In the publishing industry, magazines and newspapers use this thing called “pass on readership” to identify the perceived number of times a single copy of their publication is ready by different eyes. This is usually determined by random phone interviews, survey questions and household demographics such as looking at the average size of a Filipino family and multiplying the circulation data by that number. In reality of course, a publication doesn’t meet that requirement as it is common practice (doesn’t mean its good practice) for sales teams to pad circulation data based on their own fixations with their perceived audiences.
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The year 2007 began with fearful undertones as I had just left my “day job” and decided to go full time into the world of freelancing. As it turns out, I made the right choice. 2007 showered this blogger with a lot of blessings (and blessings in disguise) and looking back, this was a pivotal year in terms of career. Maybe 2008 will be pivotal in terms of my love life. Heh. 
Attended and helped organize more than 30 events that had participation from new media editors (aka bloggers).
Turned my photography hobby into a relevant income stream. I don’t really advertise it as I mostly shoot by request for friends in the advertising and PR industry. They usually get me for food shoots.
I was on a plane ten times this year. Most were trips for the press. Two or three were for leisure. Two were at Boracay
Gave a significant number of talks and presentations that were mostly new media related. These talks were divided among blogging and new media conferences, advertising agencies and
Formed my first company in mid-November 2007 with Markku and another friend. Most of it has to do with local non traditional advertising. So yeah, I own an advertising company.
Co-organized the first Philippine Blog Awards. Honestly though, most of the work was done by Gail, Yuga as well as the blogger-volunteers who helped out with the program.
Appeared on television once or twice this year. Also finally got into doing podcasts and online video as an experiment to get comfortable with the medium.
Launched or repackaged 6 new blogs with b5media. I’ll be launching two more in the next few weeks for the technology channel.
The Blog and Soul Movement was founded and has grown into a volunteer group that helps educators and students understand blogging as a relevant communication tool.
Got to know a lot of great bloggers this year. Special mention goes to the guys and gals from the Man Blog who have become a staple in my monthly leisure exercises.
Nokia Philippines took me in as a brand ambassador for the Nokia N82. Though December’s activities are expectedly slow, there will be a lot of things I’m going to help them with come January to April of 2008.
So we managed to find a sponsor for a blog party. Been sending out text messages to people to attend but for some reasons SMART has been screwy and not everyone has been getting messages. No need to RSVP - just show up and bring your cameras if you want to catch everyone on non-bloggable alcohol + videoke fun!
We would like to thank Noemi Dado for raffling off a hosting plan and Regnard Raquedan for raffling off The Princess Bride and Veronica Mars DVDs!! Congratulations to AJ and Juned for winning the DVDs and to Poyt for the hosting!
What: Pinoy Blogger Christmas Talent Night!!!
When: Tuesday December 18 2007 7:00 PM to 12 midnight
Where: Joey Room, Red Box Greenbelt 3 Makati
W00t: Free flowing beer and select cocktails
The room fits about 25 people but if it gets full we can always hang around the place - we assume that people will be coming and going, so its all good. There’s also a balcony for smokers. If you want to catch the buffet, please be there at 7:00 roundabouts. There will also be free flowing BEER and select cocktails. So get your singing voices warmed up and let’s get talent night started this Tuesday!
A big big thanks to Red Box Greenbelt 3 for sponsoring!
I was over at Mindanao Bob’s place last night when he pointed out Darren’s post about Google PR swinging back once more. ProBlogger.net is back up to PR 6/10. Over here, my PageRank has also been restored to its original 5/10. According to Darren, this fluctuation was confirmed to be a warning shot fired by Google for bloggers who engage in the selling of text links.
I’ve had confirmation now from two sources at Google that this latest round of updates was ALL about the selling of text links. You can see Jeremy Twittered the same thing here. Some of those who have had their updates reversed today were falsely penalized for selling links (like ProBlogger which used to do it but stopped months back).
This latest furore has all been about the selling of links and is a warning shot to bloggers and webmasters who engage in the practice. Of course not everyone who sells links has been hit (there’s no way Google will get everyone) but it’s a sign of what Google are continuing to crack down on.
PageRank is just a number. But to the blogging economy, it spells the difference between earning so much more from your blog. Darren writes the pros and cons about this move by Google but outlines, as we would all be advised, to not be stat crazy and to just focus on our content.
I assume that when Darren refers to “selling links” he refers to sites that openly hard sell links on their site. Here’s a read. This may also have something to do with the nofollow tag as well. But I may be mistaken. Anybody care to clarify?
On another interesting note, the LinkWorth blog shows their stand on the matter. It’s a very good read. What are they saying? Basically, don’t let Google bully you. PR is just a number:
Unless you’re listed on the first page for your keywords, why would it matter if you were spotted by Google and PR dropped? Money in your pocket is money in your pocket! Don’t give it back because you have less green in your toolbar! Just remove the toolbar and go with the flow, keep the ads, add more ads and continue writing great content on your site.
Putting things in perspective, I believe the issue about the Google PR numbers game is at most, a relative discourse. Yuga says that bloggers should not rely on Google PageRank and Riz exposes the idea that PageRank is a wonky statistic.
Let me give an analogy of how Google PageRank works in the light of print industry. In the beginning, a lot of media buyers would rely on ONE thing when it came to advertising on print. That THING would be the claimed circulation figures that a publishing sales team would present forward. Anybody could claim a readership of 10,000 copies nationwide but in reality the print run receipt would only amount to 1,500 copies. How bad! How evil! But why is this done? There would be such arbitrary things to consider such as pass on readership figures which were all transcribed from an in house formulae which nobody had any idea how it was calculated.
Magazine stand visibility was another thing. So many of the same mag issue adorned the wooden displays at bookstores. Did it mean that the magazine sold well? No. Not really. It could simply mean that the particular issue was overstocked. There was so much market visibility BECAUSE there was very little conversion to sales. And magazine stands wouldn’t care less anyway as they stock on consignment.
What’s my point? There are so many things going on when it comes to determining what really brings influence forward. A magazine may only have 1,000 readers but what if their ads are all targeted towards the market? Advertisers still don’t realize this because the truth is, they don’t want to, and don’t have the time to dwell on such things. That’s the broker’s job.
The Google PageRank issue is proof that the online publishing / advertising industry is still in its infancy. PageRank, Technorati links, actual traffic … these are but figures which are arbitrarily defined by the industry as measures for influence and reach. But there has to be a system somewhere - a system that’s easy to understand and Google has made that system a no brainer for advertisers to grasp, using a scale of 1 to 10. And hey, who can contradict the number 1 company in the world? That’s advertising made simple.
