So, I got an in at Alexa/Amazon and they gave me a some details on the recent spike a lot of folks have been seeing.

The theory right now is that the Chinese government has been blocking a bunch of top websites causing their pageviews to nosedive. As such those websites—Chinese language ones—took a major drop in the rankings. Their drop means the other (read US sites) spike. Assuming the Chinese government lets people back on those sites in a couple of weeks we should see all the US sites drop back down.

Now, what Alexa should really do is have multiple indexes that let you sort sites by language. Sure, I'd love to see all the blogs in the world on one list, but when I'm looking for businesses reasons I only care about the US sites.

Alexa is an amazing free service, but it needs a lot more transparency. I'm working with some of the folks over there to make some suggestions, so let me know what you want from Alexa.

How would you make Alexa better?

Here are some major sites in China. I guess the big players were not so affected by the downturn/police. Anyone have examples of Chinese sites that took a dive recently?

This report just made my night. [Hat tip, Rafat for pointing it out]

I dumped the chart into Excel and sorted by the biggest % change and you can see that Internet advertising is up 25.80% over the last nine months when compared to the same period in 2003. Additional, you can see that as a % of the whole Internet media was up .7% from period to period, the most of any other category (cable ad network TV both increased by .5% of the total pie, most others went down!).

B-to-B magazines are also showing little signs of growth, and I can tell you why:

1. B2B advertisers are moving online because it offers much better value.
2. B2B didn't get hit as hard during the downturn, and as such doesn't have to grow as much (Outdoor, which took a beating in post dotcom has been coming back strong conversely).

As far as I'm concerned the Internet is the most powerful medium for advertising and response, so I would expect that the 5.5% of total media spend number to grow to 10-15% over the next ten to 20 years—putting it right up there with national TV, newspapers and consumer magazines.

For all the hype around the Internet, one of the things that has been under-hyped has been the success story of online advertising. While the dotcoms (at least round one of the dotcoms) imploded, the advertisers and marketers only increased their online spending. More evidence that what caused the dotcom meltdown had less to do with the industry, and more to do with the inexperience of management combined with absurd valuations they were chasing.

The reality of online advertising is that it is huge—you don't need to hype it, it just is.

Is Alexa broken? I've noticed that all the major blogs had their ranking cut in half over the past week or two. It's as if 5-20,000 sites were removed from the Alexa index.

Our blogs have been growing, but looking at Kotaku's traffic log and our traffic logs it is clear that neither site grew to the point at which they would have a 10-40,000 boost.

Perhaps Alexa took out the Asian blogs that were quickly filling up the top of the index? The 100M+ Chinese users online now don't have too many sites to look at. As a result they have pushed thousands of Chinese sites into the top of the Alexa rankings over the past year. Maybe Alexa is making another index for them? I've also heard that a lot of people in Asia use the Alexa toolbar, and that the Alexa data has become meaningless because of this.

Can someone from Alexa add some transparency to the index as it is really confusing people!

Just got an email regarding a press story on the micro-controversy at MediaBistro over them asking for people to write for free. Thought I woud share my response to the writer who pinged me.

Dear TKTKTKTKTK,

It's absolutely fine for ES/Media Bistro to ask people to work for free for the byline value.

This whole micro-controversy is based on the fact that MB is banging the drum of getting writers paid while at the same time asking people to work for free. Obviously from the comments some folks in the MB community feel that MB is asking people for membership money at the same time as they are asking them to writer for free. It's sort of feels Tom Sawyer-ish (i.e. painting the fence) to some I guess.

However, it is really more a case of gotcha-journalism.

Everyone is look to catch someone being hypocritical. I don't think it is hypocritical at all. People who are getting paid big money freelancing for Conde Nast don't need to take the gig, but there are other folks who might very much appreciate the exposure created by a MB clip for their folder. Maybe some folks don't remember what it's like to have no clips? It sucks to have no clips and try to find freelance work. An MB clip might get you a DailyCandy clip, which might get you a Daily News clip, which might get you a New York Magazine clip, etc.

Writers tend to have two modes when they write:

1. They writer for the paycheck.
2. They write because they love the publication, editor, topic, and/or exposure, and the money is secondary.

Doug Rushkoff used to write for Silicon Alley Reporter for a fraction of his fee. He didn't invoice us for like a year at one point, and I had to force him to take the check for 10 columns at the end of the year so we could settle our accounting up!

Doug didn't need the money, he did it because we were friend, and we would go to the Knicks games together and have these three hour discussions about the world. He knew I really respected his opinion, and I think he liked the exposure to the "in crowd" at the time. He loved being affiliated with the magazine and what we were doing, and we loved having someone so high-profile in the magazine. He got speaking gigs and consulting gigs based on the affiliation and everyone was happy.

People do a lot of writing based on the affiliation payoff, or for the good that comes from their words. Why do people spend hours on Amazon reviews? Why do people slave away at the Wikipedia? Not for money obviously.

If no one takes Elizabeth up on her offer, well, then she has to pay folks. However, there is nothing wrong with her making that offer.

