Liz Strauss.com

In the path I’ve taken as blogger, more and more my role is one of listener. More and more I see that bloggers want to be listened to, that they blog to be heard.

Yet, I’m sure that we’re fully aware of who’s listening.

Nielsen Buzz Metrics –We help promote and protect brands by measuring CGM and listening attentively to the pulse in online “buzz.” CGM encompasses the influential insights and opinions found in online discussions, opinions, experiences, recommendations and word of mouth.

How do they do that? They do that by monitoring blogs and blog comments on topics and key words their client companies identify for them.

Talk Digger — has complete evolved from a link recording source to a conversation monitor

Find Web Conversations and discover interesting stuff example

Find web sites linking to another web site.

See the relationship between conversations of the Web.

Browse the Web by browsing its conversations.

Discover interesting stuff by browsing effortlessly between conversations.

Blog Pulse and others –Challengers to Technorati not only index, but offer this service as well.

When a blogger publishes a post and other bloggers link to it, the original post ( or “seed”) becomes part of a conversation. What happens next is fascinating. From those seeds sprout other links, and so and and so on, until it creates an entire conversation. The nodes of the graph are posts and the arcs of the graph are permalink citations from post to post.

BlogPulse Conversation Tracker provides a missing element to the blog world: a tool for assembling snapshots of weblog “conversations.” How? It creates a threaded view of the conversation by performing a depth-first traversal of the conversation graph, starting from the seed post and visiting each node only once.

Check your stats and you might be surprised to find who’s listening in on what you have to say.

Liz Strauss

Now imagine that the entry-level employee, who developed those internal relationships I required before working with customers.

What would the enterprise have? Incredible value in the form of a human being. This person would know

• the organization and how it functioned.
• the people to go to fix a problem.
• the business the company was in and what drives it.
• how to answer questions about the basics of the business.

.

• the value of the people who work inside the building.
• how to talk to people at every level of the organization.
• HOW TO TALK TO PEOPLE AND HOW TO LISTEN.

Unfortunately, relationship-building and process are still not taught well in business schools. Yet organizations sorely need them. Customers won’t stand for being treated poorly any longer.

How will they find out?

Liz Strauss

It’s always been the Generation Gap. Young lion needs to fight old lion and leave the pride to find a life. Young has his faith in himself and his idealism. Old lion has his practical wisdom. There was no bridge to cross that cavern.

Yesterday I walked up to a new chasm that has no bridge across it — the New Media Gap.

The New Media Gap Isn’t a Gap at All

The New Media Gap is disconcerting because it’s not naturally occurring. It crosses generations, educational backgrounds, and economic levels. It’s heart is totally experiential. The communication from one side to the other cannot be fixed by a simple bridge because the New Media Gap is, in fact, not a gap, but a wall.

Any blogger has met the New Media Gap (NMG) in trying to explain just what a blog is. I suppose I always was working on a hidden assumption that the problem was a lack of information. Yesterday, however, two things happened.

• I met with my neurologist and in conversation we discussed blogging and the Internet. I quickly came to the conclusion that, I didn’t have time to explain what it was about. As I left this intelligent, soft-spoken man said, “Beware of the Internet Pirates.” All I could say was, “I’m past that. They need to beware of me now.” It didn’t say nearly what I wanted it to, but how do you explain when the filtered view is out of whack?
• Later that night I read piece in print about blogging. It was well written and thoroughy researched. I’ll paraphrase here a passage within it that still haunts me,. Corporations are conservative, they don’t like to upset customers, and to think that something like blogging might have an impact is naive. The article went on to quote a corporate exec as saying something to the effect of why would I want many comments on my website saying my product stinks? and why would I want to deal with them? How do I, as a customer and a product developer, accept those statements as anything but arrogant?

I sit this morning in amazement. I know the first man to be a thorough and deep thinker and yet on this particular topic, he speaks as the ancients spoke of the constellations.

I think of the corporate exec in the second example, and I wonder would people be writing that his product stinks if it didn’t? Shouldn’t he want to know if it does? Can he hear himself use the words why would I want — to deal — with them? He uses the words of distaste and distance.

The corporate exec is right he shouldn’t be blogging. If his product does stink, he won’t have customers much longer either.

Concern on the one hand, conceit on the other.

Neither man could listen.

Walls are great insulators. They are like fences, however. They keep things in and protect them, but fences and walls also are indiscriminate about what the things that they keep out.

–ME “Liz” Strauss

Schools, families and friends ought to take a look at the launch of VOX by SixApart, the makers of Typepad, Moveable Type, and LiveJournal. At the preview I attended last night at Chicago’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, Mena Trotter described it as “putting the fun back into blogging for those folks who want to blog without all of the people.”

The ease of use and the ability to integrate sound, video and pictures make this an ideal way for families and friends to keep in touch across long distances. The interface takes away the need to know HTML to get your pictures where you want them and adds in a layer of privacy that can be split for different elements of the same post — you can let everyone read about your vacation, but only certain readers see the pictures of you in that swimsuit you bought.

VOX truly is a unique addition to the blogging marketplace. SixApart has carved out a specific personal blogging niche and made a product just for that group. That’s what Web 2.0 is all about. Currently VOX is by invitation only.Email me if you want an invitation or know someone who does.

Liz Strauss