SUMMARY: BusinessWeek introduced its own blog about blogging, Blogspotting.net, by way of its May 2 cover story, ‘Blogs Will Change Your Business‘, by Stephen Baker and Heather Green. If there’s one thing we should take home from this article, it’s the notion of "conversation".

What I often do with articles and books I find interesting, is to highlight the most relevant parts and turn them into a summary for future reference. So I worked this piece down to 1323 words, or 30 percent of the original text of 4450 words, and then I thought, why not share the summary?

(I seem to love disclaimers, so here we go again: I don’t know where the legal limits of quotation lie, so if there’s a lawyer out there who can tell me, or if someone knows a good online reference to this aspect, please drop us a line).

(And the other thing: the subheaders in this entry are my additions)

The winners will host the best conversations

To me, the most pressing message is towards the end:

"Think of the way we produce stories here [at BusinessWeek - JS]. It’s a closed process. We come up with an idea. We read, we discuss in-house, and then we interview all sorts of experts and take their pictures. We urge them not to spill the beans about what we’re working on. It’s a secret.

(…) In a world chock-full of citizen publishers, we mainstream types control an ever-smaller chunk of human knowledge. (…) The measure of success in that world is not a finished product. The winners will be those who host the very best conversations."

But let’s start from the beginning:

(…) [B]logs (…) [a]re simply the most explosive outbreak in the information world since the Internet itself. [italics by me - JS] (…)

According to a Pew Research Center Survey, only 27% of Internet users in America now bother to read them. (…) There are some 9 million blogs out there, with 40,000 new ones popping up each day. (…) Let’s assume that 99.9% are equally off point. So what? That leaves some 40 new ones every day that could be talking about your business, engaging your employees, or leaking those merger discussions you thought were hush-hush. (…)

Yet not all the news is scary. Ideas circulate as fast as scandal. (…)

How big are blogs?

Try Johannes Gutenberg out for size. His printing press, unveiled in 1440, sparked a publishing boom and an information revolution. Some say it led to the Protestant Reformation and Western democracy. (…)

The printing press set the model for mass media. A lucky handful owns the publishing machinery and controls the information. Whether at newspapers or global manufacturing giants, they decide what the masses will learn. This elite still holds sway at most companies. You know them. They generally park in sheltered spaces, have longer rides on elevators, and avoid the cafeteria. They keep the secrets safe and coif the company’s message. Then they distribute it — usually on a need-to-know basis — to customers, employees, investors, and the press. [italics by me - JS] (…)

Look at it this way: In the age of mass media, publications like ours print the news. Sources try to get quoted, but the decision is ours. Ditto with letters to the editor. Now instead of just speaking through us, they can blog. And if they master the ins and outs of this new art — like how to get other bloggers to link to them — they reach a huge audience. (…)

The divide between the publishers and the public is collapsing. This turns mass media upside down. It creates media of the masses. [italics by me - JS] (…)

Companies over the past few centuries have gotten used to shaping their message. Now they’re losing control of it. (…) Want to get it back? You never will, not entirely. (…)

I blog therefore I… consult

Perhaps the biggest is Steve Rubel. A year ago, the exec at the PR firm CooperKatz & Co. started his blog, Micro Persuasion. (…) When launching his site, he had the smarts to contact big shots such as Dan Gillmor, who was a leading blogger and tech reporter with the San Jose Mercury News. Gillmor linked to Rubel’s site, and his traffic took off. It was great for his brand, and it also gave Rubel a blogger’s education. "I became a living guinea pig for what I preach," he says. (…)

The first job, he says, is to monitor the blogs to see what people are saying about your company. (…) Next step: Damage-control strategies. How to respond when blogs attack. He says companies have to learn to track what blogs are talking about, pinpoint influential bloggers, and figure out how to buttonhole them, privately and publicly. (…)

Venture firms financed only $60 million in blog startups last year, according to industry tracker VentureOne. (…) [W]hile dot-coms promised to make loads of money, blogs flex their power mostly by disrupting the status quo. (…)

