. Unfortunately, that's what's happening right now. We've been seeing delays of up to 20 minutes between posting to our site and our posts appearing in our FeedBurner feeds. That's a pretty serious problem and we're not alone in experiencing it.

Yesterday we wrote about a new Pew study that found that only 11% of people in the US who use the internet at work are using it to read blogs. We've seen other studies that put this number much higher, but Pew's is probably the most objective.

It's really a shame that more people aren't reading blogs at work, and we don't just say that because we'd like the increased readership. If you're not reading blogs at work, you may not be doing your job as well as you could be. Below we discuss three advantages to reading blogs on the job and offer examples of the kinds of blogs that people could benefit from reading in three different non-tech professions.

Technorati says blogging is mainstream, we think the numbers indicate otherwise.

Blog search engine and ad network Technorati released its 5th annual State of the Blogosphere report and the numbers are quite interesting. Technorati says its findings indicate that blogging is now mainstream. We're not so sure. Although reading blogs is becoming increasingly mainstream, is writing them?

Zemanta, the blogging tool which harnesses semantic technology to add relevant content to your posts, has just released a major upgrade to their service. This new release allows you specify the sources you want to see in the suggestions list that Zemanta provides. You can now incorporate your own social networks, RSS feeds, and photos from your Flickr account into your blog posts. This makes Zemanta a lot more appealing to established bloggers who are in less need of suggestions and more in need of automation.

Chances are, you have seen one of those photocopied, five dollar zines about anything from local bands to organic gardening in your favorite magazine store. Florida based startup OpenZine is trying to take this idea of self-published amateur magazines to the web. In a world where blog publishing is ubiquitous and easy, however, what does OpenZine offer that couldn't be done with a blog? While the idea of taking zines to the web sounds intriguing, superior publishing methods already exist for the web, and OpenZine, even though it has some interesting features, feels like a step backwards.

There are many different types of bloggers in the world today - new media journalists, "journalers," video bloggers, and others. One of the types - "diaryists" - record their innermost thoughts and feelings in a way that's very much similar to how people (yes, usually girls) once recorded their thoughts in small books kept under lock and key and stuffed beneath their mattresses.

Of course in this day and age, the thought of actually putting pen to paper seems like something from a bygone era. But the urge to create a diary hasn't been abandoned - it's just that the format has changed.

An embargo is something that tech companies use to set a time when their product will launch and the press can publish their reviews of it. Embargoes aren't as simple as they sound and they aren't uncontroversial, either.

We believe they can be a good idea, though. Below we discuss why and share thoughts about how we think an embargo can be run well. If you've got comments to share, don't be shy, that's what the comments section of a blog is for.

A one year follow up on a study of social media adoption at 500 of the fastest growing companies in the US has found that familiarity with and use of blogs, podcasting, wikis, online video and social networking has skyrocketed in 2008 to nearly double what it was in 2007. 77% of respondents now report at least some use of a social media tool in their business.

The University of Massachusetts Dartmouth Center for Marketing Research performed the study for Inc. Magazine and their findings confirm what previous studies have argued as well: social media use is now a major, mainstream activity.

Platforms like WordPress and Movable Type democratized the process of self-publishing. With these tools, everyone could be a publisher and it didn't require advanced technical expertise to do so. Now, the next revolution for publishing is to bring that same ease of creation to the process of building social networks. With Six Apart's recent release of Movable Type 4.2, that revolution has begun. The new release provides DIY tools for building your own social networking platform which includes member profiles, forums, friending capabilities, rating of content, and more. WordPress isn't too far behind, either - a new platform called BuddyPress, is being built on the WordPress core. Is this the future of blogging? Or is this the future of web publishing altogether?

Shutterfly, the photo sharing and printing company today launched Share Sites, which will allow users to create photo albums centered around events like travel, birthdays, or weddings. Shutterfly member can also invite others to upload their own photos to a shared album. Share Sites is Shutterfly's first foray into providing a more open, Web 2.0 oriented service to its mainstream audience. While Shutterfly markets Share Sites simply as a different way to share photos, it is really a fully featured photoblogging platform.