BlogWorld Expo [SOTB] & The Status of the Medical Blogosphere

During my stay in Singapore from October 9th-16th there were 2 other great events, one of them  being the Blogworld Expo, the  World largest Conference on Blogging in the Las Vegas Convention Center. As a matter of fact, I would never have the opportunity to go to such a place, because I’m blogging in my spare time and although it has many spin-offs for my work, I would never have the resources and the time to go there. So, it was with a little jealousy and envy that I followed all those cheerful tweets from my colleague medbloggers. They apparently had a lot to talk about, -also outside the context of the meeting. I even understood that Bongi came all the way from South Africa.  And I can’t say the video below eases the pain :

more about “Scenes from Blog World Expo 2009 and …“, posted with vodpod

Image of Kim McAllister

It was the first time during the Blogworld Expo there was a medblogging-track. Thanks to the effort of Kim McAllister of Emergiblog. She posted a kind of a *rant* that there was nothing for medbloggers at two events. Seeing this, one organizer of Blogworld Expo commented: we have a place for you if you want to come. Johnson & Johnson were willing to sponsor, and MedPage Today offered an additional sponsorship. Below is an interview with Kim as well as with another well known blogging nurse, Gina Rybolt of Codeblog. In this interview “the conversation turns to why they blog, how they manage to do it without compromising their patient’s privacy and how they wish marketers and pharma brands would approach them.”

Rohit Bhargava who interviewed both nurses also interviewed the famous medical blogger Kevin Pho of KevinMD about why he blogs, what results he has seen and the future of the medical blogosphere the future of Medical Blogging. He makes clear why it is important for doctors to blog. However, there is one major obstacle for busy physicians, namely: TIME!

Want more information an/or pictures on the medblog-part of the conference, please see:

• KevinMD : Scenes from Blog World Expo 2009 and the future of medical social media.
• Kim of Emergiblog: Many posts, i.e. BlogWorld/New Media Expo – The Exhibited, The Uninhibited! and One For the Medblogger History Books and Baby Got Back….to Blogging! and Post Blog World Post
• Doctor Anonymous, BlogWorld 09: HIPAA & Blogging
• Rob Lamberts (Musings of a Distractible Mind), Medical Bloggers Frolicking at Blogworld
• Ramona Bates (Sututre for a Living), BlogWorld Expo 2009
• Paul Levy, Going virtual @ BlogWorld
• Bongi (Other-things-amanzi) Fabulous Las Vegas
• Kerri (sixuntilme): BlogWorldExpo: Medical Bloggers Make Their Debut.

The opening keynote of the Blogworld Expo was delivered by Richard Jalichandra, CEO of Technorati, showing some highlights from their annual study following the growth and trends in the annual State of the Blogosphere. The report was released over five days. (See Techcruch for presentation and short explanation ; the entire report is available at Technorati)

What I found most interesting:

• In Social Media the content is the conversation.
• There is a rising class of “professional” bloggers.
• But still Hobbyists represent 76% of all bloggers
  (I have some problems with the division in ‘professional bloggers’ and ‘hobbyist’ though, since professional bloggers are those regarded as “earning some money” and hobbyists are regarded as those that don’t. I think there should at least be 3 main groups: those blogging as a profession (earn money), those blogging as an expert (mostly) in their free time (professionally) and those writing about their hobbies, children etc (hobbyists).
• The hobbyists blog for fun and to express themselves
• 15% is part time professional, they blog to supplement their income and to share their expertise
• 9% is self-employed, 4% is corporate (see Figure below)
• Of the professional bloggers 2 thirds are male, 16% are 18-44, are more effluent and educated than the general population and the hobbyist bloggers (hmmm that also pleads against medbloggers not belonging to this group)
• 73% of all bloggers use Twitter vs 14% of the general population (but nr 1 reason is to promote their blog)
• 26% of bloggers who also use Twitter say that the service has eaten into the time they spend updating their traditional blogs – though 65% say it has had no effect.
• on average only .83% of the page views come from Twitter referrals.
• Advise to succeed: be passionate.
• Bloggers believe that politics (57%) and technology/business (44%-20%) are among the fields most impacted by the blogosphere, and that they will continue to be transformed by the blogosphere going forward. Health was only mentioned by 5%.

