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Archive for Political Blogging
How to Monitor the Commentariat for Free
Yesterday I said in passing that I thought that it may now be possible to deliver relatively easily much of the value added by subscription services designed to help organisations “get to grips” with the published commentary - based on the insight that the supply of news and comment is no longer an expensive commodity. I have had a go myself today, and this article is to introduce the results.
I said (in the context of Editorial Intelligence’s “Power of the Commentariat” Report):
Editorial Intelligence’s service was quoted as an example of a site helping people get to grips with online comment. I disagree - it is expensively paid for and therefore helps maintain an “in-crowd”.
I’m wondering if the Editorial Intelligence Model is now way past it’s sell by date - given that summaries of most of the stuff written by commentators and columnists is now syndicated via RSS. I wonder whether MySociety could build us something better for the whole world - not just those who can afford the subscriptions - to use if someone gave them £5k and a month.
Once I saw this morning that the domain commentariat.org.uk was available, I couldn’t resist having a go at a couple of aspects of this opportunity myself - just to see what could be done in a few hours.
At the moment I am providing these facilities:
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The brief summaries of each article or story made available for syndication on other sites.
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Search across all these summaries.
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Categorisation by author, feed and media organisation.
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Direct links to the original stories.
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A tag cloud.
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Archives navigable by date.
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Regular updates.
This is based on a sample of around 30 RSS feeds, and is therefore a strictly limited trial. A more comprehensive service would need to monitor perhaps 400-500 feeds and would take some investment (perhaps £100 a year on a better hosting service than I use at present).
The site is not intended to be a discussion site - in accordance with the Code of Practice I published last summer, it is better thought of as a combined “contents list” and “index” which exists to help visitors find out what has been published, and then to drive traffic to the original articles.
I’m not sure where this is going (there are dozens of other things that can be done quite easily), but I would welcome any comments you might have.
Later on I will publish an article looking at the possibilities for “alternatives” to other expensive services offered by “editorial guidance” companies.
Go and visit “Commentariat: Dispatches from the Glass Bubble“.
The Power of the Commentariat. Or Perhaps Not: Blog Platform
A couple of days ago I drew your attention to a seminar to launch a report by Editorial Intelligence called “The Power of the Commentariat”. Or rather, they have launched half of it and expect the public to buy the rest from Amazon
It’s an interesting document and I’d like to do a review of the whole thing. I have asked Editorial Intelligence for a review copy of the whole document. If one is not forthcoming, I shall review the half of the report that they have seen fit to release.
Listening to the podcast of the seminar, there are a number of moments of “Don Quixote” incongruity. However, if you want to skip the fun, and just hear what I think - then go to the next section.
The Emperor with no clothes gives advice on dress sense
Golly, Polly!
Polly Toynbee whinged complained about bloggers launching “vituperative” and “personal” attacks on her. Perhaps she thought noone had read her vituperative and personal attacks on numerous targets.
Has anyone read Polly on Boris these last few weeks, or Polly on the Archishop of Canterbury six months ago, or on any number of different people at different times?
That’s why she’s such good value for bloggers. If she didn’t exist, we’d have to invent her.
Charles “how dare you intrude into my private life” Clarke
Charles Clarke complaining about doorstepping by journalists.
This is a politician in a cabinet which passed all manner of unnecessary restrictions on liberty from the right to demonstrate, through DNA profiling of the innocent with no effective redress, via compliance with Extraordinary Rendition, to an Extradition Treaty allowing British Citizens to be yanked out of their daily lives by foreign judges to face trial in the United States on the basis of no evidence whatsoever.
Forgive me, Mr Clarke, if my sympathy for you is limited.
Again, Charles Clarke on the unfairness of anonymously expressed views
Charles Clarke complaining about anyone putting forward a viewpoint anonymously.
Er, sorry, Mr Clarke - but I thought that anonymous briefings (and bullying) were used relentlessly by the New Labour administration (of which you were a key part) as a tool for media manipulation.
What do they think of bloggers?
Quite a lot of ill-informed nonsense, but some people “Get it” (Danny Finkelstein and others) or nearly get it (Julia Hobsbawm among them).
Bloggers are dreadful horrible nasty vindictive followers of Guido Fawkes
Columnists are specifically described as being of “different types”, but bloggers are apparently all the same and we are all “followers” of Guido Fawkes (wonder what Professor Norm, Tim Ireland, Natalie and The F-Word would say about that).
