Oh my.

Oh my oh my oh my. I don’t even know where to begin, so I’ll just say it outloud.

BusinessWeek are stupid!

Not the journalists or editors working there though, but the knucklehead that thought it was a good idea to tell users not to link to pages on the site, and put it in a user agreement (the only link to BusinessWeek you’ll find in this piece) at that, and then follow it up by telling you not to link should you do it, well, s/he’s stupid.

Web 2.0, oh yes.

I thought old media (this is ancient media really) had gotten a bit further than that, and an overall pretty good site/mag like BusinessWeek should be getting it, right? Well, obviously they’re not, as SmugMug CEO Don MacAskill found out, after wanting to link to an interview with him from his blog. My, my, very smooth.

What happens next? Well, Gawker picked it up, along with CNET’s News Blog, and I’m guessing this’ll make even more rings on the water.

So stupid. Really, it is stupid. Why would you say no to free traffic? Traffic brings ad dollars! Making it hard for bloggers and well-meaning sites like this makes them pissed up, and you end up on The Blog Herald with a cranky editor whining about your policies!

What do you think? How stupid is this?

I’m reading that Google is closing Hello, which apparently was (and is, as I’m writing this), a photo sharing service that came with Picasa. I guess they feel it doesn’t fill a purpose anymore.

This from Hello.com:

We originally embarked on a mission to make photo sharing easier and more fun with Hello. We plan to keep carrying that torch in new projects to come.

We hope that you continue to enjoy the other sharing products Google offers including Picasa, Picasa Web Albums and Google Talk.

More over at Google Blogoscoped, with some links to the old version. Matthew Ingram says that Hello was a really cool app, in which case it’s a shame it closes.

On May 15, Google can begin doing something really cool with hello.com, a truly premium domain name. Too bad for the users of the defunct service though.

Sometimes our thoughts crystallize not through direct learning but through looking, comparing and contrasting. Such a moment happened for me after returning from Chicago and checking through Twitter and my emails. I saw a division between the openness, positivity, helpfulness, encouragement, passion of social media, with one or two individuals who, frankly, don’t want to get it.

I was jabbed with a tweet yesterday “all this ‘feelings’ stuff and those that gravitate to it are for those that cannot compete”. Oh dear, how sad. How many ways can one sentence be wrong? Now, of course, this particular tweet account is all about getting a rise out of people, so best not to give too much attention to it. Let’s instead look at the top of human achievement, according to Maslow:

Read through what Maslow said we as humans need and, you know, I think feelings do matter. It’s very much not just about competing for dollars. I do ok financially, I pay my bills, have nice vacations, buy boys toys, but if that’s all it was about I would still be in my corporate commuting day job.

Self-esteem, confidence, respect, morality, creativity. Sounds right to me.

As Terry Starbucker (via the New Radicals) says:

“Wake up kids. We’ve got the dreamers disease”

That’s what I like about blogs and bloggers. We achieve without climbing over each other, we cooperate, we assist, we share. The old guard can keep their cut throat business, I’m sticking to my touchy feely social media stuff because I like it :)

I recently interviewed Colleen Coplick about taking over Buzz Networker, and there I said that an interview with her focusing on PR was due on BloggerTalks. Well, it is up now, and Colleen shares her views on paid reviews, PR agencies sending out samples, getting famous in the social sphere, how to write a great press release, and more.

Check it out, over at BloggerTalks!

MyBlogLog have added some new stuff, since the obviously get that we’re not monogamous when it comes to online apps and social networks.

Specifically, whenever you:

• post a question to Yahoo Answers
• share an item on Google Reader
• post a video on Seesmic

MyBlogLog will post those events and make them part of your New with Me page.

All you need to do is to share your service ID for these services respectively. Good stuff.

We do not remember days; we remember moments.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

The Successful and Outstanding Bloggers Conference (SOBCon) in Chicago last weekend was a collection of moments I will remember for a long time.

Throughout the weekend, people kept asking what was different about this conference from all the other conferences they go to. It was clear it was different, and different from the first moment. Why?

Was it because it was a group of bloggers? I’ve been to blog events and while that was part of the reason, it wasn’t the whole reason.

After the first pre-conference party, Joanna Young of Confident Writing made an attempt to explain it. She said that so many business conferences are filled with attendees that arrive with an agenda. It’s all about them and what they can get. It’s all about grasping the opportunities. Admitting she hadn’t been prepared for the openness, she struggled to make sense of it. I told her that there is something special about social bloggers. They don’t arrive to such events ready to grasp and grab. They arrive with open hands, waiting for whatever drops in.

