Black Web 2.0 » Blogging

Blogalicious 2009 Conference Recap

BW 2.0 Staff — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 19:00:31 +0000

(Courtesy of Tyler New Media, BlackandMarriedwithKids.com)

New FTC Rules On Blogger Product Endorsements, Effective December 1

Latoicha Givens — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 16:00:12 +0000

Previously I wrote a post about the “proposed” Federal Trade Commission Rules on Blogger Product Endorsements. Basically, the FTC was considering whether to require bloggers to disclose any financial relationship between themselves and brands whom products they endorse.

Well those proposed rules are now a reality. The FTC has established new rules on Blogger Product endorsement and they are as follows:

1. Bloggers must disclose if they receive a financial benefit when writing a post about a product or service. FTC views this transaction as an endorsement of the product or service.

2. Disclosure can be a banner or part of the review.

3. Diclosure must be clear and direct.

4. If there is no disclosure, FTC may send a Cease and Desist. If Cease and Desist is violated or ignored, then blogger can receive a 11K fine.

5. Rules go into effect December 1.

Although, the rules have been established, the FTC has admitted that they will not actively pursue bloggers. Most likely, the FTC will only pursue clear rampant violations and those will most likely be the result of a tip from a concerned consumer. Hopefully the new rules will encourage bloggers to be as transparent as possible regarding product reviews. Transparency allows consumers to make informed buying decisions.

Black Web 2.0’s Angela Benton and Latoicha Givens will Present at 2009 Blogalicious Weekend in ATL

Robin Caldwell — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 18:56:07 +0000

Blogalicious Weekend makes it debut in Atlanta tonight with two of BlackWeb20.com’s best: founder/publisher Angela Benton and legal columnist Latoicha Givens. Both will join hundreds of female bloggers of color for the first event celebrating our unique presence in the blogosphere.

Angela will be seated as a panelist in the breakout session, Upgrade You: Taking Your Blog to the Next Level. And Latoicha will be seated on the panel, Possibilities and Pitfalls of Having YOU on the Net. Both sessions will take place on Saturday, October 10.

Authors Denene Millner and Nelson George will be there as well as corporate marketing reps and a few other surprise guests.

The conference closes on Sunday, October 11.

Reporter’s Privilege Extended to New Media

Latoicha Givens — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 13:00:26 +0000

There are currently two proposed bills circulating on Capitol Hill that would extend Reporter’s Privilege to those who “report” news via blogs or other social networking sites.

Reporter’s Privilege is the Federal First Amendment right given to reporters to protect their confidential sources. Currently there is debate in Congress on whether this privilege should extend to those who regularly gather or report news via blogs and other news gathering websites.

Wikipedia defines a reporter or journalist as one who practices journalism, the gathering and dissemination of information about current events, trends, issues, and people while striving for viewpoints that aren’t biased. Furthermore, Journalists gather information from sources and are responsible for verifying information gathered.

Applying the above definition, sites like Black Web 2.0, that regularly break news, are clearly entitled to receive Reporter’s Privilege. These sites regularly report on current events multiple times per day. The public may go to these sites first to receive news rather than regular news outlet sites. In addition, these New Media sites receive “exclusives” from anonymous and confidential sources that allows them to publish news before traditional news media.

Thus, extending the Federal Privilege law to New Media sites simply makes sense. Although New Media reporters may not be affiliated with a recognized or traditional news outlet, their job function and value to the public are essentially the same.

News Linking and Copyright

Latoicha Givens — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 16:00:39 +0000

Recently there has been significant debate regarding whether news stories are protected by copyright law. The Associated Press has taken action to prevent bloggers and other news site from using their stories. Specifically they have taken legal action against All Headlines News for using AP stories without their permission and they have implemented a new system to track digital articles. In addition, a federal judge proposed a ban on websites accessing or linking or paraphasing a news article without the site’s consent. In light of these recent events, below is an analysis on whether it is possible to copyright a news story? Also I will provide practical tips on how to properly reference or quote copyright material.

