If the idea behind Twitter is to encourage constant bite-sized chatter, the majority of the online flock ain’t chirping:

It seems that Twitter is becoming more of news feed than a social network, said Paul Judge, author of the report and chief research officer at Barracuda Networks. And that raises questions about its growth potential, as well as how the Internet phenomenon will make money.

As of December 2009, only 21% of Twitter account holders were what Barracuda defines as “true users,” meaning someone who has at least 10 followers, follows at least 10 people and has tweeted at least 10 times. That indicates that most Twitter users “came online to follow their favorite celebrities, not to interact with their buddies the way they would on Facebook or MySpace,” said Judge.

On a basic level, this is normal: Most networks, online and off, are driven by a dedicated minority-vanguard of members. That’s the nature of any organization, social or not.

Still, the service’s nature does encourage a stalker-ish approach. Certainly, the celebrity accounts often sport a huge imbalance between “following” and “followers”, as practically a badge of honor. Their fans are bound to emulate that approach, even on a vastly smaller scale.

I’ll also point out that the notion of Twitter as more of an information stream, and less of a clubby hangout, is the chief reason I bothered to start using it. So maybe my instincts were right in the first place; or else the rest of the Twitteratti have come around to my viewpoint.

…And we’re back.

Anyone who pokes around this URL on a regular basis knows that there’s only one rule, content-wise: At least one post per day, every day. So the past two days of blog silence — the first since mid-2008 — should have a good reason behind them, right?

Well, they do: A big, honkin’ winter storm that dumped a couple of feet of snow hereabouts, and managed to knock out my Internet connection from Thursday night through to this afternoon. Yep, total Web (and, incidentally, cable TV) silence for an extended weekend. And I was obliged to stay home that whole time too, venturing outside only for short sprints — but, alas, nowhere close enough for a reliable Web access point.

It pretty much sucked. I can’t say it was unbearable, but it was definitely a major drag. I had a load of work to do, and basically couldn’t do it until today. So I’ve been scrambling to catch up, finally finishing less than an hour ago.

Not that I didn’t find ways to fend off the snowbound ennui. I acquainted myself with my new, barely-used Blu-ray DVD player, discovering that it can play music CDs — although it can’t read some of the extra media (music videos, basically) loaded onto older, turn-of-the-century discs. I also used it to re-acquaint myself with some of my DVD collection, taking in episodes of “The Larry Sanders Show” and “Aqua Teen Hunger Force”, along with an overdue re-viewing of The Falcon and the Snowman.

And now, to complete this crippled weekend’s entertainment: I’m restarting the consecutive blogging streak. Let’s see how long this one can go before Mother Nature intervenes.

I’d like to say that the following paragraph is the part of this compellingly raw-boned confessional from a boy-crazy girl that got me hooked:

so often i worry and act out when i don’t get the attention i want from every guy who comes my way. i don’t take the time to consider if i even like THEM! unless they’re a TOTAL dorky/ugly/pussy… THEN i don’t give a fuck! but I’d still have sexxx with a bizarre looking/interesting/successful dude! in a heartbeat! my friend Dallas thinks i have the worst taste in men cuz I’ve slept with fat, ugly, short, abnormally tall, sickly skinny, balding, and bald dudes. not all at the same time! don’t worry! I’ve only had one threesome, and it was with a girl and a guy who were both hipster/heroine chic. but that’s another story, for another time.

But I’ll be honest, and admit that the post title, alone, had me at hello. I’m not going to reproduce it here, but the eponymous URL is as close as a mouseover (above) away.

While blogs are routinely identified as part of the social media landscape, they’re losing ground among the youngsters:

Two Pew Internet Project surveys of teens and adults reveal a decline in blogging among teens and young adults and a modest rise among adults 30 and older.

What’s behind this trend? Basically, blogs represent too much work for those versed in online short-form:

The explosion of social networking is one obvious answer. The Pew survey found that nearly three-quarters of 12- to 17-year-olds who have access to the Internet use social networking sites, such as Facebook. That compares with 55 percent four years ago.