As fans of Liz Strauss, the leading expert in the art of the blog conversation and online community building and producer of SOBCon, the people within the room in Chicago read each others blogs. Even if they didn’t, they had some notion of the type of blogger they were, and cut to the chase. Unlike other conferences, conversations didn’t start with “How do you do. Nice to meet you. What do you do?” There was no need to explain what blogging is or why it’s easy to get so passionate about it. We knew all that. We got right to the point.

“Tell me about you.”

It wasn’t about me. It wasn’t about preconceptions or assumptions. These people were here for the connections, not the surface stuff. As showcased in the post-conference reactions, there was a level of honesty and sincerity that was extraordinary. People didn’t want to play the typical social games. They wanted to get right to the heart of the issues. No holds barred.

In her presentation, Liz Strauss made these important points that might help define the difference:

Customers: Is your traffic a reader or a customer?

Don’t sell your customers something they don’t need or what you think they need. Sell them what they want.

Make it about them.

How to be irresistible. They are all about Frosted Mini Wheats. The fiber appeals to the adult in me. The sugar appeals to the kid in me. If I don’t want breakfast, you need to tell me something to make me want them. Tell me they make a good snack or that they are good for me.

Head, heart, and meaning. Make the connection.

Make it about them. Sound familiar? For these bloggers, it wasn’t about them. Having learned that the strength in a successful blog is making the blog about the readers and giving them what they want, the conference attendees understood how to connect in person, too. Make it about them, not you. When you do, you’re more interesting, and they want to know you better. You make them want to come to you.

A lot of business connections were made this past weekend. And a lot more will develop over the next year or two. These connections will be stronger as the courtship dance was over before they ever met.

I’ve been to a lot of blog conferences and events, but there is something special about SOBCon. Maybe you and the attendees can explain it better, but I think Wendy Piersall of Spark Plugging summed it up very nicely:

SOBCon is like walking into a room of your best friends you have yet to meet.

We weren’t there for the day. We were there for the moments. And we got them.

It looks as Blog*spot users will soon be able to insert a ratings system in their Blogger blogs which will allow readers to rate an individual post from one star to five.

Unfortunately it seems as if they launched the feature prematurely, and the Google team has currently disabled the feature–at least for now.

(Blogger Status) Some users may be seeing star ratings on their posts without having opted in to this new feature. This is an experimental feature that was accidentally enabled on some users’ blogs. We’re currently working to remove star ratings on all affected blogs. In the future, you’ll be able to choose to opt-in to this feature; it won’t appear automatically.

Update: The Star Rating feature has been disabled for the moment.

Previously the only way Blogger users could insert star ratings (or something similar) was through OutBrain and Spotback, the former who previously raised $5 million in a financing round.

There is no word on whether a user will have to register for a Google account in order to rate, although if so, they will hopefully add OpenID users to the mix (since Blogger is an official provider now).

Celeb gossip blogger Perez Hilton, aka Mario Lavendeira, is set to launch his own line of clothing, to be sold exclusively in the Hot Topic chain of stores, as well as online.

“2008 is all about expanding the Perez Brand,” the blogger explained. “I talk about clothes all the time on my website. I have a good eye for what’s hot and what’s not.”

Perez, who says his celebrity website, Perezhilton.com, is more popular than MySpace among women aged 18-25, said he can’t wait to share his new line with fans.

The line will debut on June 6, includes T-shirts, hoodies, flip flops, and other extremely necessary stuff every Perez fan should own.

Let’s wrap this little piece of blogger branding news up with another nice quote from the announcement post:

“It seems natural to make products that my readers will love and hopefully some guys will rock it too,” he said. “Some people might even call me a perfectionist, well that person would be me! I’m very passionate about my brand. I have extremely high standards and I like to get my hands dirty!”

Yeah…

Hat tip!

Pownce, the microblogging service you know, have upgraded itself to a filesharing service. They’ve done this by letting you share 100 MB files with the public, should you want to. Previously, the cap was 10 MB, and 100 MB was for pro users only, so I wonder what they’ll do to compensate that feature that some people (me included) paid for? Edit: It’s now 250 MB for pro users.

Anyway, this means that you’ve got yet another way to share files with friends. Might this be another dump for RAR:d porn and overall crappiness for people not wanting to spend money on a VIP account on Rapidshare? I hope not.