Being affiliated with respected brands is very important, and always will be. In fact, as the number of blogs grows from four to forty million over the next five years it will be even more important for full-time writers to differentiate themselves with clips. I know I look at clips from certain
publications as a big plus when we hire bloggers, of course their blog writing is equally important.

So, writers should make their own call on these issues. If they want to work for free sometimes that is ok. If they don't, that's ok too. now, I can tell you it is hard—if not impossible—to build a business on writers working for free. If you want to have long-term value it is much easier to pay writers so you can have their attention on a consistant basis. That is why we are paying bloggers now. Our revenue split model works, but you get more attention from writers when you pay them a specific fee for a specific amount of work. It's much easier. So, Nick was somewhat correct when he said people wouldn't want to do the split. Some do of course, but more like the steady paycheck. Live and learn!

The topic of the moment in the blogosphere is ethics and advertising. As many of you know I've taken a hard line against bloggers taking money from companies to advertise their products. It's clearly wrong, and it clearly confuses the user.

Print media—the closest analog to blogs—has already resolved these issues. You only need to look to their standards to see what we as bloggers should do. We are not the first people to face these issues.

Now, I wanted to point out again that Rafat Ali corrected the confusion about the advertisements on his blog that were in "blog post" format. He did this immediately after I pointed it out to him, and the reason he did it was simply because he didn't have the technical resources to place the advertisement any other way. Turth be told, I expected nothing less from Rafat. We worked together at Silicon Alley Reporter I came to admire his talents, ethics and hard work. He's a man of high standards and significant talent.

Today I'm happy to say that when I spoke to Steve Hall at the AdTech conference on Monday he told me that I was right about his Adverposts on AdRants. He told me he would be changing the format of his advertisements in blog format shortly to make it clear that they were ads (right now the posts look identical to his normal posts except for a tiny "Adverpost" link at the bottom). Steve told me he is going to put them in a separate box, in a different font and with a different background color. Way to go Steve!!! This is exactly what you need to do! Look for it in their redesign which is coming shortly.

Steve still has one problem left: he's writing the copy for the advertisers! While I think it is great that advertisers are doing text-based ads, and adopting the blog post style for their ads, writers should not write ads for their advertisers.

If John Markoff at the New York Times wrote the advertising copy for Microsoft would you trust him when he wrote about Microsoft?

If Dan Rather wrote the advertisement for Honda would you trust him when he reported on the automotive industry?

Exactly.

 That is why the magazine, newspaper and TV industries forbid this kind of behavior by journalists.

There are some exceptions to this rule, like if you did a contest giving something to the readers, or if you hosted a conference and thanked the sponsors. Those are understandable times for an editorial person to get involved in advertising, but that is all I can think of in terms of exceptions at this point. Perhaps there are some others.

Steve, why not just hire one of the talented marketing people out there to write the ad copy for your posts (maybe Steve Rubel)? Problem solved!

Kudos to Rafat and Steve for not only engaging the discourse around ethics, but for taking a stand on the issue.

It's not always easy to take the high road, I understand that. I was a one-man show for the first couple of issues of Silicon Alley Reporter and I had to deal with advertisers and editorial (I sold the ads for the first couple of issues like you guys do for your blogs currently!). However, if you want to grow your brands to any level of significance there is no other option then the high road.

All the best, Jason

I'm really disappointed that two of my favorite blogs are doing advertisements in their posts and not making it clear (see images below).

Months ago AdRants started running ads as blogs posts and as you can see in the example below the only way you would ever know that is that on the bottom of the post—after you've already read the post—it says "AdRants Adverpost." The post is in the same font, same space, same colors and is written like a normal post.

Today I noticed Rafat, one of my very good friends who worked with me at Silicon Alley Reporter, started doing advertisements in posts. Now, I know Rafat and he has the highest integrity—as I'm sure Steve Hall has at AdRants—however someone else would certainly question that when reading PaidContent.org today.

As you can see in Rafat's implementation (second image down) he too is using the same font, the same blog format and placing the advertisement in same space. I started reading the post in the middle as I was scanning down the page—the image caught me. I then worked backwards to the first sentence and was like "what is this!?!?!" Perhaps Rafat didn't have the tech team available to make a different looking format, I'm sure there is an explanation for this. Rafat's a great guy.

If you're going to do advertising in a blog post fastion (which I don't recommend), and it is going to be in the content column, you should at the very least do the following to make it clear to the reader:

1. Put Advertisement at the top and bottom of the blog post in a readable font size. Don't put sponsored post, or adverpost. Call it what it is, an advertisement.
2. Put the blog post in a different font style, and perhaps font color.
3. Indent the post so the reader gets a clue that this is not part of the content.
4. Place the advertisement in a box with a line around it and background color (a la Google AdSense).

The magazine world does this already because they know how important trust is to the industry.

3. LABELLING, LAYOUT and DESIGN

In order to identify special advertising sections clearly and conspicuously:

    (a) The words "advertising," "advertisement," "special advertising section" or "special advertising supplement" should appear horizontally at or near the center of the top of every page of such sections containing text, in type at least equal in size and weight to the publication's normal editorial body typeface.