With social networking has come the ability to do a quick status update and that has “kind of sucked the life out of long-form blogging,” says Amanda Lenhart, a Pew senior researcher and lead author of the latest study. More young people are also accessing the Internet from their mobile phones, only increasing the need for brevity. The survey found, for instance, that half of 18- to 29-year-olds had done so.

Correspondingly, shorter attention spans are becoming the norm. Not that older folks aren’t as impatient with reading more than a hundred or so characters at a clip. If anything, this points to more of a distinction between online communication and online media consumption — status alerts and such are more in-the-moment pieces of information, while blog posts are more asynchronous and (intended, at least) for archiving and posterity.

None of this is any surprise. From the start, blogging has been a minority pursuit, best cut out for those comfortable with filling content wells, mainly with writing (sorry, podcasters/vloggers). Maybe by the time telepathic status updates are the norm, blogs will finally wither away and join stone tablets in the ol’ dustbin…

I’m assuming the 2010 budgets have kicked in at various advertising agencies, which accounts for the three solicitations for blog-based marketing that landed in my inbox yesterday:

- One for Yarie, a niche-level competitor to Google AdSense;

- One on behalf of Dentyne, for some fab new packaging they want to promote;

- And one for MatchPoint, a PR clearinghouse for online pitches.

This, after months of no nibbles from the product-placement pushers. Always nice to be asked, even if it’s an obvious, relevance-free shotgun approach. I might just take the first two up on their offers; scant chance on the last one.

Theoren Fleury is not playing in the National Hockey League this season, and he really thinks he should be:

The report says that Fleury believed that his performance at Calgary’s training camp last fall during his comeback attempt should have been enough for him to make the squad.

“At one hundred and eighty pounds, I finished 11th out of 56 guys at camp in the fitness test and scored a historic shootout goal in an exhibition game after being out of hockey for six years,” Fleury reportedly wrote. “What does that say about the talent level in the NHL? 4 points and a plus 4 rating in four exhibition games and I get cut. What a joke! Craig Conroy goes the first 37 games of the season with zero goals. I wonder how many I would have had?”

That rant came from Fleury’s blog, on a post that’s since been removed. In addition to the media report, the original lives on on various hockey forums. Looks like typical publish-first-think-later blogging.

The thing is, I’m somewhat in accord with Fleury on his getting a bum rap during training camp. In fact, I used it as a test case for how inefficient pro sports training camps are:

On something of a flip-side, 41-year-old Theoren Fleury’s comeback attempt was snuffed by the Calgary Flames. Even with the odds against him — age and six years out of the NHL — he posted four points in the preseason, and certainly didn’t look out of place. Still, Flames brass deemed him not good enough to crack the team’s top six forwards. What more he’d have to do is undetermined.

I’m hoping I didn’t inspire Fleury to post his legacy-threatening comments. Although if I did, the least he could have done was sent me a trackback link…

As was the case on my flight from New York to LA, I’m once again, on the return trip, blogging from 36,000 feet thanks to GoGo Inflight Internet.

And, like last time, I’m paying nada for it. The other promo code I found worked for this session. So I got about 26 bucks’ worth of free wi-fi-in-the-sky on this cross-country sojourn. I’ll take it!

I’ll keep surfing until this netbook dies on me. And then probably connect with my iTouch.

One thing about GoGo: Their slogan reads, “The sky is no longer the limit”. That’s the same retro-futuristic tagline used in Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, for the never-realized Pan-Am passenger space jet. Just throwing that out there…

Since I can’t fathom going more than a couple of hours without being online, I’m tapping the InterWebz while in-flight to Los Angeles. I’m blogging this post from 36,000 feet, thanks to GoGo Inflight Internet, the wi-fi provider for Delta.

It ain’t free (exactly). The cheapo in me resents having to pay for Web access, especially on a 6+ hour flight. Only a few years ago, Delta and other domestic airlines were providing free onboard wireless. But I guess I knew that wouldn’t last. And it’s hard to blame them for taking advantage of the situation — this is the ultimate in a captive audience. We’re lucky we’re not paying for our oxygen…

Anyway, I am getting this hookup for free. While I did have to register for an account (which I did last night, anticipating that this particular jet would be wi-fi enabled), I came across some free promo codes. Luckily, the one I chose worked! I only get to use one for this account, so unless I can create a new one (actually pretty likely), I’ll probably have to pony up the $12 for wi-fi on the return flight to NYC. But for now, I’m set.