It is a general rule that factual information or news stories are not copyrightable. The copyright law protects original creations of the mind. This definition means that any idea or thought that creates an original work of authorship is considered copyrighted material. Stories that report facts and information are not “original works of authorship” or “creations of the mind.” As a result, the copyright laws have never extended to news stories. Specifically, the Copyright statutues states in Section 107,under the Fair Use Doctrine, “the reproduction of a particular work may be considered fair, when reproducing a criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research.” So when a blogger or website, paraphrases, quotes or links back to a news story, without obtaining the permission of the news source, it is permissible under the current law.

How to properly quote copyrighted material

The law is significantly more strict when it comes to copyrighted material. A blogger or website can directly quote, paraphrase or link back to copyrighted material if:

1. The blogger or site first obtains the permission of the copyright owner before posting the copyrighted work.

2. Simply acknowledging the source of the copyrighted material is not a substitute for obtaining the copyright owner’s permission. (Bloggers Take Note!)

3. If the copyright owner licenses their work under a creative common license, then the blogger or writer is free to share, copy, and distribute the work if the blogger attributes the work to the copyright owner and does not use the work for commercial purposes (financial gain)

Copyright infringement is rampant on the internet and copyrighted works do deserve adequate protection. But re-posting news stories that are simply a reiteration of facts is not copyrightable material and should be reproduced and shared for the public benefit. If we extend copyright protection to news, it will restrict the free sharing of information.

Latoicha Givens

www.iplaw101.com

2009 Blogging While Brown Wrap Up

Markus Robinson — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 17:03:25 +0000

The 2^nd annual Blogging While Brown Conference, held at the University Center in Chicago, IL, was an extraordinary gathering of participants from diverse backgrounds and a wide range of technological skill levels with many ideas. Though the participant’s backgrounds were diverse, they gathered with one common goal; to discuss the issues affecting bloggers of color. The event, founded by Gina McCauley the founder of What About our Daughters, and Michelle Obama Watch, brought together speakers with different levels of expertise to provide tips, tools and insight on a wide array of topics including branding, creative and design, monetization, and industry trends and research. Speakers included; Hajj E. Flemings, founder of Brand Camp, Angel Laws founder of Concreteloop.com, and Eric Easter, Chief of Digital Strategy for Johnson Publishing just to name a few.

New to this year’s conference was the Beginning Blogger Bootcamp (BBB); an intensive workshop for those who have a desire to blog, but don’t know how. The bootcamp, taught by McCauley, touched on a range of topics for beginners including; how to post text, links, images, audio, and video; to intermediate topics including; the use of widgets, and gadgets, search engine optimization, podcasting and social networking. “The bootcamp was modeled after a class I taught for the Red Cross NAACP, right after Hurricane Ike.”, said McCauley. “Each participant received course materials, and laptops were provided for those who did not bring their own; because I believe that in order for you to learn it you must do it.”

After monitoring the tweet stream it seemed like one of the most popular speakers was Hajj Flemings. Fleming’s session on branding introduced such terms as Grustling (Grinding + Hustling = Grustling), and a list of memorable one liners including:

If you’re the smartest person in your group, then you’re in the wrong group.
Create quality content that is credible & creating quality contacts is paramount.
The best time to start something was a year ago. The next best time is right now.

Another notable speaker was Naoko McCracken of Wordpress. Naoko, introduced the audience to Buddy Press, a Word Press plug-in that allows users to add social networking features to their blog. Gina was particularly excited, “I was just researching using Ning to add social networking features to my blog. Now I am really excited about trying Buddy Press”.

