Interestingly, corporate bloggers were least likely to blog about brands and products (lawsuit anyone?), and hobbyist bloggers were second least likely. Technorati defined hobbyist bloggers as those that blog for fun. They don’t make money (and only some of them want to, which I think is awesome). Instead of brands and products, they mostly share “personal musings” (53% of hobbyists), and 76% blog to speak their minds. 72% of bloggers fell into this category.

“Part-timers” were most likely to mention brands and products. They blog to supplement their main income. 15% of respondents, most part-timers blog to share their expertise or attract new clients.

“Self-employed” bloggers, 9% of the survey respondents, blog full time for their own company or organization. (Corporate bloggers, 4%, blog for someone else’s company/organization—including their employer.)

Despite the focus on products and brands, bloggers felt that the free goodies weren’t the most important benefits from their blogs—gaining visibility (individually or for their business) and bringing in new business were the top two benefits cited by bloggers surveyed.

What do you think? Do you blog about brands? What benefits have you seen from blogging? Which group do you fall into?

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Enter Ad Age and its video feature “Three Minute Ad Age” which interviews BlogHer co-founder and COO Elisa Camahort Page on the eve of their 5th annual conference in Chicago. While many turn up their noses at the idea of ‘mommy-bloggers’ there is power in numbers whether it is real or perceived. Ask Motrin. BlogHer.com is a online community that gets 15 million unique visitors per month so there is nothing to sneeze at there from a pure quantity measure.

The focus of this interview is ‘blogola’ or the practice of being paid for a review of a specific product or service. Others like Chris Brogan have gone through some significant debates about the merits or demerits of this practice. BlogHer’s Page is anticipating that the subject will be top of mind during the conference because many influential mommy-bloggers can help sell a lot of products for companies if they mention and / or review a product on their blog.

While everyone agrees that full disclosure is paramount, Page is seeing that the context of the review is critical as well. In other words, disclosure is not enough. To that end, the BlogHer community cordons off the reviews in separate review logs where there is no advertising sold. These ‘sponsored conversations’ are clearly defined as such because Page that not only disclosure but context matters when it comes to paid posts.

I agree for the most part. The only real crime to me in this type of environment is if there is literally no mention or a very weak mention of ‘blogola (which by the way is a dumb name, anyone have anything better they would like to ‘coin’ here?). As long as the post is clearly marked as a paid discussion or whatever at the start and the conclusion of the post then there should be little trouble. Where you get into trouble is if the mention is brief and buried in the middle of the text or simply non-existent. Having a title that reads “You Have to Get Brand X!” may be all that someone reads so there needs to be the best shot of someone seeing that the post is paid for. Otherwise, we are in a gray area where a blogger can say they mentioned the nature of the post but didn’t make it really obvious. Starts to sound like a sleazy sales practice at that point.

So Pilgrims, on this fine Monday, what is your take? Should bloggers ever take pay for posts? If they do how should it be handled? What are best / worst practices you have seen? What are the potential consequences? Not surprisingly, the government has chimed in through the FTC on the matter so we better pay attention (I guess).

A discussion amongst the type of readers that come here could beneficial to all so please let us know your thoughts.

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With a simple filter, you can remove anything from red eye to love handles in a photo, and change your skin tone to give yourself that tan you wish you had too. We even have a word for images that we believe have been altered, calling them "photoshopped." In this overly perfected world of online imagery, there is such a thing as looking too good online. It’s hard to trust in images that are too perfect. They just aren’t believable.

There are a handful of sites that have started to uncover the solution to this problem. TripAdvisor lets users post their own images of a hotel. Without the benefit of a fisheye lens, the rooms look the size they actually are, and any customer can get a more real picture of what their room may actually look like. On Amazon, you can upload customer images of any product – so people not only get the manufacturer’s photo, but get to share their own. These images are often real and unfiltered. They are the ones that add dimension and inspire trust. Ironically, they may even be the ones that contribute most to converting a potential customer.

What these sites know is that a hastily taken photo with a simple point and shoot reveals a truth that no professionally photoshopped image will. Ultimately, it is the combination of both that gives your customers a real sense of what they are about to buy, and helps to minimize the chance that they will be disappointed with what they get.  Sometimes being less than perfect can be the best way to sell.