This is great news for Twitter users (like me and The Blog Herald)! Twitter have been marking accounts as spam, but the practice have been a bit weird to say the least:

Before today, Twitter would mark accounts as “spam”, but not tell the owners of the accounts they marked them as spam. Those owners of the accounts could follow others, but no one was able to follow them, and there was no way for the owners of those accounts to know they had been blacklisted.

The excellent Jesse Stay broke the story (also on TechCrunch and Techmeme), and found the confirmation that spam accounts would be suspended on the Twitter Dev mailing list.

Luckily, Twitter won’t just suspend spammer account to the left and right, they’ll contact them first to give them a chance to state their case, which is a good thing.

Jesse also points to a new feature in the API, the “since” variable, something that a lot of stand-alone applications and services will find useful, I believe:

Now, with the “since” variable, I can keep a tally of when I last checked your following/follower ratio and only do a request on those friends that have followed you since the last check. I can now go from checking those you follow on a daily basis, to checking almost every minute!

For more in-depth coverage, check out Jesse’s post.

Duncan Riley, who left TechCrunch to launch his own site, have announced his team at The Inquisitr.

• Pop Writer: Meieli Sawyer Detoni
• Tech Writer: JR Raphael
• Tech Writer: Minic Rivera

The first name is new to me, but I’m not so into the celebpop world. Most of you will probably recognize the last name, since Minic’s been a writer here at The Blog Herald previously, and on 901am as well.

So far, I find The Inquisitr a good read, but I’d like to give it a few weeks more before giving it my final verdicts, although I have faith in Duncan’s abilities. After all, he did found the site you’re reading right now, back in the day.

A localized version of YouTube just launched in India, which should make a lot of people happy. It’s basically same old YouTube, but with an Indian focus. Check it out, and watch the promo video:

Sarah Perez’ blog network, Grand Effect, have added three more blogs to the fray, and these might be the last ones since the goal isn’t to build a big network. It might not be the final addition to the network though, former Splashpress employee David Peralty hints that they’re saving a spot.

Anyway, the additions are:

• Webby’s World (join post)
• WinExtra (join post)
• Mark Evans Tech (join post)

Congratulations to all new additions. Now it’ll be interesting to see if Grand Effect can score some nice advertising deals, which is one of the reasons to its existence.

Which bookmarklet do you use to post to your WordPress blog? WordPress 2.5.1 is a mandatory upgrade with security patches. Are you ready for WordPress 2008 in San Francisco in August? Weblog Tools Collection hosts a WordPress Plugins contest this month. Get your WordPress Secret Key to secure your WordPress blog. Greasemonkey doesn’t automatically upgrade, so manually upgrade to continue using Auntie Akismet and Comment Ninja Greasemonkey Scripts for WordPress. Discounts for WordPress fans to Event Apart events. Get your WordPress mug now! And more WordPress news.

How Do You Post via Bookmarklet to Your WordPress Blog? Matt Mullenweg asks what is your favorite posting bookmarklet on his blog as an informal poll to determine how people post to their WordPress blog and how WordPress can help them do that more efficiently.

WordPress 2.5.1 Mandatory Security Release: WordPress 2.5.1 was released earlier this week and is a mandatory security release. It includes bug fixes, performance enhancements, along with the security fix. The corrected files are wp-includes/pluggable.php, wp-admin/includes/media.php and wp-admin/media.php, if you want to just replace the changed files. Theme Lab offers a simple upgrade guide for this upgrade. Included in the upgrade are fixes to Internet Explorer issues with the new Media Library.

WordPress 2.5 Secret Key: WordPress 2.5 now makes cookies more secure and protected from attacks with a new user-definable constant called SECRET_KEY. Ryan Boren talks more about this issue in depth, and you can get your unique secret key for your WordPress 2.5x blog to improve your blog’s security.

WordPress Plugin Competition: Weblog Tools Collection has announced a new WordPress Plugin Competition specifically for WordPress 2.5. It will begin May 10 and end July 10, giving us 30 days of non-stop fabulous Plugins!

WordPress on a Windows Home Server: Install We Got Served offers tips for installing WordPress on the new Windows Home Server.

WordPress Community Discounts: An Event Apart Discount for their events is now available for WordPress users, resulting in a discount up to USD $200 for any Event Apart events.

Get Your WordPress Mug: I love my new WordPress mug and shared my love with a lot of people recently. Go get yours at the WordPress Shop.

WordPress Podcast: WordPress Podcast Episode 40 with Charles Stricklin and Jonathan Bailey covers WordPress and Technorati issues, WordCamp Dallas, Woopra, Weblog Tools Collection Videos, Apple bundling WordPress into iPhone, and more WordPress Themes and news about WordPress.

