A look at the Australian blogosphere by blogs.com.au

New York blogger, protocelebrity and web entrepreneur Julia Allison whom I’ve previously mentioned here at The Local as well as at my other blogs (fascination or infatuation, anyone??? actually don’t answer that), was profiled on Saturday in a cover story in the Sydney Morning Herald’s and The Age’s Good Weekend magazine.

Over the last 18 months, for many bloggers especially those who use the Tumblr platform or read the snarky NYC gossip blog Gawker, it was hard to ignore Julia Allison. Describing her as ubiquitous would not be improper use of the adjective. So much so that as @rainbowhill mentioned to me on Twitter: that one only has to read those initials (JA) to know who the f she is after I said that Allison was brought up by an attendee at a short course on blogging I was giving two weeks ago.

Which is why after the outrage and vitriol on blogs that followed a story about herself on the cover of Wired magazine I was expecting something of a mini storm over the Good Weekend story. Even some mild indignation by Australian bloggers. But the reaction from the Aussosphere has been kind of lacklustre to say the least. Including myself with this blog post, it seems only four Australians care about Julia Allison. Just two Twitter posts by @jjprojects and @lachlanhardy and a blog post from back in September by writer/journo/blogger Rachel Hills who described that Good Weekend running a profile on Allison made her feel tired and bored more than anything else. ‘Twas a good prediction for what mostly everyone’s reaction would be.

Why no outrage? As Gawker pointed out, when you can follow her blog which already contains all the juicy details a profile seems beside the point and out of date by the time it goes to print but I think it is more that people are just over or her type of self-promoting vacuous style of blogging. Yay for discerning blog reading tastes!

Still, I really thought the Aussie Bloggers message board with their committed group of local blogging enthusiasts who are always keen to take down a high profile mainstream blogebrity could muster up a thread on JA. I guess not. Poor Julia.

“There’s a person in here. And I have feelings too, whether it’s about politics, the person I’m seeing, the person I’m not seeing. That’s my way of connecting. I don’t want people to think that I’m just an empty f**king whatever.“ (source)

(found via buy her candy)

(found via Kottke + Something Changed)

I can actually see mid-level mangers in Australia getting fired up like this about blogging in 2009. The blogosphere is hot. Seriously.

(via topherchris)

On the Gold Coast a breakfast radio show host has taken his fight against his former employer over his recent sacking to the web by setting up a blog.

The about page says all it needs to:

The process to protect my reputation and pursue my lawful rights is now actively underway.
- Rob McCasker

The open disclosure on this blog is good because so many times in the media industry whether it is radio, television, magazines or newspapers, a personality/broadcaster/journalist/columnist will leave yet there will be no explanation and their name will never be mentioned again by that station or publication. This blog gives his listeners as well as other industry people an explanation about the termination instead of it being a source of gossip and innuendo.

Still, even though the blogging evangelist inside of me thinks this is exactly why everyone should have a blog, it is a gutsy thing I have not seen done in the Australian media industry before so will be interesting to see how he goes in locating his next radio job and if there are any negative implications caused by fighting your old boss via a blog.

Of the 13 tips in the guide on How To: Write a Really Crappy Business Blog (found via John Lampard at disassociated.com) this was the one I see occur most frequently:

Never post anything. The easiest way to have a blog that’s crappy: Set up the blog, post once, and then never. post. again. This tip’s great because it involves no work on your part. It’s like you never created a blog at all. Which might have been better.

I think the rate of abandoned corporate blogs is higher than personal blogs. At least 75% against 50% is what I’ve seen while maintaining the list of 7000+ active Australian blogs here at blogs.com.au. Just as an example here are five 1 2 3 4 5 off the top of my head. I have a secondary list of non-active blogs that I maintain in the hope that they will one day have posts again but rarely does it provide any RSS activity.

It seems strange that businesses which usually pay significant amounts to maintain their image offline with expensive logo designs, costly advertisements and shiny double laminated matt business cards would let their blog stay online abandoned for the world to see a last blog post dated from over a year ago. It isn’t a good look to customers who would half be expecting to hear crickets or see tumbleweeds rolling by your blog. Neither is it fair to existing readers who would have been used to checking in to see what your company has had to say.

Either maintain a goal to write on your blog with a consistent but achievable posting schedule or close the blog down. If you are going to stop blogging and leave it online then ensure there is a farewell post encouraging customers with other ways to maintain contact with the business so people don’t assume you are no longer operating because you haven’t update your blog recently.

I’ve just noticed that a friend’s blog is running a very old version (2.1) of the popular self-hosted WordPress blogging software and his site has regrettably but understandably been hacked.

If you have a non-current version of WordPress installed the first thing you should do right now, regardless if you think your blog has been hacked, is to upgrade to the latest version of WordPress and make sure your themes are clean of any malicious content/links.

If you don’t, your site will be at risk of being blocked by network and ISP filters because of offensive content as well as more importantly it will get your blog banned/dropped by search engines. Technorati and Google do not show any sympathy towards a site that is compromised.

While it is definitely a boring 15 minutes waiting for your FTP program to upload the files and some more time is lost testing as well as possibly tweaking plugins/themes to ensure they work with the new version it is much less stressful than having your your site hacked.

The latest stable release of WordPress is version 2.5.1 and can be downloaded for free at http://wordpress.org/download/

Even though as bloggers we are happily doing our own thing here on the internet it is always a nice bit of validation when old-media take an interest to explain aspects of blogging or introduce bloggers to a wider audience.

There were a couple of new stories this week that I saw some blogs I read which were highlighted:

- Defamer Australia’s editor got some front page love from the Sydney Morning Herald web site over the weekend.

- And, Network Ten featured Darren Rowse, Karen Cheng and Neerav Bhatt in a segment in their news bulletins today on making a profession from blogging.

Hope everyone got some new readers and commenters to enjoy your writing. Congrats on the media attention!

Saw in my Tumblr dashboard via Something Changed that the identities behind the pseudonyms “The Hack” and “Caz” from the once very popular and particularly spiteful but now defunct blog The Spin Starts Here have been revealed.

This is pretty big news, especially to anyone who was around the blogosphere a few years ago but a fair outing considering the hateful attacks they used to dish out to other bloggers under the veil of anonymity the web afforded them.

You can read the whole story and back story of The Spin Starts Here at http://jamieduncan.wordpress.com

One of my fave bloggers, Marieke Hardy, also known as Ms Fits from the popular blog Reasons You Will Hate Me has announced she will stop blogging to concentrate on travelling and writing a novel.

As well as winning the gong for best Australia/New Zealand blog at this year’s international blog awards (a result that as far as I noticed didn’t raise the usual petty remarks and vitriol from other bloggers towards any high profile blog that scores some mainstream media attention). She has been a wonderful example of how by the simple act of writing online on a blog can lead to recognition of your talents in wider endeavours. All through having a blog Marieke landed a weekly newspaper column as a television critic, a panel spot on a television show and a gig co-hosting a breakfast radio show.

While the attrition of a blog isn’t really newsworthy outside of her readers. I thought this text from her farewell post shows how sometimes people’s mindshare can be too devoted to their blog.

It is my sneaking suspicion that perhaps reducing the amount of mind-numbing political photo based ring-rings and scouring the newspapers for vacuous crap to tear apart each day may lead to some more productive work, though this is of course all speculative at this stage.

I guess not everyone would need to go cold turkey but certainly something to consider if you feel like your blog is holding you back from getting stuff done.