And, regardless of the vitriol poured on him, Guido has done some superb work - my favourite is the the exposure of Peter Hain’s attempt to drive a double decker bendybus through the rules and principles supposed to govern elections in his own party.
He had also entertained us from time to time by getting the things hilariously wrong from time to time (one word: Newsnight).
Bloggers are all the same
A very, very funny comment.
Anybody who says that has not mastered their brief to comment on bloggers. It has a “whole class of Japanese students out on bicycles in Cambridge for the first time going the wrong way round a traffic island, knowing they are wrong but being too scared to go back” feel about it (ack. Bishop of Maidstone). I’d suggest working harder and getting out more.
Bloggers are Masculine
This was a statement from Julia Hobsbawm in the closing conversation. Certainly most are, but there is no male monopoly - even in politics.
My thoughts?
The Commentariat (as represented in this podcast) seem to be having a few problems getting to grips with the blogging medium - in particular coping with the diversity.
How can they cope with the plethora of blogs? Have they “got to read” all of this? (yes you do - at least enough of it enough times to develop a familiarity sufficient to make a sensible judgement).
The Internet is stuffed with automatic tools to help you get to grips with the flow of comment, including aggregators, specialised search engines (www.technorati.com, Google news and blog search), and services to try and judge what is important (www.technorati.com again, www.wikio.com).
The UK Political Blogosphere is also heavily summarised if you know where to look. How many columnists heave heard of the Britblog Roundup, the Scottish Roundup, the Welsh Blog Index, Cassilis’s roundup of think tanks, and the numerous other “signposts” that are published every week? Hopefully at least some know about these various “roundups”.
If they aren’t familiar with these tools then - again - it’s a matter of getting out more and working at it a bit. That’s not exactly difficult.
And I haven’t even mentioned RSS and RSS Readers (Google Reader, Feed Demon to name one online and one offline reader).
Even Danny Finkelstein - who writes a fantastic blog at Comment Central - quoted the “Cover it Live” chatroom service (btw, Danny, it IS moderated) as potentially useful. The fact is that chatrooms have existed for years and years and years; when I was diagnosed with Diabetes a regular chatroom meetup was one way I learnt to cope - that was in 2001, and they were old then. The problem here is mainly that there has been too much conservatism to use them appropriately. There are dozens of tools out there - sites just need the minimal knowledge to use them and the willingness to take a slight risk as to what will happen.
if I was a struggling columnist floundering in a sea of blog comment, I would make a point of taking Jemima Kiss or Chris Vallance (or me!) out for a long, expensive lunch to quiz them on how to read blogs the easy way.
Wrapping Up
Guido and Iain have commented on the Power of the Commentariat “do”.
And Guido is making a feature of holding columnists to account. A good idea, but it needs more than just him.
Iain has commented more sympathetically on the report itself.
In the meantime you can listen to the podcast here, and download half the report here.
Editorial Intelligence’s service was quoted as an example of a site helping people get to grips with online comment. I disagree - it is expensively paid for and therefore helps maintain an “in-crowd”.
I’m wondering if the Editorial Intelligence Model is now way past it’s sell by date - given that summaries of most of the stuff written by commentators and columnists is now syndicated via RSS. I wonder whether MySociety could build us something better for the whole world - not just those who can afford the subscriptions - to use if someone gave them £5k and a month.
The thing that the Commentariat actually need to do is to shatter their “bubble on a pedestal” from the inside before it gets shattered for them from the outside.
I’ll follow this article with a review of the full report, or half the report - depending on what is made available to me.
You can get the first half at the link above, and the second half of The Power of the Commentariat
And a slight apology - I have not linked absolutely everything in this article as I am away from home.
Editorial Intelligence get half the point
[This article escaped early. Withdrawn to be edited.]
Sorry.
When will New Labour ever learn…
From a statement in a report on the BBC News about students being overcharged for student loans by Direct Debits continuing after the debt has been paid off:
“The government denies the system is flawed, but will be introducing improvements from September”.
What?
Make an argument, and then destroy it in the next 3 seconds, why don’t you?
Results in Wales - from Ordovicius [Updated]
Here are the lastest results from the Local Elections in Wales.
Who Controls which Councils?
