ReadWriteWeb

Anyone who has scanned the comments at Perez Hilton would understandably be puzzled by the idea of relying on blog readers to peer review a book. The idea seems especially ludicrous if the book is being published by the MIT Press. But as we're well aware here at ReadWriteWeb, some blogs do have very intelligent readers (*wink, wink, nudge, nudge*). Author Noah Wardrip-Fruin, an assistant professor of communication at the University of California at San Diego, thinks so too, which is why he is calling on his blog's readers to peer review his new book.

If you're a blogger who is into covering live events, like keynotes, press conferences, meetings, or sports events, you may be interested in the new, free service from CoveritLive. In development since 2006 and emerging from beta in November of 2007, the CoveritLive platform gives you an easy way to blog events as they happen and it also provides tools to interact with your readers during the event you're covering.

As you use CoveritLive's software, your commentary streams live to your web page or blog. Readers viewing the commentary can ask questions and participate in polls you create, giving them a reason to stay online on your website for the duration of the event, instead of checking in every now and then. Readers viewing the live blog stream don't have to create user accounts to participate or download any software.

The New York Times ran two stories today affirming the usefulness of citizen journalists and microjournalism tools to the reporting of major news stories. In October we reported that citizen journalism had gone undeniably mainstream after both Reuters and CNN embraced citizen journalism techniques and amateur reporting itself in the coverage of important news stories (perhaps most notably at the time, the California wildfires). Today the Times writes in two separate stories how techniques and technologies pioneered by citizen journalism are changing the way we get news.

Blogger Aditya Mahesh has managed to corral some of the biggest names in blogging to contribute to the BlogOnExpo, an event Mahesh describes as an online conference aimed at helping bloggers improve their blogs.

Starting yesterday and running through the 18th of January, the BlogOnExpo includes interviews and short tutorials from names many readers here will recognize.

Last week gadget blog Gizmodo admitted to pulling a prank at CES 2008 in which they used a device to turn off TVs on the exhibit floor and during company presentations. In their post about the prank Gizmodo apologized ("It was too much fun, but watching this video, we realize it probably made some people's jobs harder, and I don't agree with that [...] We're sorry," they wrote), but across the blogosphere the blog was still widely panned for the juvenile prank. And rightly so. Today, Gizmodo editor Brian Lam posted a lengthy response to his critics.

Earlier this week Alex Iskold wrote that there is no money for bloggers in the long tail, even if there is money from aggregating the long tail.

There are many different motivations for blogging and some do not involve money. Some people have a cause they are passionate about - they want to help change the world and a blog is a marvellous way to get attention for that cause. Others don’t even want to change the world or get noticed, they are just passionate about something and enjoy writing about it - attention is a by-product.

These bloggers may have Adsense ads and Amazon affiliate links. Who wants to turn away “no effort” money, however small? Just don’t judge them by their revenue, it is a by-product.

The bloggers who don’t have either a financial motivation or a passion, tend to move to social networks and Twitter-type microblogging models.

The bloggers who are financially motivated break down into two broad types:

1. Unchained journalists and early bloggers turned aspiring media mogul - think Mike Arrington, Om Malik, Arriana Huffington, Henry Blodget, Jason Calacanis and of course our own Richard MacManus. It is such a great business for those that make it; so many more will be tempted to try. The barriers to entry are much more than they were for the innovators in the early days, but they are still lower than most businesses and new spaces are constantly emerging. So the blogosphere will always be full of blogs with minimal revenues and big ambitions, just like we have lots of start-up technology companies with minimal revenues and big ambitions.

2. Blogging for Attention that translates into other revenue. This is simply the open source model applied to writing. Why does a software engineer spend a lot of time writing code that they give away as open source? There are certainly some who do it for non-financial reasons; they just love writing code or they want to kick an evil empire in the shins. However this assumes a day job or a rich uncle- because the huge open source industry would not sustain on this basis otherwise.