Six Apart, a four-year-old San Francisco company, leads in blog software. Technorati and PubSub Concepts are battling it out in blog search. (…) [I]f recent history is any guide, most of them will wind up in the bellies of the blog-minded Internet giants — led by Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft. The latest to disappear was Flickr (…) acquired by Yahoo in March for an undisclosed sum. (…)

What the world is thinking, minute by minute

"Blogs are what’s causing the Web to grow," says Jason Goldman. He’s project manager at Google’s Blogger, the world’s biggest service to set people up as bloggers. [For] David Sifry (…) founder of Technorati, (…) it’s not the growth of the same Web, but an entirely new one. It’s wrapped up far more in people’s day-to-day lives. It’s connected to time. (…)

[I]f a company can track millions of blogs simultaneously, it gets a heat map of what a growing part of the world is thinking about, minute by minute. E-mail (…) exchanges were private. Most blogs are open to the world. As the bloggers read each other, comment, and link from one page to the next, they create a global conversation. [my italics - JS] (…)

Why does this matter? Think of the implications for businesses of getting an up-to-the-minute read on what the world is thinking. (…) "I’m amazed people don’t get it yet," says Jeff Weiner, Yahoo’s senior vice-president who heads up search. "Never in the history of market research has there been a tool like this." (…)

RSS, aggregators, podcasting, TiVo

RSS, or Really Simple Syndication. Five years ago, a blogger named Dave Winer, working with software originally developed by Netscape, created an easy-to-use system to turn blogs, or even specific postings, into Web feeds. (…)

"[A]ggregators." (…) For now, only about 5% of Internet users have set them up. But that number’s sure to rise as Yahoo and Microsoft plug them. (…)

They discourage surfing as users increasingly just wait for interesting items to drop onto their page or e-mailbox. (…) Already Yahoo is packaging ads on the feeds. Google is testing the waters. (…)

Winer also ushered in a second tech breakthrough, podcasting. (…) Adam Curry, a blogger and former MTV host, (…) [l]ast summer (…) created software called iPodder so these MP3s could hitch a ride on an iPod. (…)

One more idea. Think of TiVo, think of the iPod. When you’re using one of them, do you consider the company that provides the programming? CBS, for example? Not much. (…)

We’re going to have to think small

[J]ust like the record companies, which have figured out how to market bits and pieces of their albums as standalone songs and ringtones, the rest of the media and entertainment world is going to have to think small. (…) The challenge, for bloggers and giants alike, is to brand those nuggets. (…)

Some blog entrepreneurs, such as Nick Denton, publisher of New York’s Gawker Media, sell ads for everything from Nike to Absolut Vodka (FO ). (…)

Blog power simply doesn’t translate yet into big bucks. (…)

Yes, we, too, are under the gun. MSM, the bloggers call us. Mainstream media. (…) We have to master the world of blogs, too. This isn’t because they’re taking away ad revenue, at least not yet, but because they represent millions of eyewitnesses armed with computers spread around the world. They are potential competitors — or editorial resources. (…)

Dan Gillmor, who quit his San Jose newspaper job, is lining up investors for a new type of media company, Grassroots Media. (…)

The measure of success is not a finalized product

Think of the way we produce stories here. It’s a closed process. We come up with an idea. We read, we discuss in-house, and then we interview all sorts of experts and take their pictures. We urge them not to spill the beans about what we’re working on. It’s a secret. Finally, we write. Then the story goes through lots and lots of editing. And when the proofreaders have had their last look, someone presses the button and we launch a finished product on the world. (…)

If this were a real blog, we probably would have posted our story pitch on Day One, before we did any reporting. (…)

In a world chock-full of citizen publishers, we mainstream types control an ever-smaller chunk of human knowledge. (…) The measure of success in that world is not a finished product. The winners will be those who host the very best conversations. [my italics - JS] (…)

Starting on Apr. 22. We’re launching our own blog to cover the business drama ahead (…). Blogspotting.net. (…)"