WP Weekly Podcast: WordPress Weekly Live Show Episode 15 featured David Peralty, Blog Herald, BloggingPro.com and SplashPress Media and discussions on the business of blogging.

Do You Want to Help with WordPress Development and Community? If you would like to help with the WordPress Codex, the official online user manual for WordPress users, we need you. If you would like to contribute to WordPress as a volunteer in the WordPress Support Forums, testing, coding, and more, see Contributing to WordPress. If you would like to help improve WordPress by reporting bugs, please report them via the WordPress Bug Report form. Your help is needed to ensure WordPress works.

Last Week’s WordPress Wednesday News: Can’t get enough WordPress news and tips? There is so much news coming out about the latest version, so you can catch up with the past news in last week’s WordPress Wednesday News: WordPress 2.5.1 Released, WordPress 2008 in August, Plugins Contest, 3 Million, WordPress.com Responds to Brail Court Ban, and More.

WordCamp San Francisco August 16: August 16, 2008 is the next WordCamp San Francisco, considered by many to be the premier WordCamp event. This year, it appears it will be only one day instead of two, but details are still coming. It will be at the Mission Bay Conference Center this year.

New WordCamp Site for WordCamps: The new official site for tracking WordCamps is WordCamp Central, and includes instructions and guidelines for running a WordCamp.

News From WordCamp Paris? I was looking for news about WordCamp Paris and I haven’t found much. Please let me know so I can share the fun here on the WordPress Wednesday Weekly news.

WordPress Meetup or WordCamp Near You? If you are putting together a WordPress event, please email me so I can publicize it here. If there is a WordCamp near you, go. If you are interested in setting up a WordCamp, stay tuned for news and information on to bring a WordCamp event near you.

Here are some WordPress-related dates and events to put on your calendar as found on the WordPress Roadmap and the WordPress Meetup Group Listings (subject to change):

• European WordCamp in Milan, Italy - May 10, 2008
• WordPress fans social gathering in Austin, Texas - May 13, 2008
• Boston WordPress May Meeting - May 15, 2008
• The New York City WordPress May Meeting - May 17, 2008
• PodCamp Atlanta 2008 - May 17, 2008
• Nashville WordPress May Meeting - May 24, 2008
• Dallas/Ft. Worth Area WordPress May Meeting - May 24, 2008
• WordCamp UK - July 19-20, 2008, Birmingham, UK
• WordCamp San Francisco 2008 at Mission Bay Conference Center at UCSF - Aug 16, 2008
• WordPress 2.6 - August 2008
• South by Deep South WordCamp - September 26-28 - Birmingham, Alabama
• WordCamp Toronto - October 4th, 2008

Is WordPress Safe? With a lot of rumors, over-reactions, and scares going around about security issues and WordPress, I addressed some of this in WordPress Security Prevention, Reactions, and Scares. The best recommendation to protect your blog from hackers? Update.

How Do I Know if My WordPress Blog is Vulnerable and Has Been Attacked? Your WordPress blog is vulnerable if it is not versions 2.5, 2.3.3, 2.1.3, or 2.0.11. Upgrade now. See the WordPress Release Archive for past versions. For more information, see a past issue of the WordPress Wednesday News.

WordPress Plugin Error Management: Weblog Tools Collection offers “Error Management for WordPress Plugins”, tips for improving how a WordPress Plugin handles and responds to errors using the WP_Error.

Tips for Creating Your Own Administration Panels Color Scheme: Weblog Tools Collection offers tips to create your own Administration Panels color scheme to customize the interface for your own WordPress blog.

Let the Reader Decide: Mark Jaquith explains why he let’s the reader decide in his new version of Subscribe to Comments by leaving the subscribe to comments checkbox unchecked by default. This brought a round of cheers by many frustrated with finding themselves subscribed to comments on a blog that they did not intend to do so. By giving the control back to the reader and commenter, those who want to subscribe are there by choice, a much more powerful stance. Great work, Mark! Let’s hope it sets a standard for all similar WordPress Plugins.

Where is PodPress? Weblog Tools Collection and others have been asking what happened to The popular PodPress WordPress Plugin since there was a glitch with the site and not much news lately. Well, it seems that a new version of PodPress is almost ready for release and includes a lot more customization features and will be branching out to include Joomla and Drupal as well as WordPress. Stay tuned for more news.

