the NextWeb says "This Will Change The Way Bloggers Write"
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That is, for what it’s worth, not the distinction Google News is making: The “(blog)” label is supposed to be attached to any news published with blogging software. At the time, I thought Google might be throwing a bone to newspaper companies that don’t like being lumped with amateur news sources. And while I’m sure the new label was not important enough to reach Schmidt’s desk, his framing of that distinction — “the infrastructure around the writer” — is an interesting one.
Filed at 10:33 a.m. ET
PHILADELPHIA (AP) -- The Federal Trade Commission will require bloggers to clearly disclose any freebies or payments they get from companies for reviewing their products.
It is the first time since 1980 that the commission has revised its guidelines on endorsements and testimonials, and the first time the rules have covered bloggers.
But the commission stopped short Monday of specifying how bloggers must disclose any conflicts of interest.
The FTC said its commissioners voted 4-0 to approve the final guidelines, which had been expected. Penalties include up to $11,000 in fines per violation.
The rules take effect Dec. 1.
Dec. 1st..just in time for all those Christmas gadgets all the A-listers will get. :)
TechCrunch's Jason Kincaid describes the FWix model below.
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"The basic idea behind Fwix is fairly simple: it aggregates news articles and blog posts that are relevant to a certain region (the site now features support for over 80 cities in the United States and Canada). To do this, the Fwix team selects news sources and blogs that it thinks are related to each city, and also uses automated algorithms to determine when other content might also be relevant."
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You can't turn around without seeing a company targeting the aggregation and content markets. With social networks and media converging, the ability to filter and aggregate information isn't just important to publishers, it's important for every company. The ability to cut through mountains of information is increasingly becoming a competitive advantage.
Never has the "get the right info to the right person at the right time" saying rang more true. That expertise will ultimately be one of your company's biggest assets. Hell, in some organizations is it's the only real differentiator. So pay attention to the the way news and information is being used -- and pay special attention to the companies that are innovating in the space. They could be your next competitor..or partner.
At about the 2:20 point, Bonin Bough talks about Pepsi's hands-on approach and how it has to be about more than the product. I like the way Andy framed the blogger outreach discussion, mentioning how blogger relations isn't always as "easy as it looks."

Louis Gray points to another graveyard created by Google -- the market for standalone RSS readers. But the snippet that stands out for me is this one:
"not only is innovation alive and well, but blogs and RSS are key components in creating new products." Exactly.
Let's take that a bit further. Many of us describe RSS as plumbing, infrastructure, whatever. What we mean is that it's important technology that facilitates how we use the internet as a platform. And it enables other services and tools to work properly as we slice, dice and interact with information across the web. Transporting data via RSS is something that every new service or tool will provide, at least to some extent.
Owning big pieces of the RSS and blog pie (Blogger.com) gives Google an advantage in a number of ways. Not only can it cherry-pick its way to the internet acquisition top, it gains valuable insight around the real-time web.As it delivers RSS-powered content via Google Reader, it can use the same lens to understand who's actually creating all that content. That's insight that's priceless as big companies pay big bucks for insight into the web's data streams.
The bigger question is what other pieces are ripe for the taking? I think the Yahoo, Microsoft deal answered that for us.
Part of Kaiser Permanente's experiences reflect a lot of the things I'm hearing from other customers. Weber talks about how many of her colleagues really didn't have a good grasp of what everyone was working on, or in some cases, what each person's job role encompassed. She describes how Kaiser devised a collaboration strategy using tools like blogs and wikis for creating content and sharing information.