The connection seems pretty good. If anything, I’m more concerned about having to access it via my HP netbook. The battery’s draining all too quickly; I doubt it’ll last more than another hour. And I’ve yet to get used to the cramped keyboard and generally slow processor. Still, it’s better than nothing. Besides, if the netbook conks out too early, I can always switch to my iTouch…

In the meantime, I’ll have to flag down the flight attendant for a bag of peanuts, and perhaps a mojito or two. Ah, the vagaries of air travel…

The stats don’t lie: This here blog has been getting a distinct uptick in Web traffic over the past couple of days. And the tracking confirms that the reason is the odd little photo above, which I first used on New Year’s Day 2009.

That year-old post pondered the upcoming chronologically-delivered demise of these goofy double-zero party specs. Based on all the Internet searches landing here, I guess party people aren’t ready to give up the ghost on these glasses just yet.

I hope everyone looking for these oh-10 accoutrements finds a source. Obviously, I’m not selling any — heck, I have serious doubts that the photo on display here is even Photoshopped-free. But at least I can provide a point of reference.

And with that, and with the strategically-set timestamp at the foot of this post (think 24-hour time), I’d say it’s time to usher in the new year-slash-decade…

Greg “Puck Daddy” Wyshynski saw fit to link back and expand upon my little post on what might have been had the Edmonton Oilers and Toronto Maple Leafs swapped cities/arenas in the early 1980s, the proposal of which recently has been alleged by former Oilers owner Peter Pocklington. Much thanks to Wysh for the added exposure in the hockey blogosphere.

I was inspired to comment on the Puck Daddy blog on some of the further ramifications from this what-if-ing. Included in that is Wysh’s point about the New York Rangers’ Stanley Cup drought possibly having extended well past 1994, since they wouldn’t have had a cash-poor Oilers franchise from which to import Cup-winning ringers that year (in which case, the New Jersey Devils’ new Prudential Center arena might have a seat count representing the year 1940). Another commenter pointed out that the Calgary Flames would also have been affected in this scenario; since they arrived in the province in 1980 (from Atlanta), I’d speculate that they, not a relocated Leafs team, would have become Alberta’s favored team.

Anyway, since I went a little long in my commenting on Puck Daddy, I figured I should bring that verbiage back to this blog, for personal posterity’s sake. So here it is, and if it doesn’t speak for itself, at least it’ll leave some cryptic puckery for future pondering:

As for team mergers, it’s the NHL’s distinction to have fostered the last one among the 4 big leagues: 1977, when the Minnesota North Stars basically swallowed the Cleveland Barons (formerly the Golden State/Oakland Seals, answering the question, “Whatever happened to the now-extinct 6th team from the 1967 expansion?”). The major consequence of that deal is that it brought the Gund brothers into the league, who later moved on to the expansion franchise in San Jose.

Minor quibble: The league was already set on Sunbelt expansion before Bettman, under President-For-Life John Ziegler. If anything, to further the never-was scenario, I’d think they’d have started planting flags in Florida and Texas earlier, in the late ’80s — and maybe achieve a favored-nation-status with ESPN that extends to present day? (Hah!)

Anyway, Gretzky would be the central figure here. Reminds me of similar speculation from some AP writer 10-15 years ago, who wondered what would have happened had Bobby Hull never signed with the Winnipeg Jets, thus strangling the WHA as a stillborn. Ultimate upshot: Gretz enters the Draft in the late ’70s, gets picked by the Leafs in the 2nd round (due to size concerns), and goes on to lead his hometown team to glory. (If anyone can track down that anonymous wire article, I’d be a happy camper.)