I wonder where/whether Science/Health/Medbloggers fit in? Are they underrepresented in the study? Or do they belong to a minority anyway? See here a discussion on Twitter (catched with QuoteURL)

Related articles by Zemanta

• State of the Blogosphere 2009 is Out (buildabetterblog.com)
• 2009 State Of The Blogosphere: The Full BlogWorld Presentation (techcrunch.com)

Incorrect Google Incoming Links?

Google links are a very handy tool for becoming aware who links to you. You can also use Technorati for this purpose, but these sources overlap: some links are unique for Google Links and others for Technorati.
Google Links alert me to blogs and reactions to my posts I would have missed otherwise. I wouldn’t have known for instance that my blog had been reviewed in the Gazette (see post “Laikas-little-party”). Often this leads to a mutually follow (via an alert).

Google links are the incoming links seen at the Dashboard and the blog Stats Page of WordPress Blogs (I don’t know if they are an automatic feature in other blog types as well).

Correct Incoming Links at Dashboard

These are only the most recent links. To see them all, you have to click at “See All” at the Incoming Links at your stats page (“More” at your dashboard page).

For those not having WordPress, you can also perform a Google link search yourself. Go to Google BlogSearch and type: link:your web address, in my case link:http://laikaspoetnik.wordpress.com/

Alternatively you can make a Google Alert at google.com/alerts.

It is also possible to take a RSS feed to Google Links by simply clicking the RSS-symbol at Incoming Links at the WordPress or by taking an RSS feed to the link you created yourselves in Google Blog Search

———————————————————————–

Since 2 weeks, approximately at the same time my Technorati Authority made a free fall from 46 to 5, some Incoming (Google) Links were lost. In addition, the links showing up were different:

1. Incoming Links at WordPress, showing correct links.
2. Incoming Links at WordPress, referring to all blogpost mentioning your website in their sidebar. The same links show up at Google Blog search. Most of these links are temporary.
   
3. Cumulative results in Google Reader (all results, whether correct or incorrect, temporary or not).

Incorrect Links showing at WordPress's dashboard (after refreshing, confer Figure above)

This seems a mutual problem. There was a Google link at my blog to this post of Biomedicine on Display (see Figures), as well as a link to my blog at their blogroll, whereas neither blog had a recent post referring to the other…..

Wrong link to Laika's MedLibLog at Biomedicine at Display

Surely this is not what Google links are meant for. I don’t want alI posts of a certain blog showing up. I already have all kinds of alerts to the blogs I like. (Google Reader, Technorati, Twitter).

This makes me wonder:

• Do you see similar incoming links that don’t really link to your post?
• What causes these “wrong links”?
• Why does WordPress show different results upon refreshing (the address, link:http etc remaining the same)
• Has this anything to do with the Technorati problems?
• Does anyone know to whom (at Google and/or WordPress) I should report these artifacts?

Technorati back?

In my previous post I mentioned that Technorati had been down for a week.

But now Technorati seems to be in the air again, according to the new message on the Technorati support block.

And indeed, also in my hands everything seems to be working again.

That is a relief!

What is wrong with Technorati?

This is the message I got from Technorati: favorites will be right back.

O.k. those things can happen.

But I’m seeing this message for a week now.

Right back? When?

Am I the only one having this problem?

————

May 27th: 16.00: While trying to get to the Technorati support staff, I found a Technorati Support Blog with an official (?) announcement on the (May 20th) saying:

Favorites / Fans currently Down.

Apologies for any inconvenience!! We are working on it and it should be back up soon. A message will be posted here when it is back up. Thanks for your patience.

So it is a general (and long lasting) problem. Hopefully it will be resolved (real) soon.

……………..

May 27th 16:17. ha, ha, ha. have a look at the possibly related posts to this post.

Possibly related posts: (automatically generated)

• Burton: For Right or Wrong
• Technorati Claim
• Does God Exist?

Terugvindbaarheid (Technorati enzo)

Terwijl Booklouse en ik -hopelijk niet voor lang- nog in een parallel universum rondzweven, willen we jullie op de hoogte houden van onze Spoetnik-relevante ervaringen.

