Yesterday I attended the first ever WordCampNL where I gave a talk about “The blog as database. Blogging and the blogosphere through the eyes of software and search engines.” I talked about how research can tell us something about current blogging culture through three concepts:

1. Freshness Fetish (an internal wish to update, the consensus within the blogosphere to blog daily and the external force of the search engines that rank their content according to freshness)
2. Software-Engine relations (the role of the search engines in indexing, shaping and constructing our blogosphere and blogging behavior)
3. Template Culture (how the software also defines the aesthetics of blogging and the rise of the ‘widgetized self’ – see a previous post on The widgetized self and the modding user in the blogosphere

The talk was also recorded for WordPress.TV and I will keep you posted when the video material is online. [Update: Video now available]

The first Dutch edition of WordPress was a great success thanks to the organizers. I also got a chance to meet my ex-colleague of the Blog Herald and long time blogging inspiration Lorelle VanFossen and successful blogger Liz Strauss.

On top of that I was actually able to help some people with some WordPress questions. Loved it!

Photo by Daphne Channa Horn (whose blog I built ;)

Madbello from about:blank posted a small video preview of WordCampNL

I will be speaking (in English) at the first WordCampNL edition in Utrecht on 31 October 2009. I will be presenting my research on Blogging for Engines filled with updates and practical implications for bloggers. Please join us if you’re interested in blogging/WordPress and I hope to see you there!

Summary:
Blogging is often seen as a new form of journalism, an online diary or a democratising medium which potentially gives every citizen a voice. However, what can we say about blogging and the blogosphere if we look at blogs from within the medium? In other words, what is blogging when we look at the software blogs are made with?

Anne Helmond graduated from the University of Amsterdam with a study on WordPress, the leading blog software. This research focuses on how blog software and search engines arose at the same time (1999) and have since established a tight relationship. What does this mean for bloggers, blogs and the blogosphere if we look beyond search engine optimization?

Music and Bits unconference

Jeff Jarvis (What Would Google Do)

Andrew Keen

Ricardo Baeza-Yates

Renato Valdés Olmos (My Name is E)

Matt Mullenweg (Automattic/WordPress)

More pictures on Flickr: The Next Web 2009 (Set)

Keynote by Pete Cashmore, founder and CEO Mashable

Pete starts with his main mantra to “build something you love” which not only applies to forming a blog but to any successful company. He uses the Waybackmachine as a resource to show screenshots from Mashable’s history and talks about its development over the years.

People spend many weeks on tweaking their blog to look really professional but according to Pete it’s a waste of time. To prove the viability of a blog you just have to sit down and blog. Just do it! was Pete’s slogan before some sports company ran off with it. Blog, eat, sleep and repeat. Don’t mess with templates and funding and waste your time.

Start at WordPress.com and if you have the skills install WordPress on your own server. Pete is obviously a member of the WordPress fan group and slightly bashes the Six Apart products and Blogger.

So what is important when building a blog empire? Stats. Find what your readers want and give them what they want and then monetize it. When asked, hardly anyone in the rooms actually wants to monetize its blog. Pete is kind of surprised, especially if he asks the same question in the US where everyone raises their hands.

Q&A: Apparently blogging is dead, it’s all about microblogging. Blogging is hard now. How do you compete with blogs created by established media empires who create blogs? Find a niche. What’s the future of blogs? According to Pete it is about how do you aggregate the dispersed conversation that’s on FriendFeed and Twitter, or do you want to completely distribute content as a brand?

In February I graduated cum laude with a thesis on blog software and search engines titled ‘Blogging for Engines. Blogs under the Influence of Software-Engine Relations.’ It aims to add the study of software-engine relations to the emerging field of Software Studies, which may open up a new avenue in the field by accounting for the increasing entanglement of the engines with software thus further shaping the field.