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The current wave of image search services, even at Google, depends more on the surrounding text and appended metadata for pictures than on the actual images. Vaunted search algorithms might go after keywords like a terrier chasing a rubber ball, but photos make them sit back, cock their heads, and wonder when they may see a treat.

A little project referred to as VisualRank, formally known as “PageRank for Product Image Search,” promises to change this. The New York Times cited a Google presentation at the International World Wide Web Conference in Beijing, on the topic of image search and how to accomplish it.

Industry observers may be astonished to learn that Google has upper limits on its computing power, but the researchers quoted on VisualRank called analyzing and comparing all of the images Google indexed “impractical.”

They plan to focus on a subset of images and analyze them intensively. Contrary to what some may think, inanimate objects rather than people presents the big challenge to automating the recognition process for an algorithmic approach.

A breakthrough in this area of search promises a tremendous return for Google. Consumers looking for products, especially during the busy holiday season, would stand a better chance of finding what they want quickly. Couple that with Google Checkout, and Google becomes a stripped down version of online retailer Amazon.com.

Want another?  Yesterday, we documented the existence of a new interface for Google products on the iPhone; a company exec used the word “eventually” to describe when Google would get around to creating interfaces for other devices.

Ignoring things isn’t a longstanding tradition at Google, however, and in any event, Google Mobile Updater “lets you install and update Google Mobile services.”  According to a product description, it will also “keep you notified of new Google Mobile services as well as updates to installed applications.”

The implications of this don’t seem to be too widespread, although we’ll keep an eye open to see if Ionut Alex Chitu’s readers come up with any insights.  Also, BlackBerry owners should at least be among the first to hear of it if an improved interface becomes available for their phones.

The product’s name is Salesforce to Salesforce, but in order to avoid endless repetition, I’m going to risk offending some marketing manager and call it S2S.  S2S, then, will allow Salesforce’s clients to “[s]hare leads, opportunities, or any custom object.”

To answer two quick objections, Salesforce claims that it can do this “securely and easily.”  Since many companies already share info, the key, here, will be to keep that promise and beat existing means in terms of convenience and cost.  On that note, the pricing shouldn’t be too hard to swallow – Salesforce wants just $100 per month for each connection.

So will S2S become standard?  Larry Dignan points out, “Salesforce.com is trying to build a moat around its business and take advantage of its subscriber base, which will pass the 1 million mark by the end of the month.  By connecting subscribers to make transactions and information sharing easier Salesforce.com is trying to turn its community into a competitive advantage.”

Sounds like a smart tactic to me.  Initial responses to S2S have been positive, and we’ll see how often it’s picked up in the months ahead.

Site publishers have known of the necessity of quality content for their websites for some time. Without it, people will skip away to another destination as quickly as they can hit the Back button.

Webmasters who haven’t picked up on this trend as a reason to drive improved copy for their sites should note the recent survey by web marketing syndicator WebCollage. Their 2007 Survey of Online Consumer Product Research Habits found that people want complete product information.

When it isn’t present, those visitors tend to go in search of a site that does have it available. The survey found that two-thirds of respondents considered detailed product benefits and capabilities as the most useful information they can find online.

Some 37 percent of frustrated visitors will go to a competing retail site to find the details they want. 55 percent will head to a manufacturer’s site, as they believe the best product information about an item will be there.

Sites that run as small operations may not have the staff needed to obtain the best information and write it up as product copy. But the investment in that effort may pay off in better conversions and repeat customers.

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Let’s start off with Kindle’s price: $399.  For that amount of money, a person could buy four complete (and fancy) sets of Shakespeare’s plays and sonnets.  And after the initial purchase, things don’t get any better – e-books for the Kindle cost $9.99 apiece, which appears to be a little more expensive than the average paperback.

Valleywag’s Jordan Golson compiled a whole list of other areas in which Kindle falls short.  Some are realistic, others aren’t, but battery life is a biggie – a real book never needs to be plugged into a wall for two hours.