I spoke with multiple attendees who had nothing but high praises for this years’ conference. “The conference was great! It was intimate enough to allow some real, meaningful conversations and diverse enough (in experience) to learn some things from a lot of angles.” , says Fredric Mitchell of Bright Plum. Mitchell, a panelist and first time participant says, “…in all honesty, the conference benefits immensely from Gina’s personality… her admittance that she is a ‘do-er’ helped keep the focus that this isn’t a conference about airing out grievances or what minorities aren’t doing or covering…it’s about learning tools so that u can tackle any problem and make it an opportunity”.

As for the future of Blogging While Brown; Gina announced the development of two small spin-offs of the conference; one on the west coast focused on Accessing Capital and one the east coast focused on Social Justice and Community Organizing. The courses, which she hopes to start in 2010, will accommodate approx 50 people, and will focus on teaching the users the “hard-skills” necessary to move black and brown blogs to the next level. Locations and dates have not been finalized for these and future Blogging While Brown Events, though we will attempt to keep you posted as soon as plans are released. One thing’s for sure though, we can’t wait!

If you’re upset about missing this year’s BWB, don’t fret, the conference was recorded and is available at Next Generation Web.

Shout out to all the blogs represented at the conference:

Audio: RapRadar.com Founder and CEO Elliott Wilson

Markus Robinson — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 17:00:33 +0000

In this edition of the Black Web 2.0 Show, I sit down with the Founder and CEO of RapRadar.com Elliott Wilson. Elliott boasts an impressive resume, spanning across nearly 20 years of monitoring and documenting Hip-Hop music and culture. Elliott’s career was jump started after he co-founded an independent magazine, Ego Trip, which subsequently morphed into successful books and television shows. Shortly after Ego Trip, Elliott became a music editor for The Source, and a rap/Beatbox editor and columnist for CMJ: New Music Journal.

Just prior to launching RapRadar.com, Elliot served as Editor-In-Chief of XXL Magazine and founding editor of XXLmag.com, as well as an executive producer of VH-1’s Ego Trip’s Miss Rap Supreme and Ego Trip’s The [White] Rapper Show.

Elliott and I discussed a wide range of topics including the differences between print and online content production, his personal blogging style, his impressions of other the Hip-Hop blogs, as well as the controversy surrounding Vibe selecting RapRadar as one of the top 50 Hip Hop Blogs.

Enjoy!!
[display_podcast]

Six Apart Calls A Truce With Wordpress

rahsheen — Mon, 18 May 2009 12:56:53 +0000

Six Apart just launched some powerful plugins and services for their bitter rival Wordpress. I know it doesn’t seem to make much sense. Six Apart and Automattic are the entities behind the popular blogging platforms Typepad and Wordpress, respectively. Six Apart explains this bold move quite clearly:

At Six Apart, we love making the web better and more connected, and we want to help all publishers succeed, regardless of what tools they use. We believe in the power of blogging, and that’s why we’ve got a whole bunch of powerful services available for WordPress users: TypePad AntiSpam, Six Apart Media, TypePad Connect, Blogs.com and more. One simple plugin helps you get started.

ReadWriteWeb says this is like “Apple releasing software that runs on Windows”. This could be a strategic move by Six Apart to leverage the popularity of Wordpress. Either way it goes, these offerings will only serve to benefit the blogging community as a whole.

TypePad Connect

This plugin will bring a whole different level of community to your Wordpress blog. Visitors can login with their Google, Yahoo, Facebook, or OpenID and create a social profile right there on your blog. They can also follow each other’s activity across the web.

This service seems to operate a lot like Google FriendConnect. The primary difference is that you have more control over the appearance of profiles on your blog and you don’t have Google all in your business. If you haven’t implemented FriendConnect for one reason or another, TypePad Connect could be the alternative you’ve been looking for.

TypePad AntiSpam (beta)

This is an alternative to Akismet, the default Wordpress spam comment blocker. Six Apart says that it gives fewer false positives, is completely open source, and is free for any use. If you’ve been having problems with spam comments on your blog or you don’t even know what Akismet is, I’d say give this plugin a shot and be sure to tell me what you think. If you run Disqus or Intense Debate, you probably won’t be able to take advantage of this particular plugin.