The previously-announced Federal Trade Commission plans to combat blog-delivered stealth marketing were more clearly delineated today, perhaps too abruptly for some:

Some marketing groups fought the changes. “If a product is provided to bloggers, the F.T.C. will consider that, in most cases, to be a material connection even if the advertiser has no control over the content of the blogs,” said Linda Goldstein, a partner at Manatt Phelps & Phillips, a law firm that represents three marketing groups, the Electronic Retailing Association, the Promotion Marketing Association and the Word of Mouth Marketing Association. “In terms of the real world blogging community, that’s a seismic shift.”

Ms. Goldstein added, “We would have preferred the F.T.C. to work closer with the industry to learn how viral marketing works.”

Translation: “We would have preferred spending a few more months sandbagging the FTC while we squeezed the last few drops of juice out of this unregulated channel.”

I guess the unmarketing folks will just have to fast-track their migration to Twitter and other post-blogging platforms. It’s a nomadic pursuit, of course — you exploit the new territory for as long as you can before regulation comes in to spoil the party. Left in the wake are the party favors and a lot of noise.

It completely slipped my mind that this past Wednesday marked the five-year anniversary of the launch of Population Statistic. Frankly, if today wasn’t such a slow news/blogging day for me, I wouldn’t have bothered mentioning it here now, two days later.

So obviously, if this blog were my wife, it would have ample grounds for divorce.

Better late than never, though. For what it’s worth, the posts I did publish on blogiversary day were high-quality, I think. Judging from the feedback and traffic they’re drawing, I’d say I did the fifth birthday proud, formal observance aside.

As for the state of the blog in a larger sense… It’s worth noting that the past five years of permalinking are an extension of my original two-year training-wheels web journal on Blogger/BlogSpot (which remains, and will remain, on Google’s servers indefinitely). My Web writing and editing style has evolved somewhat over that stretch; the main shift has been well away from the personal insights that I intended to include in this space. But overall, the basic framework remains: Generally unfocused beyond a broad range of my personal interests, and a commitment to update with at least one post every day of the week, weekends and holidays included. Nobody’s perfect — I’ve have occasional lapses in that span, but mostly have stuck to the script. When you can still measure the average blog’s lifespan in a matter of weeks, I’d say I’ve proven my staying power.

On to the next 12 months. Hopefully this InterWebz fad doesn’t run out of steam before then…

There’s no getting around it: I’ve drunk the Twitter Kool-Aid. Why else would I have installed on this blog not one, but two WordPress plugins specifically for Twitter-interfacing purposes? And this is someone who doesn’t mess with plugins: Up until recently, I’ve only had one other non-spam-filtering plugin installed, and that covers the entire time I’ve had this domain up and running.

Anyway, CommenTwitter is today’s new add-on, and its presence is apparent in the comment-box section of each blog post (and the comment pop-up boxes, should you prefer those). Hopefully it’s a simple concept: Fill out the comment fields as normal, then click on that link next to the Twitter icon to fill in your Twitter handle and password, so that when you hit that “Say It!” button to submit, your comment will appear on this blog and also in your Twitterstream. Two birds with one stone, sorta (hey, the bird motif fits with Twitter, anyway…)

CommenTwitter appealed to me because it’s one more way to spread blog linkage via tweets. This method spreads that linkage beyond my own Twitter account, to that of my engaged readers. A short-URL link accompanies this comment-tweeting, so hopefully that drives a few more eyeballs back thisaway, to read beyond the first 140 characters of feedback if nothing else. I’ll be curious to see how much it’s used. Extending the conversation is a constant aim in this bloggin’ biz…

CommenTwitter is the overt way to plant permalinks from this blog into the Twitterverse. The under-the-hood way is via WordTwit, the other dedicated plugin. I’ve been using that one for months, pretty much when I first jumped aboard the tweet-train. It’s an auto-generating push-to-Twitter tool that shoots out a tweet every time I publish a new post, with the title and permalink included. I can’t say it’s generated a ton of traffic back to the blog mothership, but it’s passive enough that it’s worth maintaining.