(2007 figures in brackets)
- Conservative: 2 (1)
- Independent Control: 0 (3)
- Labour: 2 (8)
- Liberal Democrat: 0 (0)
- No Overall Control: 15 (9)
- Plaid Cymru: 0 (1)
- Results still Pending: 3
- Results in June: 1
The full list
- Blaenau Gwent NOC
- Bridgend NOC
- Caerphilly NOC
- Cardiff NOC
- Carmarthenshire Pending
- Ceredigion NOC
- Conwy: NOC
- Denbighshire Pending
- Flintshire NOC
- Gwynedd NOC
- Merthyr Tydfil NOC
- Monmouthshire CON
- Neath Port Talbot LAB
- Newport Delayed until June
- Pembrokeshire NOC
- Powys NOC
- Rhondda Cynon Taf: LAB
- Swansea NOC
- Torfaen NOC
- Vale of Glamorgan CON
- Wrexham NOC
- Ynys Môn NOC
Updates
From Bethan Jenkins (AM for PC) via Twitter:
We are very close to getting the 1999 highpoint of 204 councillors. some areas still counting.
From Ordovicius
Plaid and Cons have made significant net gains (in seats), Libs have held their ground, Lab are up a creek without a paddle.
What does Google do when you get hacked?
A month ago the Wardman Wire was hacked, probably via a vulnerability in a software package. We have now recovered to our former level of referrals from Google; here is the graph. I have posted the data going back to the start of the year for context.
The key dates:
- Viagra etc. ads were inserted around March 17th - which is just before the biggest spike on the graph.
- Then there was a spurt for 2-3 days before Google’s algorithm took noticeable action.
- I noticed the hack a couple of days later (while doing something in my account there were extra files and directories where I had not put them), then blogged it some time after that here.
- You can see that I completely closed the blog for a couple of days early in April to move it to a different account.
- Recovery has taken about a month.
- One interesting point is that referrals from Google Image Search still seem not to have recovered.
A bit more background:
- This graph is referrals from all Google properties.
- Google represents around 75% of search engine referrals.
Wrapping-Up
So - that is one example of how long it takes to recover. In our case - about a month.
Top UK websites, and does Google have potential to dominate?
Google websites account for more than a third of all traffic to UK websites. It also has a strong presence in a large number of Internet market segments. Do we need to worry?
Yesterday I asked the question:
Which do you think is the most visited website in the UK?
I asked because I ran across a post on Robin Goad’s Hitwise UK blog analysing the source (i.e., referrer) of UK internet traffic , and as a follow-up to my Economist post at the weekend.
A few people replied (thanks, guys). This is the detailed list from Hitwise:
Rank / Website / Market Share
1. http://www.google.co.uk 7.77%
2. http://mail.live.com 3.1%
3. http://www.ebay.co.uk 2.75%
4. http://www.facebook.com 2.07%
5. http://uk.msn.com 1.76%
6. http://www.google.com 1.7%
7. http://www.bebo.com 1.45%
8. http://www.youtube.com 1.31%
9. http://news.bbc.co.uk 0.99%
10. http://www.myspace.com 0.88%
11. http://www.bbc.co.uk 0.87%
12. http://www.microsoft.com 0.85%
13. http://uk.mail.yahoo.com 0.84%
14. http://uk.yahoo.com 0.79%
15. http://www.orange.co.uk 0.72%
16. http://www.wikipedia.org 0.61%
17. http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport 0.59%
18. http://images.google.co.uk 0.58%
19. http://www.amazon.co.uk 0.48%
20. http://www.msn.com 0.47%
These are the points that I note:
- The dominance of google.co.uk over google.com. I’ll make my traditional point that many UK Political Websites targetting UK traffic would be better off on .uk domains, since google.co.uk gives an extra weighting to these domains in search results. The diagram indicates that google.co.uk accounts for more than a quarter of “upstream” (i.e., referrer) traffic to UK websites. That was my point from last spring.
- I’m surprised how far down the BBC are on that list - albeit they are still the top “content” site.
- The appearance of images.google.co.uk at position 18 is interesting. For some time web-design commentators have been pointing out that using descriptive names for images is a good contributor towards ranking in the search engines - this is one reason why that is the case. On this site we receive a small but significant group of visitors via the Google images search.
I’d be interested to hear your further thoughts, but in the meantime Hitwise also provided a list of the top 10 “owners” - combining different Internet “properties” into a single figure.