Six Apart Media

This isn’t just a simple plugin. Six Apart is giving Wordpress users access to their ad network. If you’ve been looking for a way to monetize your blog and want to get involved with an established and respected ad network, this may be the one for you. You can apply today to join.

blogs.com

This is Six Apart’s blog network and directory. It works sort of like Regator, where a team of editors selects featured blogs from the best of the blogosphere. Now, Wordpress users can submit their sites as well. The site also offers editorial round-ups, top ten lists, and makes it easy to share content.

Which of these services are you going to implement on your Wordpress blog?

BlackPlanet’s Featured Blogger Program

Angela — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 13:46:57 +0000

Many of you (including us) have been contacted by someone on staff at BlackPlanet about their new Featured Blogger Program. It is being described by BlackPlanet’s Chief Content Officer Smokey Fontaine as:

Essentially, it’s a home page program that uses my content sites as distribution points for our community’s best bloggers. It’s something I may have discussed in our interview, and I’m now ready to debut it. Given my enormous reach (~9MM uvs across BP, MG, Content Sites, Radio Sites, etc), engagement (>500MM monthly pvs) and ability to diversify and segment the offering via our different properties, I’m able to create very effective traffic and distribution win-wins for bloggers with a desire for a larger audience .

If you haven’t been contacted yet here is the formal run down of the program:

BPU Blogger Letter – Free Legal Forms

When we first got an email about the program about 3 weeks ago I had many questions about it that hadn’t been answered in the initial letter. Luckily I was able to SOME clarification from Smokey. Here is our dialogue about the program over email:

This sounds like a blogger/publisher network, is it? If so is there an ad sales/network element to this that I am missing?

Yes it is essentially a blogger / publisher network, although I think that term has been overused lately. Essentially, we are in a position to provide a mass distribution point for the best blogging content because of our scale. There is not an ad sales element attached to it at this point. We may add one later if it makes sense, but the main value to the publisher is from the resulting promotion, branding and link-exchange.

Is this open to any and every blogger or is there a limit on how many bloggers you will allow into the program?
If you allow many Bloggers it seems like your homepage would then turn into something that is more UGC (User Generated Content) than it is currently?

This is not an all-call. My site leads will be selecting the best bloggers for each vertical that fit our editorial directions. It will give each of our home pages more of a UGC element, which I will look forward to (we’ve already begun to ramp up our “BP Community” category that highlights our BP members on the verticals. Our comments are truly unique), but I will probably limit each site to about 20 Featured Bloggers.

Where is the bloggers content going, will it reside in the BP Universe or simply point and drive traffic to the bloggers site?

The bloggers will likely be given log-ins to our verticals and will be free to publish to the site per an agreed editorial schedule. With flexibility, bloggers will be asked to post an exclusive piece (or in some cases a solid excerpt) and then link out to their home pages for the archive or to “read more.”

All of these features sound powerful (SuperFriend and NoteDrop) however it also seems like it allows a user to potentially spam easier than is already being done on the platform, what are you and your team doing to make sure this isn’t and issue?

These are powerful tools and always have to be used with discretion. Every blogger will not be guaranteed the use of all the promo tools, instead editorial/marketing decisions will be made based on popularity, performance, content, etc. I take our member’s privacy and user experience very seriously and am aware that there is a perception (not unreal) that BP members get a lot of unsolicited email. I’m excited about this program because both the site and the featured blogger are incentivized to create a well-produced, well-written, well-read blog in the same way. Members’ response to the content will be the ultimate judge.

Are these features publicly live yet or are they in a public/private beta etc? If it is not open I’d love to try it and write about my experience with what you all have developed over a trial period of time to see how it works (traffic/conversion/etc.) and/or give invites out to a limited number of my audience before you fully release.