Greasemonkey Not Updating - Comment Ninja and Auntie Akismet Stop Working: Be aware that Greasemonkey FireFox Extension has been updated to work with the latest version of FireFox, but for some reason, it doesn’t find the update and automatically install it. If you are a fan of WordPress Comment Ninja and Akismet Auntie Spam for WordPress Greasemonkey Scripts for FireFox by Engtech of Internet Duct Tape, and they aren’t working for you, be sure and manually upgrade Greasemonkey to the new version.

Interesting WordPress Plugins: The following are some interesting WordPress Plugins I’ve uncovered over the past few weeks:

• WordPress CMS Plugin adds CMS features and options to WordPress blogs.
• Viddler WordPress Plugin helps with adding Viddler videos to your WordPress blog.
• Add Your Own Headers WordPress Plugin allows the addition of tags, meta tags, keywords, descriptions, stylesheets, or embedded style tags to a Page or post’s header.
• flickrRSS WordPress Plugin displays Flickr photos via feed to your WordPress blog.

Finding WordPress Plugins: For more WordPress Plugins see the official WordPress Plugin Directory, the WordPress Plugins Database, and Weblog Tools Collection Plugin and Theme announcements.

Here are some more interesting WordPress tips I’ve uncovered:

• Define Your Own WordPress Loop Using WP_Query
• How to install WordPress via Godaddy
• Easily Add Videos to Your WordPress Blogs
• Put MP3 Files On Your WordPress Blog (and avoid the chipmunk effect)

Want to Write a WordPress Tip and See It Here? If you would like your WordPress tip and technique included in this list, see Tips For Writing Good WordPress Tips and Writing and Publishing Code In Your WordPress Blog Posts. When its ready, contact me at lorelleonwordpress@gmail.com.

Comparing Blogger to WordPress.com: My Internet Stuff has a comparison of Google Blogger and WordPress.com Blogs with a chart that lists some of the pros and cons of which service to use. It’s worth exploring if you are considering switching. I know which one wins. :D

April Numbers: WordPress.com April Wrap-up covers the numbers and enthusiasm over the new Monotone WordPress Theme. WordPress.com reached 3 million registered blogs with 240,494 blogs created, 281,729 new users joined, 2,533,704 file uploads, about 740 gigabytes of new files, 3,258,032 posts and 1,330,355 new pages, and 5,775,721 comments. WordPress.com broke a billion total pageviews across all the blogs for the first time. Some other interesting numbers included 30% of pageviews are to blogs in non-English languages with Spanish, Portuguese, and Indonesian the most popular. Visitors from outside the United States accounted for 63% and 93% of pageviews were by people not logged into WordPress.com, which means WordPress.com blogs get the majority of visitors from outside the WordPress.com community.

WordPress.com Admin Bar New Design: Giving up on the distinctive blue colored bar, the WordPress.com Admin Bar has a new look: Gray. This change is to better match the new WordPress 2.5 interface and improve the contrast between the Admin Bar and the WordPress Theme design colors.

Control Avatars on Your WordPress.com Blog: WordPress.com offers Default Avatar Options now in the Settings > Discussion panel. You can turn avatars on or off on your WordPress.com blog, choose a rating to keep only “safe” or “anything goes” rated avatars displayed on your blog, and choose a default other than a blank avatar in case the commenter doesn’t have an avatar registered with their email address. The options are courtesy of Viper007bond, a long time developer and contributor to WordPress.

WordPress.com Gets Sphere Possibly Related Links: Some thought these were neat. Many don’t like them. They are Possibly Related Posts, a new feature announced this week by WordPress.com in conjunction with Sphere. The goal of the feature is to bring in more links to your blog and connect the diverse blog community together on WordPress.com. WordPress.com promises an increase of 5-10% increase in traffic from this new feature, but many have turned it off as they want more control over their outgoing links and the links often do not relate nor are appropriate. The feature can be turned on or off through the Design > Extras panel. Matt Mullenweg promises that soon you will have more control over which blogs these links will link to, though we’re still waiting to see what that means. Check out the WordPress.com Forums for more discussions on this issue and to have your say.

Understanding the Power of the WordPress Community: Jacobs Santos talks about the WordPress Community in a loving but honest way saying:

I’ve learned more during the 8 months while on the WordPress Hackers mailing list, than I have during 2 years of self motivated development.

It is interesting however, you get more out of WordPress becoming a member of the community, whether on the forums, blogosphere, or on one of the mailing lists. I can see why Lorelle holds each member in such high regards. These people are a small percentage of what makes WordPress what it is, but they do a lot more to gain the trust of others.

Vote for WordPress Ideas: There is still time to get your vote in for ideas on upcoming versions of WordPress in the The WordPress Ideas section. Why not take advantage of it and add your voice to the vote.

