As some readers will know, blogs and how they report news is a topic of interest to me. Along with that comes the ability to disseminate the news.
I have been following the Natalee Holloway story and have also tried to search out message boards, internet forums and so forth so as to do more than simply re-hashing headlines from the MSM in my reports.
I don't run ads or take tips to offset any costs, though if I did, I could certainly see adding making phone calls, as in to Aruba in this case, to help report the story, as the costs might then be offset.
The point is - at around 3PM today if you Google Natalee Holloway, as many are apparently doing, the first link has been to my personal blog. If you use Google News, the first three links are to posts of mine at Blogger News Network. I'm attaching screen captures to document same.
This is currently resulting in approximately 5-600 hits an hour to my blog - far more than usual and all without any real linkage from another blog. My point isn't to trumpet this for my own ego, but to make the point that an individual blogger can become a genuine part of distributing topical news today.
That said, hopefully bloggers taking advantage of search engines to drive traffic through topical news will endeavor to bring value by at least aggregating and parsing content from various MSM stories, as opposed to simply jumping on a headline to increase traffic for a snarky comment, or two. In my opinion, that would support a decision by large search engines to overlook the blogs as a source of genuine information.
Click Images of Google searches below.
Well done job. I see a future Drudge in the making!
Posted by: cris | Saturday, June 11, 2005 at 01:56 AM
Dan, My eleven year old daughter just asked me what is the difference between a blog and a message board. One defination I found said a blog is one way communication and a message board is two way communication. Clearly, that is changing. Can you enlighten me? Thanks.
Posted by: sirius700 | Sunday, June 26, 2005 at 11:44 AM