    (b) The layout, design, typeface and literary style of special advertising sections or custom-publishing products should be distinctly different from the publication's normal layout, design, typefaces and literary style.

I'd like to personally ask Rafat and Steve to rethink their advertising positions for the sake of their own reputations and the reputation of all blog publishers. You guys are some of the best content in the blogosphere, don't sell out to the advertisers like this. Make it clear to the readers what is an advertisement just like the magazine industry does.

Moments ago at the Web 2.0 conference Dan Rosensweig, COO of Yahoo, said that Overture will support ads in RSS!

So, the question now is when Google  Adsense support  RSS!

UPDATE: Chris Tolles of Topix.net asked the question… so props to my pal for standing up and asking!

This is the single biggest blog PR moment to date. Congrats to Nick, but even more props to Ana Marie Cox of Wonkette who will have a book, movie and TV deal by Monday afternoon. I think Nick will be looking for a new editor in a couple of hours as the deals roll in.

Huge—this is seriously big for the entire industry… if people didn't know what a blog was this week, a large number will know next week.

I've never heard of Ensight.org, but today it was sold for four thousand dollars. Maybe Nick was right, blogs ain't gonna be worth that much! :-)

I love AdRants.com, it's a great blog and I read it daily. Would love to have them as part of our network, but they are so established it doesn't look like it's going to happen.

So, we're going to do our own advertising industry blog (I think). I'm currently looking for someone who is some combination of witty, clever, sardonic, sarcastic, cynical, funny, etc. to work with us on this blog.  It's a part time gig working from home (or from your employer's office where you're not doing much work anyway—just kidding). Your grammar, spelling, etc. must be perfect… no one is going to be proofing your work—it's a blog!

If you're interested in the gig please send me three blog posts in a style similar to blogs like AdRants.com, Gawker.com or Engadget.com, or just point me to your blog.

This is a paid up front style gig (not the typical WIN split revenue thing).

One of our two excellent bloggers—Dave Thomas—on Autoblog.com were featured on NPR's Marketplace today! Excellent job Dave!

The Job Files!  You're familiar by now with the web log, or "blog" phenomenon. Some people actually get paid to post their every thought on the internet … as you'll hear in today's edition of the Job Files.

We've been looking at the legal space for a while now, and we're ready to start a couple of legal blogs. Couple of questions for folks:

1. What are the best legal blogs out there?
2. Do you know any folks who might be interested?
3. What topics you think we should go after?

If you send me someone good, and we wind up working with them I'll buy you sushi in NY, SF or LA!

Feel free to post to comments or email me at jason <at> calacanis <dot> come.

Every day I become more and more enamored with the power of blogs. As you may have seen Engadget.com posted a video of how you can open a $100 Kryptonite Lock in about five seconds with a twenty cent Bic Pen. Today Kryptonite sent one of our readers the most lame response to the issue—apparently Kryptonite did not read the memo about transparency or how to take criticism. They have failed at taking responsibility for this question and now they will be ridden by the blogosphere. Right now if you do a Google search for Kryptonite Locks the fourth result is the Engadget.com story. I bet it will be the number two or three result in a couple of days.

This tells me two things:

1. Google made a really great decision in giving blogs a heavy weight in their index.

2. Blogs are making the world a better place by putting the search for truth on hyperdrive.

Blogs are pushing the truth to the top with the help of Google's ubiquity. It's a one two punch that is making the world better by getting the truth to rise to the top.

Shame on your Kryptonite! Do the right thing and fix the problem and let people trade in their locks for one that actually works.

Congrats to former WIN-blogger, and my good friend, Sean Bonner for running the largest local blog network in the world!

He just launch his 16th city—Tokyo.

Metroblogging.com isn't like those other local blogs where they just rehash what's in the local paper and lift some images—nope, it's worth reading. Sean believes in letting people write about whatever they want, however they want. So, you're going to have some bloggers you don't love and others you totally fall in love with. However, his local blogs are really authentic—you can tell the people believe in what they are saying.

Great job Jason and Sean!

Nick Denton's blogs do it, and today I noticed that AdRants does it (did they just start?).

Thanking sponsors in the editorial column, is it good or evil? While I like the idea of thanking the sponsors (they are important), it makes me a little nervous when the bloggers are forced to do this as part of their job. Kudos to Nick for at least letting the bloggers do it in a funny way and in their own words, but if you want your blog to be a serious news source this might stop this from happening. Obviously since Nick is running blogs that focus on gossip and porn getting taken seriously as a news source is not a big deal.

I mean, sure Howard Stern and Jay Leno thank their sponsors, but no one looks to a talk show for objective news. In fact, we all know that talk shows are designed so that folks can sell stuff. That's the deal, Tom Cruise comes on the show and in exchange for us getting to watch him he gets to show a clip.

What do you guys think about this? Harmless, or does it create an appearance of impropriety?