Friday, May 10, 2002

Weblog Clusters; Google weblog cluster searches? It's time to add "Clusters" to my categories of organization blogs, even though it's not quite a neat, logical fit with the others.  For some reason, I like the word 'cluster' better than 'community.' Maybe it's because 'community' is so overused, but I tend to think that it's overstating it when there's no formal intentionality among the blogs in the cluster. I think organizational Weblog clusters could prove to be an important development. I'm pitching the concept to a group of civic-oriented groups here in my hometown of Northfield, as well as to some organizations in the Twin Cities. I ran some ideas about it past Doc Searls yesterday, who was in town to give a speech. He seemed to see the potential, too. Noodle this related issue around: how could Google be tweaked so that a weblog cluster could be searched? Or better yet (especially for civic/democracy-related purposes) how could Google return a result on a certain topic within a cluster of weblogs? For example, if a cluster of organizational and personal weblogs in the Twin Cities all touch on the topic of urban sprawl over a six month period, would it be helpful to be able to do a Google search on the phrase "urban sprawl" and have it return a result that would indicate "cream rising to the top" somehow, i.e., whose thinking/writing on the issue within the cluster is most linked to? Griff Wigley 5:29:38 AM     comment []

Blogging Goes Corporate This article in Wired profiles the use of weblogs by Macromedia product managers for customers that I wrote about last week. Note the informal weblog cluster that includes a developer/customer:  "Hall has his own blog, and he often links to the Macromedia blogs, and they link to him, and others link to all of them -- creating a community of Flash blogs that the company says addresses the needs of its customers."  And note the process by which cream rises to the top: "The important items -- the best Flash examples, the most interesting tips, the most pernicious bugs -- are passed through the developer community at blog-speed, which can be quite fast. The unimportant stuff isn't passed around as quickly -- which of course is just how it should be." Griff Wigley 3:04:42 AM     comment []

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