Do You Need Help with WordPress? I’m finding a lot of people still asking for help with their WordPress and WordPress.com blog by blogging their request. This is really dumb, folks. You don’t know who is reading or how qualified they may be to help you. Or you might never get the help you need. Please, go to the WordPress Support Forums for help with the full version of WordPress and the WordPress.com Forums for help with WordPress.com blogs. Get the help you need directly from those who can help you.

Looking for a WordPress Expert? If you are looking for a WordPress expert, try the WordPress Consultants list Automattic the WordPress Jobs listings, and the WP-Pro mailing list.

WordPress Installed For Free: Installing WordPress for Free (aka Install4Free WordPress) is a free, volunteer-driven service is limited to personal blogs only, and they help only with installations, not upgrades.

Using WordPress in Your Blog’s Name: It’s about respect. Please use WordPress names right because WordPress is a trademark and you are not allowed to use WordPress in your blog’s domain name or URL unless you have permission of Automattic and WordPress. Also, remember, it’s spelled “WordPress” not “Wordpress”. Oh, and Plugin is Plugin, not plug-in (what you put into a wall electrical socket).

Found a Bug in WordPress? If you find a bug in WordPress, report it by following the instructions in Reporting Bugs on the WordPress Codex, the online manual for WordPress Users.

Shop WordPress: You can now buy t-shirts, hoodies or mugs with the WordPress logo on them in the WordPress Shop.

• WordPress Wednesday News: WordPress 2.5.1 Released, WordPress 2008 in August, Plugins Contest, 3 Million, WordPress.com Responds to Brazil Court Ban, and More
• WordPress Wednesday News: WordCamps Everywhere, Webware 100 Again, Plugins to Fix WordPress 2.5, Change Admin Colors, and More
• WordPress Wednesday News: WordPress 2.5 Issues, WordCamps Everywhere, Mullenweg Addresses Security Fears, Coffee2Code Finishes 14 Days of Plugins, and More
• WordPress Wednesday News: WordPress 2.5, Security Issues, Plugins Updated, WordPress vs WordPressMU, and More
• WordPress Wednesday Special Edition: WordPress 2.5
• WordPress Wednesday News: Sneak Peeks of WordPress 2.5, Beta Released, WordCamp Dallas Next Week, and More WordPress News
• WordPress Wednesday News: WordPress 2.5 Due March 17, Administration Plugins May Break, Tons of Plugins Updated, Add Buttons to Toolbar, WordPress Dallas and Now Milan!

• WordPress Planet
• WordPress Development Blog
• WordPress.com Blog
• Weblog Tools Collection
• BloggingPro
• The WordPress Podcast
• Lorelle on WordPress
• Planet WordPress from Planet Ozh
• WordPress Publisher Blog
• WordPress Weekly live show with Jeffro2pt0

If You Are Reading This: If you are reading this blog post NOT on the Blog Herald or from within your feed reader, it is being used against the copyright policy of the copyright owners. Please report it immediately so action may be taken to break some heads and feed scraping blogs.

Each Wednesday on Blog Herald is WordPress Wednesday, featuring the news around the WordPress Community. If you have a WordPress news item or tip to suggest, please contact me at this special email address: lorelleonwordpress@gmail.com

The worst part of the Successful and Outstanding Bloggers Conference (SOBCon) is that I now have to add over a hundred feeds to my feed reader.

When you are in a room with over a hundred of the most powerful, exiting, socially aware and responsible, and enthusiastic bloggers, your feed reader count is going to grow. Not to mention your Twitter list. And Skype. And GTalk. And email list and all the other ways we stay in touch.

The most amazing part of SOBCon this year is the proof that lightening does strike twice. It struck twice in Chicago as Liz Strauss and Terry Starbucker hosted the second annual SOBCon event, bringing together top notch bloggers for The Biz School for Bloggers, helping bloggers learn how the blog marketplace works and how to turn those blogging connections and decisions into money.

As both speaker and attendee, Anita Bruzzese wowed the audience on tips for being a blogging journalist and social responsibility for what you publish. She also admitted that she had no idea what people were talking about throughout the weekend (describing it as Klingon) and that she has a lot to learn about blogging.

Many were impressed with the presentation by David Bullock, especially when he blew the crowd away with:

I have the selling figured out, but I can’t get a comment. You all have communities, online families, and the comments flow in. We have opposite sides, and I want your side…

You have done the hard part. As far as I’m wired, the selling is easy. Do you know there are salespeople everywhere dying to get a sense of community and bonding that you have so successfully achieved? You have already done the hard part. I want what you have.