Alvorens we de melkweg verlieten hebben we ons nog enige van de 17 tips van Wowter eigen gemaakt om de zichtbaarheid en terugvindbaarheid van onze blogs (en van onszelf) te verhogen. Veel had ik al intuïtief gedaan of afgekeken of geleerd in de Spoetnik-cursus, zoals de ondertitel aanpassen (Tip 0), aanpassen “about page” (5), gebruik van categorieën(7), RSS-button op de pagina (3) of waren mij overkomen (5: pings). Het linken en backlinken heb ik me inmiddels eigen gemaakt. Dat geldt ook voor veel andere Spoetnikcollega’s! Enkele andere tips heb ik inmiddels ook doorlopen. Niet alles lukt, bijv. de de feedburner stats in mijn wordpress-Theme-editor voegen. En op een gegeven moment ging het me echt duzelen van de links die ik open had staan en de sites waar ik me op geabonneerd had. Ik weet niet of delicious meer ordening in de chaos had kunnen aanbrengen,gevoelsmatig lijkt het mij dat een wirwar aan tags de chaos alleen maar verhoogt.

Mijn maatje Brughagedis is veel verder dan ik. Nadat hij samen met Klijt Berroo RSS-feeds heeft gemaakt van alle, nu ja bijna alle blogs, is hij alweer bezig alle weblogs te embedden, Joost mag weten waar dat goed voor is, maar ik zie wel dat mijn meeste bezoekers nu van zijn pagina afkomen(?!).

Ik zal hier alleen even noemen waarvan ik me herinner dat ik het gedaan heb:

• Een email logo gegenereerd via nexodyne (zie rechterkolom) (punt 8). Ziet er leuk uit, vooral op zo’n saaie WordPress-kolom.
• Me aangemeld bij de twee grote internationale LIS blog zoekmachines Liszen en Libworm (punt 12)
• Mijn blog claimen bij Technorati. Ik heb dit gedaan door een door hen verstrekte code in een nieuwe post te plaatsen, maar het kan ook anders. Technorati indexeert alle aangemelde blogs. Zo zie je vrijwel direct je eigen nieuwe posts, de reacties op je posts, alsmede de posts van je favorieten. Het is als het ware een ingebouwde RSS-feed, die heel prettig leest. Het is wel even zoeken waar je op moet klikken om je favoriete blogs of reacties te vinden (zie figuur).
  Iedere blog heeft een bepaalde ‘authority’, dat zegt niet direct iets over de inhoud van je blog, maar is gebaseerd op het aantal links ernaartoe, waarbij de authority in sterke mate bepaald wordt door het aantal verschillende sites dat naar je linkt.
  Ook kun je zien wie jou als favoriet gezet heeft. Je kunt iemand favoriet maken door op het hartje te klikken. Als je mij favoriet wil maken kun je op het groene logo klikken boven in de rechterkolom op mijn pagina. Je kunt deze link ook gebruiken om jezelf te registreren.

• Tenslotte heb ik me aangemeld op cocomments, hier kun je de commentaren op je eigen reacties volgen nadat je ook hier je blog geclaimd hebt. Ik kwam toevallig achter ‘cocomments’, doordat ik zag dat iemand vanaf deze site mijn blog had bezocht en Wowter ook een cocomment-site op Technorati had. Het werkt prima, ik zie een envelopje in de statusbalk als er een nieuwe reactie is. Om dit te kunnen volgen moet je het programma wel downloaden. Wat mij wel erg aan de site tegenstaat zijn de flikkerende advertenties, die o.a. aankondigen dat ik (weer) in de prijzen ben gevallen. Ik weet niet zeker of ik hier lid van blijf.

Wat heeft het me opgeleverd? Vooral dat ik makkelijker anderen kan volgen en wellicht ook anderen mij, maar dat merk ik nog niet direct. Het verkeer is wel geïntensiveerd, maar dat ligt vooral aan het aantal posts van de laatste tijd, de toename van pings en backtracks en -lasts but not least- het maken van overzichtfeeds van de bijdragen van alle Spoetnikdeelnemers op de Spoetnikpagina en de pagina van Brughagedis. Zelf volg ik nu ook andere dan de mij bekende blogs.

Toen ik WoWter’s lijstje zag viel me wel een ding op, nl. dat de tips zich concentreerden rond de vindbaarheid, maar is niet TIP nr 1 dat je wat te melden moet hebben? Het gaat toch vooral om wat je te zeggen hebt? Of om te spreken in UbaBerts citaat van WordPress: “Size doesn’t matter. Finally, remember that it’s not the size of your audience, it’s how much you care about them and they care about you.” In ieder geval zal ik, nu ik de meeste vindbaarheid-trucs onder de knie heb, me in het vervolg wat meer op de inhoud richten.