Almost as a followup to my earlier post about “Web 2.0″ comes another angle. I don’t personally know Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff, the co-authors of “Groundswell”, a book that claims to help big companies determine what Web 2.0 strategies are right for them. They were at yesterday’s Web 2.0 Expo, pitching their book. 

Nor have I read their book, but I have browsed through some of their ideas on their own blogs. Josh Bernoff has been quoted as saying,

An important first step is to understand the cost and benefit of harnessing these new technologies. For instance, the first-year cost of starting an executive blog for a Fortune 500 company is about $285,000. Executives must be trained how to blog, and it must be vetted by lawyers and Web Designers, and that costs money.

Excuse me? $285,000 U.S. Dollars?!? Where did this guy pull that figure from? Sadly, some naive business people are buying this book and are actually taking the content to heart! The book is hard bound and comes in a sickeningly bright green and yellow cover, available for $19.77 at Amazon. But don’t stare at the cover too long, because I think there is some kind of subliminal advertising built in to those swirling circles. 

Here is what I think blogging is all about. Communication. Nothing more, and nothing less. It’s more modern, it’s instantaneous, and it can be informative, educational, and even funny. But it is still just another form of communication. I can just imagine some big CEO, trying to figure out what to write in their business blog each day, surrounded by a team of attorneys and a webmaster with a really BIG grin on his or her face.

The problem is that too many people are looking at blogging as a means of getting into your head and making you buy something. It is degenerating into just another marketing tool. Fussing over every word we write, just so we can include well thought out key words. Purposely misspelling the names of our competitors, just to get those extra search engine hits on Google directing links back to our own site.

So for the record, if any business people out there truly believes that they have to spend $285,000 in order to have a successful blog, please contact me via my blog and I guarantee that I can do this for them and it will cost much less. I’ll even make your blog pretty for you. I’ll take the responsibility of coming up with your daily posts with a minimal amount of your time and assistance, and I will even bend my own moral scruples and include keywords and search engine optimization techniques if you so desire. But please, keep those lawyers a safe distance from me. I don’t write well with someone reading over my shoulder.

photo credit: destinelee

Like most blogs, I wish I could attract thousands of readers, receive accolades about my unique and keen style of writing, all while impressing the girls and increasing the sum of my bank account. Obviously, that hasn’t happened - yet.

So I’ve been looking at various methods of drawing attention to my blog. I’ve considered conventional means such as participating in social networking sites to gain exposure. I’ve considered going online and begging for people to just visit once. I’ve considered a lot of different techniques.

Then today I ran across a website that says:

Every website needs traffic. How would you like to see your hit counter rocket along with a leg-up in the search engine rankings? Especially if your site is new you need to somehow make your site stand out in an ever-more crowded marketplace.

Why, this sounds just like me! So I looked into it further. It turns out that for a mere pittance of $3,700.00 per campaign, this company will utilize the controversial technique of “link baiting.” Link baiting is basically a technique where you go out and encourage other websites to link to yours (often by returning the favor), irregardless of whether or not your content has any similarity or relationship with the others. You can also submit your website repeatedly to the various search engines such as Google. The idea is to raise your website to the top of the search results page. All the search results falling below the top 10 or 20 results are generally ignored by the person doing the search.

Now, I can’t really blame “Ryan” - he is obviously catering to a perceived need and filling it. I’ll even do him a favor and provide a link to his page, just in case anyone wants to see first hand what it is I am talking about.

But personally, the whole practice bothers me. The original search engine concept was to provide a list of links that are the most relevant to the search terms used. Now all you get is a list of websites that managed to link their way to the top. So now I make it a habit to always view at least a few of the search results that fall below the top 10, just because it seems to be the fair thing to do.

Here’s the link the Ryan’s website: http://services.performancing.com/social/

photo credit: lemoncat1

Here’s a story I still haven’t quite figured out. Under current policy, foreign flagged cruise ships that visit more than one U.S. port are also required to make a stop outside the United States. Many cruise ships are foreign flagged, but owned and operated by companies in the U.S. This policy goes back to the U.S. Passenger Vessel Services Act of 1886 (over 120 years ago) and was intended to protect U.S. ships from foreign competition. I’m not certain how this pertains to current day cruise ships, but the industry has managed to abide by it, by making short stops. For example, a cruise from San Francisco to Alaska has to make a short port call in Canada before continuing on their journey.

But now a branch of the Department of Homeland Security is calling for changes to tighten the rule. Instead of a quick stop in a foreign country, they want foreign cruise ships to stay at least two days on each itinerary. In order to meet this requirement, foreign cruise ships would have to completely reorganize their schedules and modify which ports of call they will visit. Most vacationers prefer the short stays, as a 2 day visit to Canada may not be of any interest.

According to the Cruise Lines International Association, a Florida based trade group that represents most U.S. cruise ship companies, this change would cause some U.S. stops to be scrubbed in order to give them more time to meet the 2 day visit requirement, resulting in less tourism in the U.S., but more tourism in those foreign countries where the ships would be required to stop.

So with all that being said, can someone explain to me what exactly this has to do with Homeland Security? Or why they are using our tax dollars to increase tourism outside the U.S.?