As Jesse Petersen summed up, we were here to learn from him and here he was, anxious to learn from us:

…he would trade the money that he has channeled by using the Internet for a community and then build up the money later. To him, doing what came naturally to us was awe-inspiring.

So, what am I going to do with this information? I’m going to concentrate on my readers more and stop trying to drive traffic as a primary goal. If I take care of them, they will take care of the rest. As Liz said with her brief five minutes, “Don’t sell your customers something they don’t need or what you think they need. Sell them what they want.” The term “sell” there applies to readers as “give” and customers as “sell.” It’s up to me to determine who my audience is and not get the two groups confused.

A weekend at SOBCon brought Brian Clark of Copyblogger to write The Snowboard, the Subdural Hematoma, and the Secret of Life, sharing his most life changing moment with his reader, putting himself out publicly on how he got where he is, stunning and humbling his readers as never before. If that’s what SOBCon can do for him, one of the most popular bloggers in the world, then think of what it could do for you.

This is an example of why SOBCon is unlike any other conference. The speakers are there to learn as much as the participants. All are on equal footing when it comes to truly understanding this new technology and the virtual global village being built on the web with blogs.

I’ve found the most amazing recommendations for an event is the comments during and after, so I’ll let others have their say and share their experiences.

A gathering of like minded individuals is a beautiful thing, a gathering of like minded bloggers gathered to learn about the business of blogging is even more of a beautiful thing.

That was a mouthful.
Karen Hanrahan of Best of Mother Earth

[SOBCon ] summarizes what we bloggers are really all about. Why we do what we do. Why we come together to encourage each other and learn from each other.
Carpe Factum

This past weekend I had the pleasure of attending the business school for bloggers, also known as SOBCon08. With an impressive list of speakers and an equally, if not more so, impressive list of attendees, there was plenty to learn.

In the coming weeks I will be sharing some of the juicy nuggets of wisdom that I took away from SOBCon08.
Derek Semmler

These People are Passionate about their Businesses, their Families, their Cities, their Pet Projects. They are Real people, just like you and me and they Love what they Do. If you had a question, they had an answer. If they didn’t have the answer, they would help you find the answer. It’s almost like we always knew each other, friends helping friends and sharing because that’s what friends do.
Joe of Working at Home Internet

We hear that cliche all the time, especially with blogging. Content is king. I know it’s debatable for some. And other factors do weigh in, for sure. But the speakers at SOBCon08 provided us with some tremendous content and we were given an opportunity right at the conference to set down some ways to apply that content to our own businesses.
Chris Cree

The session Saturday was so packed full of ideas that inspired me and light bulb moments that my brain was numb by the close of the session.
Chris Brown of Brand and Market

The people I’ve met are what it’s all about. And meeting them face to face at events like SOBCon is like icing on the cake.

The really powerful outcome of the event was the personal connections. Blogging has changed my life - and I don’t say that lightly.

Throughout the presentations, everyone was posting on twitter important points and tips shared by the speakers. This enabled thousands of people who could not attend the event to get a flavor of what was going on and to participate in a limited way by commenting and asking questions.
Denise Wakeman

Of the many many things I will take away from SOBCon08 perhaps the most powerful is the sense that I am part of a community. It’s not a community of elitists as we see too often. It’s a community that is open and encouraging and welcoming. It didn’t matter that I walked in the door with a small obscure blog, SOBCon’rs still went out of their way to make me a part of what was happening.
Matt Murphy of Matt’s Cuppa

…But I did pick up a lot of ideas to riff on, and the heart of SOBCon itself is one of them:

Community Is Fundamental

Community, along with ego and family and mortality, is one of those primal driving forces. If you want to tap into something deep and fundamental in order to deliver your message, community is one of the options.
Sonia of Remarkable Communitions

Today is the last day of the “blogging biz school” and yesterday’s presenters were great - each of them had a unique slant on how to establish your blogging platform and what to expect from your blogging efforts.
Stephan Hopson - Adversity University Blog

Communities Don’t Get Built, They Grow

In other words, trust. Trust in people who trust.

An incredible experience is built on trust. Trust yourself. Trust the people around you. Trust that when things don’t go perfectly other folks will understand. People do the most amazing things in a community filled with trust. They change, grow, learn, connect, feel, and communicate. They smile at the drop of a hat.