No one’s more bemused by this Twitter devotion than me. After years of spurning the other social network hangouts, for some reason the little bird-brained site snared me aboard. Of course, if it runs its course in similar fashion as the other community-based online fads, I can always deactivate the plugins and go back to lone-blog-in-the-wilderness thing…

I’ve got two testicles too many to have taken part in this past weekend’s BlogHer conference in Chicago. But enough of my Twitterstream was attending, and tweeting updates, that I got the gist of it.

Attendees go to these things as much for the peer-to-peer contacts as for the sponsoring product/services presentations (and giveaways, naturally). For brands that want to associate themselves with outspoken new-media women (and thus pick up a good deal of women-centric business), BlogHer is the place to be. One participant, Kathy Casciani of DeVries Public Relations, identified with this product-consumer outreach so much that she actually requested additional corporate pitchers to sell to her:

Sponsors I’d personally like to see at next year’s #blogher: Advil, Red Bull, Metronaps, Dr. Scholls, Band Aid

The request for Advil, a pain reliever, in this X-chromosome context reminded me of another woman-targeted pharmaceutical: Motrin. An over-the-counter drug that’s still somewhat on the outs among a notable segment of the BlogHer community: Mommybloggers, who famously triggered an online “Motringate” backlash over some patronizing advertisements.

I’m sure the Motrin folks have been making amends ever since that episode, but here’s how to complete their atonement: Become a sponsor for next year’s BlogHer conference.

Having the Motrin brandname so intimately linked with the same consumer segment that they formerly offended would do wonders for repairing the damage. And the media buzz, both online and offline, such a move would generate would be priceless, for both Motrin and BlogHer. Both sides would get a boost from such a reconciliation (no matter how self-serving it would be).

I know Motrin’s corporate parent, Johnson & Johnson, was already a sponsor for BlogHer ‘09. But it’s not the same thing. Planting the actual Motrin brandname into that list of sponsors makes this visible, and signifies the intent. Since J&J has an existing relationship with the conference, it shouldn’t be hard to get Motrin into the lineup for BlogHer ‘10. It’s just a question of whether or not J&J wants to take that step; if nothing else, it would shut out the competing Advil (which, like Motrin, is basically just ibuprofen).

I see big potential for this, and fully expect to be reading about this “twist” in consumer-retail/online PR damage control a year from now.

The party’s over for many a freebie-addicted blogger as the Federal Trade Commission plans to include blogs under its consumer-oversight aegis:

Mandatory disclosures could change how reviews are perceived online because many Internet users might never imagine that bloggers get compensation.

“I don’t think, for the average reader of a blog, it immediately comes to mind that they actually have a relationship with the company,” said Sam Bayard, a fellow at Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet & Society. “You think about (blogs) as personal, informal, off the cuff and coming from the heart — unfiltered, uncensored and unplanned.”

This is the heart of it. You can spin the practices any number of ways, from firms encouraging “sponsored conversations” to the formalization of “word of mouth” marketing, but it all boils down to the same dynamic, to wit:

Readers perceive blogs to be first-person journals, and thus assign a certain level of personal trust to them that they withhold from recognizable commercial messaging. Advertisers covet the opportunity to penetrate this trust field with their sales pitches, because they feel the message will be more effective coming from this more-intimate voice.

There are plenty of caveats: A blog is really a format more than a medium, corporate and media blogs aren’t necessary regarded the same way as personal journals, certain campaigns work better than others via this method, etc. But basically, marketing via third-party bloggers involves co-opting a less-formal media channel and disguising the formal commercial arrangement from the audience.

There’s a lot of hemming and hawing about just how the FTC is going to implement its proposed enforcement over a blogosphere of billions. Obviously, it’s only got to worry about the U.S.-based bloggers, and even then, will rely on direct consumer complaints versus specific sites. Ultimately, it won’t bother to probe obvious splogs and hole-in-the-wall blogspot outlets; the blogs with recognizable traffic and reach will be the ones to watch.

I view this development with full acknowledgment that I’ve dipped my toe into this product-shilling. I’ve never been offered three thousand bucks for a glowing post, but I’ve agreed to free footballs and energy drinks, among other trinkets. I’ve always disclosed the arrangement with the advertiser, both because it was always stipulated and because I wouldn’t do it otherwise even if asked.

