Blogosphere dispatches

Wow! A lot is going on in the blogosphere! I assembled quite a few news clips about some interesting trends, changes and business developments in the world of blogs, but I wasn't able to publish them until now. So here is what caught my attention - with the latest news first:

CooperKatz & Company, a mid-sized New York City public relations firm, more famously known as the employer of Steve Rubel of Micro Persuasion, today launched a new service to help corporations monitor, analyze, plan for and respond to issues that might bubble up from blogs.

Search engine Ask Jeeves has bought Bloglines, a Web log index and Internet news funnel popular with serious readers of online journals, in its latest bid to gain ground on heavyweight rivals Google and Yahoo. California-based Bloglines, formed in 2003, has established itself as an important player in the field, with a searchable index of nearly 285 million articles posted on blogs.

Blogcritic asks: Are blogs the new Google?

Fotolog has welcomed its one millionth “Fotologger” and has claimed the title of the Internet’s biggest photo-blog site.

Yahoo has entered the blogging market launching Yahoo Japan blogs. The move comes following the launch of the Microsoft MSN Spaces service last year and Google’s purhase of Blogger in 2003. Yahoo is currently not disclosing its blogging strategy for English speaking markets but has a track record of testing new offerings in Asian markets.

America's "first blog mogul" Nick Denton - publisher of Gawker media - launches two new blogs: Gridskipper, dedicated to travel, and Lifehacker, which will examine software downloads and time-saving web sites. Sony Consumer Electronics agreed to pay $25,000 a month to be the exclusive sponsor of LifeHacker - according to Advertising Age "a new milestone for the commercialization of blogs". Denton, publisher of 11 blogs, has done other sponsored blog deals in the past, among others with Audi, Nike and New York Times.

More and more bloggers turn into book authors. Just recently two of the 'A-list' web writers, conservative polit blogger Glenn Reynolds (Instapundit) and witty Wonkette editor Ana Marie Cox, announced they would stop blogging for a while in order to focus on other projects. Cox received an a $275,000 advance for her first novel "Dog Days". And Jay Rosen, author of the journalism blog PressThink, has signed with Times Books to publish his book about how blogs are changing media and and politics.

Writers of the following blogs also have book projects, according to the The New Yorker: Buzz Machine, Engadget, Eurotrash, Hit & Run, The Black Table, Dong Resin, Zulkey, Low Culture, Lindsayism, Megnut, Maud Newton, MemeFirst, Old Hag, PressThink and I Keep a Diary.

Just as a recap. One of the first to make the transition from web to book author was Baghdad blogger known as Salam Pax, who wrote an often bleakly humorous weblog under most dangerous circumstances from Iraq. He became an internet sensation, got a column in the British "Guardian" and signed a book and a movie deal. His book "The Clandestine Diary of an Ordinary Iraqi", has just been published as paperback.

Then some sex blogs also caught the attention from publishers. Jessica Cutler, for instance, a 24 year-old staffer at Capitol Hill, became famous last year with her online diary Washingtonienne about the sex affairs shed had with her co-workers. Despite the fact she lost her job, the "scandal" payed off: she soon signed a book deal and posed for Playboy. And a British call girl with the pseudonym "Belle de Jour", who had created a sensation with a blog about her experiences, has signed a six-figure deal with Warner Books to publish a memoir. The book has been recently published. The film rights are also being frantically contested. (Update: Channel 4 is to make a TV drama based on her web diary.)

More blogs will turn into 'literature'. The interest among editors and agents continues to increase. The New Yorker reported that one of the leading talent agencies, International Creative Management in New York, has assigned one of their assistants to become a kind of one-woman blog boutique, surfing for the best writers online and suggesting they work with her to develop and sell a book. The magazine predicts: "Books by bloggers will be a trend, a cultural phenomenon."