This thesis wishes to contribute to the understanding of blogs by approaching blogs as both a medium and bi-product of practice that are both entangled in software-engine relations. In the history of blogging both the medium and practice are constantly being shaped by the search and indexing engines. Not only did the introduction of the ‘nofollow’ attribute have a major impact on the construction of the blogosphere, it also points to how the blogger is (un)willingly entangled in a relationship that the blog software establishes with the engines. The common blog practices of tagging, social bookmarking and the obsessive checking of blog statistics raise the question if we are now blogging to feed the engines. Continue to read an excerpt of my PhD proposal to continue my research on software-engine relations, or download the PDF ‘Blogging for Engines. Blogs under the Influence of Software-Engine Relations.’ (4,2 Mb)

Excerpt PhD Proposal on Software-Engine Relations

Google as the number one search engine is regarded by many to be “the start page for the Internet” (Dodge, 2007) and “Google has become such a commonly used resource that people are beginning to regard it as synonymous with the Web.” (Searls in Gudrais, 2007). What is missing from the current studies into software is the recognition of the central role that the engines play on the web. The engines are considered to be the starting point of the web and play an important editorial role on the web. Introna and Nissenbaum (2000) describe the politics of search engines with the engines

[...] determining any systematic inclusions and exclusions, the wide-ranging factors that dictate systematic prominence for some sites, dictating systematic invisibility for others. These, we think, are political. They are important because what people (the seekers) are able to find on the Web determines what the Web consists of for them. And we all —individuals and institutions alike— have a great deal at stake in what the Web consists of.

The politics of inclusion and exclusion in the search engines, which may also be described as the drama of search engines (Govcom.org, 2007), is clearly visible in the case of the website 911truth.org which suddenly disappeared from Google results. These issues raise the question if and how the web is structured by search engines. Rogers (2008) describes how the engines are demarcating different spheres on the Web. Previous research done with the Digital Methods Initiative (2007) not only showed how the engines construct different spheres but also how these spheres are constructed differently by different engines.  What role does the software play in the construction of these different spheres?

Previous research into the role of software and the engines in the blogosphere showed that there is an increasing symbiotic relationship between the two (Helmond, 2008). In this study into the most prevailing blog software, WordPress, it appeared that is is establishing strong ties with Google, Google Blog Search and Technorati. The blog software and blog engines determine the nature and construction of the blogosphere through co-construction. These software-engine relations enforce a steady regime in the blogosphere that puts the blogger in a position where the politics of inclusion and exclusion are played out in the game of search engine optimization and spam.

(Excerpt from my PhD proposal)

Mashable just pointed my attention to the release of a new WordPress plugin which is particularly interesting regarding my thesis. I am currently writing about the increasing relationship between blog software and the engines. Yahoo! just launched a new plugin for WordPress that pulls in related content to your post. As I skimmed briefly through the Terms of Use (I missed the option of using the Whatever Button) I noticed that

Yahoo! reserves the right to charge fees for future use of or access to the Yahoo! Contextual Shortcuts Modules or the Yahoo! services and Web sites (collectively, “Yahoo! Contextual Shortcuts Modules Services”) in Yahoo!’s sole discretion. If Yahoo! decides to charge for the Yahoo! Contextual Shortcuts Modules Services, such charges will be disclosed to you in advance.

Sure. Whatever. I’ll stop using the plugin then. Not sure if I am actually going to use it because I am not sure if it will be useful for me whatsoever. On top of that I like keeping control over my content and create and use my own content. However, I see the potential for the plugin for news or product oriented blogs.

I am going to give this plugin a try as it connects to my current research on the increasing symbiotic relationship between blog software and blog engines.

The plugin might influence the construction of a blog post as Yahoo gives implicit instructions on how to get the most out of the plugin. If you think in Yahoo content and if you think in Yahoo search terms and “addresses, most public companies (American stock exchanges) including their stock ticker symbols, products, people, cars, and lots more (Yahoo)” it will definitely work for you.

Flickr, a Yahoo company, is also integrated into the suggested content and with just a single click you can easily embed Creative Commons licensed photos into your blog post. What would happen if Yahoo would integrate del.icio.us too? It could use tags to display contextual related (popular) blog posts. A new Sphere competitor?

PS: Not a lot of exciting suggested Shortcuts for this post, that’s for sure.