But in a sense, each individual post on this blog, or any other (for that matter) exists in a vacuum — an explicit disclaimer on a “bought” page doesn’t cover another page where some commercial product may be featured, even in a less-than-flattering light. In some ways, any mention is suspect, because of the precedent established by PayPerPost and other blatant content-hijackers. When the field’s already not level, an overarching policing agency — even if it is the FTC — will help to reset the table, with an assumption of transparency.

There’s no shortage of blogs chronicling “Sims”-generated storylines. But Alice and Kev takes frivolous avatar-watching to a more sobering level:

This is an experiment in playing a homeless family in The Sims 3. I created two Sims, moved them in to a place made to look like an abandoned park, removed all of their remaining money, and then attempted to help them survive without taking any job promotions or easy cash routes. It’s based on the old ‘poverty challenge’ idea from The Sims 2, but it turned out to be a lot more interesting with The Sims 3’s living neighborhood features.

I’m no “Sims” expert, but I’m guessing those “living neighborhood features” are meant to emulate real-life human societal interactions. If so, I’m sure the other characters in this “Sims 3″ scenario will encounter Alice and/or Kev sporting some new trinket, and automatically assume that the homeless bit is a scam…

Clutch Tees delivered! After I blogged about the Caddyshack “Bushwood Country Club” t-shirt my friend sent me as a birthday present, I promptly emailed the permalink to get a gift certificate for another Clutch shirt. Sure enough, they sent back the $25 voucher, to be applied toward the purchase of another tee.

And I chose the one pictured above, which I’m wearing right now. Frankly, it was the only other one in their collection (aside from the Bushwood one I already have) that I could see wearing without incurring lost-youth embarrassment. The “Give Peas A Chance” tagline is cutesy, but I can live with it, and I liked the simple smiley-faced green sprites. They look good against the light-blue cloth, too (which is much darker in real life than in the photo here). Worth the minor-grade blog shilling.

So the net result is that I got two birthday t-shirts. I guess I could submit this post for yet another gift certificate, but I think I’ll stop at just two.

If you’re the type that still clings to a TV news anchorman as some sort of authoritative voice to deliver you the news, then the idea of that same talking-head grooving as a music blogger is probably jarring. But that’s the incongruity you’re stuck with, should you come across BriTunes or Amplified, the pop-culture side projects of the two frontmen at NBC News and ABC News:

[ABC's Dan] Harris, 37, anchors ABC’s “World News” on Sundays and is a general assignment reporter who spent six months in Iraq. He has a “Nightline” piece coming this week on children in the Congo being accused of witchcraft and subjected to abusive exorcisms. [NBC's Brian] Williams, who turned 50 last month, is a news traditionalist with such a formal manner on “Nightly News” that his bosses once worried that viewers would have a hard time relating to him.

Their musical credentials were met with some suspicion in the rock world. “There is sort of a feeling of ‘What are these interlopers doing in our special little space?’” Harris said.

If the hard news business ever goes soft, I suppose Harris and Williams could apply for jobs at Pitchfork…

This was all pre-Oprah, but there’s no reason to think that it won’t persist for the immediate future: A Nielsen study finds that Twitter is less sticky than other online hangouts, with 60 percent of new users abandoning their accounts within a month.

“It is clear that a retention rate of 40 percent will limit a site’s growth to about a 10 percent reach figure,” [Nielsen VP David Martin] said. “A high retention rate doesn’t guarantee a massive audience, but it is a prerequisite. There simply aren’t enough new users to make up for defecting ones after a certain point.”

Martin pointed to MySpace and Facebook.

“[When they] were emerging networks like Twitter is now, their retention rates were twice as high,” Martin wrote. “When they went through their explosive growth phases, that retention only went up, and both sit at nearly 70 percent today.”

I’ll point out right away that this parallels the traditional abandonment rate for blogging. I can’t find a straightforward update on the latest activity rate — for instance, Technorati’s “State of the Blogosphere” is fairly convoluted and limited — but as of a couple of years ago, roughly half of all newly-minted blogs would be abandoned in under three months.