Admittedly, as writers, perhaps Golson and I aren’t the most objective sources on this issue.  Still, Mary Jane Irwin and Rob Beschizza checked out the actual Kindle product page on Amazon, and discovered that it’s not doing too well, earning just 2.5 stars based on 348 reviews.  Even “Elvis Presley: Paradise, Hawaiian Style” scored better than that.

New technology is often appealing, yet Kindle has done anything but catch my interest.

Back in October, LiveSearch introduced a feature called "New and improved product results in Web search", thorugh this users could have more product information and informed decisions. Now, the official Live Search blog has a post called, "Summarizing user reviews for computers and electronics" which finds, analyzes and summarizes reviews from across the Web in a single place.

"Our search results for popular computers and electronics now include graphical summaries of reviews from people across the Web. The summaries highlight the most discussed aspects (e.g. size, battery life) of each product and the percentage of positive and negative opinions expressed.

For example, try the query hp printers and click a printer such as the LaserJet 2600n.

You can see a graphical summary of user reviews in the form of green bars on the left and click on the different aspects discussed such as "Price", "Print Quality", or "Speed". Here’s a screenshot of positive comments about the printer’s speed. From users’ comments I can quickly see that a majority of users on many different review sites think that the printer is fast.

However, when I read negative comments I learn that many users complain about the printer speed, especially for its startup speed and black and white prints. It may have been difficult to read every review for the product to find these comments, but the summary automatically lifts out comments about this important aspect of the printer’s speed.

See our previous blog post for some other computers and electronics searches to try. Click results with star ratings to see summarizations for products with many reviews.

As you can imagine, summarizing reviews can be tricky. There are some cases where it’s easier to classify comments as positive or negative and identify the aspect discussed. For example, the following comments are concise and clearly mention aspects of the product such as "easy to use" or "support."

• "Very easy to use"
• "Cons: HP will not be supporting this per their website."

However, consider the following cases. These comments are trickier and there are an infinite combination of these and other types of issues in natural language.

• "The best budget laser color created by hp" – this comment was correctly associated with other positive opinions about "Price" even though it doesn’t contain the word "price." This requires understanding the fact that the word "budget" is synonymous with a good price.
• "I love it, you just have to be careful with it because it’s somewhat fragile" – this comment is part positive and part negative requiring careful handling.
• "I ordered the product online and waited anxiously" – this comment says nothing about the quality of the product and needs to be ignored during summarization.
• "The manual duplex is real easy to use" – this comment mentions "manual," which is a word with multiple meanings. One meaning of the word is product documentation, which is a commonly discussed aspect of products. However, this comment is talking about a printing capability called "manual duplex". This type of word ambiguity can cause the comment to be misclassified as discussing product documentation.

Because of these challenges, it took a lot of effort and help from Microsoft researchers to develop this feature for popular computers and electronics. Also, the summarization isn’t always perfect and occasionally misclassifies comments so we’re working hard to continually improve the accuracy of this technology."

LiveSearch has one again done a commendable job. This will not only improve user experience but also save time and headaches, something that will benefit everyone.

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“[W]e’ve built a way for you to connect to things other than people, without cluttering your Friend List,” explained Justin Rosenstein on The Facebook Blog.  “I love the Indian restaurant downstairs from Facebook HQ, and now that Junnoon has a Facebook Page, I can become a fan.”

Rosenstein then continued, “This is useful, not just to let Junnoon know I love their food, but also because my friends can see this affiliation on my profile or in their News Feeds and then go to Junnoon’s Page to learn more about it — or even make a reservation, thanks to an OpenTable app installed right on the page.”

Not every page is as well-developed as Junnoon’s, yet, in a short bout of testing, Facebook’s search function didn’t ever fail to find one.  In fact, the range of people and things that can have pages is quite wide – there was at least one result each for Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds, the Tesla Roadster, and Google.  Also, after just a few days of life, those pages have attracted 24, 43, and 61 fans, respectively.

That won’t set any records – a surprisingly successful New York Times app drew over 1,000 users in a similar period of time.  Still, Facebook’s product pages would seem to open yet another avenue in which the social network can bring people and potential advertisers together.