The Featured Blogger modules are live on all my content sites now. This is an expansion of this that adds BP pages and our promotional tools. Ali Sharif’s “From The Bottom Up” blog is a recent example. His video blogs are a part of NorthStarNews.com and he promotes them from NewsOne and his Black Planet page. When we turn on some of our promo tools, we can help get content producers a dedicated (and large) audience that would be hard for them to get on their own. Editors Note: As of today Ali Sharif are nolonger listed on NewsOne as a Featured Blogger, typically the area where contributors have been displayed in the past.

What I think….

Based on what I’ve learned so far I’d be slightly skeptical about joining the program. Right now the only benefit to the Blogger is the POTENTIAL reach you would get from the BlackPlanet Universe. Currently I am not convinced on their offering to essentially produce content for them without being paid for it, even if only on a per post basis for exclusive content produced (I am always a fan of syndicating content as long as attribute and full stories aren’t posted).

As of right now it sounds more like a partnership or even possibly a freelance blogger position that allows the blogger to utilize their own content. I am definitely interested in testing this out for say a one to two week period, I’d be interested in seeing the type of responses from this community in comparison to others like Facebook. I think this could be an interesting program especially if the level of interaction and CTR (Click Through Rate) to content on the bloggers site is higher because the demo is targeted. If the user responds well for the blogger in addition to them being give some type of incentive it seems like COULD be a win for the blogger and Interactive One.

I’ve extended the offer to review the program hands-on to give you all some data to really go off of before you make your decision. Like how many people end-up actually coming to your site through the program, the time on site these users spend, and if the program will actually build a Bloggers audience month over month. It seemed like everything was a go for the trial run then….crickets. So as of today, based on the info I have I wouldn’t pull the trigger on BlackPlanet’s Featured Blogger Program just yet.

Blogs Join Forces to Create “The Black Family Blog Network”

Markus Robinson — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 16:15:54 +0000

In a post entitled Surviving the Economic Forest Fire, I mentioned that one of the keys to surviving during the economic slow down was to join forces, create partnerships, and begin working together. In a African-American targeted niche blog industry, it’s sometimes very difficult to reach and impact the numbers readers we would like too if were just “one blog armies”. It’s also financially difficult to expand and improve upon our web offerings if we don’t make the necessary capital to cover the cost of expansion. This is especially difficult during tough economic times, as ad revenue slows and the amount of web properties (ad inventory) increases. That’s why working collectively with other blogs within a similar genre allows each blog to feed off the other blog’s successes. One of my favorite examples of this is the creation of the “Black Family Blog Network.”

Lamar and Ronnie Tyler, founders of the award winning website “Blackandmarriedwithkids.com“, have launched “The Black Family Blog Network”. The network will group together a collection of black targeted family websites including; Blackandmarriedwithkids.com,
CocoaFamilia.com, and CelebrityBlackMarriages.com to increase their online reach, voice, and ultimately impact. The group’s mission is to support the fact that successful black families do exist and challenge the old stereotypes concerning marriage and family in the black community.The Tylers believe this collection of sites will provide more positive affirmation dealing with black relationships and parenting through interesting topics, photographs and video content that will be updated on a daily basis. Each site will also list the latest stories from other network sites at the bottom of each web page thus allowing users to stay current on the latest network topics.

Summary of each site:
Blackandmarriedwithkids.com is the flagship website which deals directly with relationships, marriage and parenting. Since launching in late 2007 the site has experienced explosive growth, added great contributors who provide various points of view and won two black web awards for Best Blog – Culture and Best Lifestyle Blog. The site has also been featured on local and national media outlets such as XM Radio, The Monique Show and Essence.com.

CocoaFamilia.com is a baby and children products Blog. The site will feature reviews on products such as clothing, toys and health conscious food choices that are of interest in the African American community. There will be a special focus on products made within the African American community.

CelebrityBlackMarriages.com is a positive entertainment Blog which focuses on news and photos of black celebrity couples and their children. We plan to balance out the negativity that’s found on most entertainment sites while at the same time showing positive images that we believe will reinforce our message.