Instant Gratification is a free, totally non-commercial service that sends website owners an IM whenever someone visits their page. It allows the people visiting your site to optionally identify themselves with their name, email, AIM username or blog address. [link via kuro5hin.org]  

"Whenever someone visiting my site provides their Blog address I tend to visit it in real-time while they're visiting my site. The act of them surfing actually causes people to read their site, which they see in the form of an IM traffic alert. It's an odd, almost Pavlovian stimulus-response kinda thing. Very often I'll IM the person too. There must be 20 blogs that I regularly read because their authors happened upon my site.

It turns out that this is happening all over blogspace. People are forging these real-time communities, totally by accident. This seems to have a much stronger pull than blogrolling (lists of blogs that you frequent listed on your own blog), because it's very personal and immediate. An actual person is reading your diary at this instant. You, compelled to find out more about this visitor, run off and check their blog. They get a little IM pat on the back that makes them feel good. It is, I suppose, similar to blog comments, but again the real-time element seems to push it more"

I don't use AIM .... yet.  Planning to download it and test it out.  Will share my experiences.

10:20:41 PM    comment []  trackback []

Came across a survey on blogs through a link in my sitemeter.  Not sure how rigorous the sampling is really.  Or the methodology.  Am reading it as indicative of a trend at best.

"The Blog Search Engine held a survey on blogging which was concluded on December 1, 2003. The 610 survey respondents were made up mainly of blog owners who have submitted their blog to the Blog Search Engine (over 2,800 blogs submitted) and other blog owners contacted through different channels...."

Here's the full report with tables.

Does have some implications on the role of blogs as a PR tool. 

Some highlights:

• 13.4% of the bloggers surveyed run advertising in their blogs.
• 58.5% of bloggers who do not run advertising on their blog claim that the reason is because they do not want advertising or feel that advertising does not belong on blogs.
• 50.6% of all bloggers surveyed are not open to running advertising on their blogs.
• 10.1% may be barred from running advertising by their blog host, although they can still run affiliate links in their blog content if they choose.
• Other reasons for not running advertising include:
  ìNot sure it will add to the quality of my blogî
  ìMy readership isnít big enough for advertising to really do me any good, and it would just annoy what readers I do haveî
  ìNot something Iíve ever consideredî
• Ironically, 73.9% off all bloggers are open to receiving and blogging about such information.
• This is in vast contrast to advertising where only 29.4% of all bloggers surveyed are open to running ads (run advertisements or would like to).
• And 41.8% of bloggers may be open to PR contacts, and are willing to post a negative review in their blog if they do not like the product.

12:45:10 AM    comment []  trackback []