Six Apart: Love at First Blog - ' Reference Checks '
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Reference Checks
Advance.net
Jeff Jarvis
President, Creative Director
buzzmachine.com
Project: Advance Publications' online division relies on Movable Type to
customize content for its local newspapers, and the software is key to its disaster-recovery
plan.
Gawker
Choire Sicha
Editor
gawker.com
Project: Part of Gawker Media—which includes porn-themed Fleshbot
and gadget-centric Gizmodo—Gawker is nearing its one-year anniversary delivering
daily doses of snarky pop culture.
The Kicker
Elizabeth Spiers
Editor
thekicker.nymetro.com
Project: After nine months running Gawker, Spiers was plucked to guide
New York magazine's blog, which launched in September to cover the media scene.
Greenpeace
Gilberto Cutrupi
Scanner
weblog.greenpeace.org
Project: The global environmental organization began its blog in May 2002,
and has since spawned "sub-blogs" on such topics as Iraq and the World Trade Organization.
Clark for President
Cameron Barrett
Manager, Online Community
blog.clark04.com
Project: Online forum for Wesley Clark, the latecomer to the campaign,
first ran on MT, but is switching to different software to handle the burgeoning
load of comments.
Dean For America
Mathew Gross
Director, Internet Communications
blogforamerica.com
Project: The presidential campaign for former Vermont Governor Howard Dean
started using Blogger, but later switched to Movable Type.
The Technology
One of blogging's most useful features is the ability to let readers react to
posted items. If a campaign blog, for example, summarizes coverage of the previous
night's debate, anyone can log on and post comments to the piece.
But that's inherently limiting, keeping all the related material in one place,
on one server. In the "blogosphere"—the universe of bloggers—the real
power is in the spread of information, not the hoarding of it. Six Apart's attempt
to address this is a feature called TrackBack, which collects links to comments
made by readers on other sites.
The comments remain offsite, but can be reached by clicking on links on the blog
where the original message appears.
A blogger from outside starts the process by embedding a tag on his or her site
linking back to the campaign's post. Six Apart has made the TrackBack code freely
available, so it can be adopted by other blogging software.
This will increase the ability of different sites to encourage interaction and
linking between posters. And it even will play a role in limiting the bane of
blogs: comment spamming.
By identifying where a comment has come from, the posts can be segregated. Readers
are not forced to wade through all posts from all comers, including posts that
are actually advertisements. The mechanism also allows the use of "blacklist"
software for blocking comments from unwanted posters.