It’s that easy.
Liz Strauss

We shared - learning, laughter, fresh air, excitement, joy, a hug, the skyline of Chicago, we broke bread together, and shared a beer. What better ways to know a man.
Todd Jordan

People, if you’re not here, you are missing out big. I’m so, so serious about this. SOBCon is one of the least expensive and most valuable conferences I have attended to date, and although it’s only one day of official sessions, it has been nonstop learning since I got to my hotel and connected with my first fellow blogger here.

From meeting people I recognized from their Twitter avatars to hearing URLs and throwing my arms around folks I’d been reading for more than a year but had never known their names, it’s been both emotional and incredibly educational.
Kristen King

The fascinating finding here for Cubicle Warriors is that the principles for business, whether physical at work or online, are very similar. There are customers. There is the purpose of your work for your customers. There is efficiency for the work being done to make ourselves better. And there is personal development to make ourselves (and our careers) better. There is an international group of speakers providing great input to what we do. A great way to spend the weekend.
Scot Herrick of Cube Rules

The subtitle of the conference should have been “Hugfest 2008?. I have never had the quantity and quality of hugs from so many people. This will be one of my enduring take aways and I am deadly serious. Until the internet can deliver a hug experience, ie. an unmistakable and deep human connection, we will need to keep going to events such as SOBCon (especially SOBCon).

Liz told me what to expect but of course the reality can never be done justice with words, it has to be experienced.

As far as learnings, my head is still buzzing. Every single person I met gave me a new, fresh and invigorating perspective. There are people using this social media stuff for everything from adversity, to parenting to health. We had an expert on making sales coming from the other direction and wanting to make community, and we had the guys with community asking how they can make sales without losing the trust of their audience. A lot to process. I am sure there are lots of reports popping up all over and I will try to link to some in a future post.
Chris Garrett

You can read more about what people had to say about the event in SOBCon08 Devoured; SOBCon09 in the Oven, and check out the non-stop stream of Twitters and blog posts from the Technorati tag for SOBCon08.

Much thanks to Wendy Piersall and her SOBCon Flickr set of photographs.

“How do you make any money when you are giving your advice away?”

“I really wish you wouldn’t have said that, people pay a lot for that kind of tip”

These are things people have said to me recently that have made me think about what we do. There is a spectrum of attitudes towards information. People see value in information to varying degrees, but not everyone is willing to pay for it, and some of us while valuing information highly, give it away.

As bloggers we give and give. Sometimes we ask to be paid for the information. Sometimes we get paid by advertisers.

The thing is, while good information has real value, that doesn’t mean your reader will value it in the same way. What can we do about it?

Yes bloggers do share valuable information for free. What people are willing to pay for is the in depth step by step approaches and tailored information for their specific situations.

Ideas are plentiful, never fear to share them. In fact, I find if you share ideas and tactics then you get back much more than you put out through feedback and debate. Try it.

Giving information away does not mean you do not think it is worth anything. Price is not the same as value. I see my blog posts as a free sample. If you do a good job with the free then a percentage of people will want to see what else you offer.

While not all of your readers will value your information, that does not mean you need to devalue it. Have confidence in your value and other people will too.

The Webby Awards have been announced (I thought that already happened?), and the winners are presented both in a nice flashy gallery, and on the static full page. There are several companies and services that either won or got the People’s Voice award in their category that should be relevant or known to bloggers, such as Mint (People’s Voice in Banking/Bill Paying category and Financial Services category), Wired (Best Copy/Writing category), Flickr and Digg (Best Practices award and Voice Award respectively, Flickr also won Community in both), The Huffington Post (Blog - Political, both award and People’s Voice), The Escapist (Games-related, both awards), Flock and Facebook (Social Networking, respective award), and so on. I Can Has Cheezburger got People’s Voice in both the Weird and the Humor category.

Congratulations winners! Full list of nominees and winners here.

Southwest Airlines have relaunched their blog, Nuts About Southwest, on their second birthday (sort of):

Thanks for joining us on our slightly belated birthday celebration as we roll out our exciting new Nuts About Southwest platform, or as we call it around here, our “blog 2.0 site.” Don’t worry, this is still the Southwest Airlines blog, and you haven’t landed in a time warp! Rest assured, everything you liked before is still here, but we have added a lot of new “stuff” that will give you more choices in information and even provide you the ability to personalize your Nuts experience.

The Nuts About Southwest blog is often referred to as a good example of how companies should embrace blogging. Via.

Haven’t submitted your site to 9rules Round 6 yet? It’s open for a few hours more, although I miss a ticker of some sort (add it ’til next round perhaps?). The announcement post is a long one, and the comments to it exactly what you’d expect, right?