No surprise in that similarity. Twitter is routinely described as a “microblogging” service, although after having used it for a good spell, I reject that characterization (I’ll expand more on that at a later date). But the common thread is that both formats demand regular (if not copious) posting of content, primarily writing. And for most people, it comes down to that: Even the shortest form of text exposition seems too laborious to bother doing regularly.

So, with that dissuading demand, is Twitter nothing more than a fad? Earlier this decade, blogging was projected to flame out due to the same dynamics. It sorta did — but only the notion that everyone and their mothers would maintain a personal blog. The blog scene evolved to the point where the format and medium is a routine part of the Web media landscape; the separate, mainstream activity that was supposed to be focused on blogging is now directed to social networks. Sort of a division of labor.

Twitter might very well evolve along the same lines, even though it’s a more centralized entity than the general blogging movement. The current dedicated Twitterers will continue to populate the site and drive expansion to other platforms and more focused tweet-groups (professional associations, etc.). Meanwhile, more casual users can experience 140-character expression via other clients like mobile devices, with output integrated into Facebook and MySpace pages, among others.

More than anything, this retention study is a cue for Twitter’s braintrust to start implementing the refinements that will encourage more people to stick around longer (and make the ultimate, and inevitable, monetization easier). Like it or not, it’ll spur changes, to the point where Twitter 2.0 won’t bear much resemblance to the current version.

I don’t have any hard data to back this up, but from my anecdotal observation, I’d say that the average 10 corporate blogs tend to break down this way:

- 7 are largely neglected dumping grounds for press releases and other excess marketing junk;
- 2 are well-maintained outlets for corporate communication between the business and its customer base;
- and that last one is, well, usually like the one kept by Incase, an Apple accessory maker.

That would be something that’s ostensibly a company blog, in that it’s part of the company website and so would be expected to publicly represent the business, its products/services, and the people behind the company. But instead of containing much in the way of useful information on the aforementioned, it’s filled with a bunch of irrelevant posts about music, sporting events, and holiday parties. In the case of Incase, all that stuff represents the interests of the personalities that work there. So at best, their blog consists of an employee newsletter — pretty much a vanity HR exercise that’s better suited for internal consumption.

Basically, Incase has lost sight of the purpose of a company blog: To sell the company and its services. That doesn’t have to mean hard-sell tactics in every post — but it doesn’t mean post after post of unrelated fluff (sponsorship opportunities don’t really count). It’s great to get a glimpse at what the crew is up to, but not at the expense of learning more about what the company does and offers.

Obviously, this is coming from my less-than-satisfying experience with Incase.com. I visited the site to see what it offered in the way of iPod Touch extras. I didn’t find much in the current product line-up section, so I tried the blog in the hopes of finding out about any upcoming and in-development wares. Having to wade through two pages of bulletin-board material without finding anything really pertinent to my buying something from them seemed pointless (and keep in mind, 99 percent of potential customers aren’t going to bother digging even one page deep before giving up and browsing away).

So Incase goes into my new-media consulting file for how not to do a corporate blog. Would I rather see companies go as loosey-goosey with their blogging as that, versus the stultified treatment that those other 7 corpblogs get? No, because either way, it’s a poor use of what’s supposed to be a dynamic two-way channel between company and customer. And in fact, such ultra-personalized company blogs are probably harder to turn around, because it’s harder to convince their curators that the passionately personalized postings are the wrong way to play it.

It’s come to this: The most recent piece of comment-spam for this blog — that was snagged instantly by Akismet, naturally — was delivered in the form of an honest-to-goodness joke. And here it is:

Two old ladies were outside their nursing home, having a smoke when it started to rain. One of the ladies pulled out a condom, cut off the end, put it over her cigarette and continued smoking.

Lady 1: What’s that?
Lady 2: A condom. This way my cigarette doesn’t get wet.
Lady 1: Where did you get it?
Lady 2: You can get them at any drugstore.

The next day… Lady 1 hobbles herself into the local drugstore and announces to the pharmacist that she wants a box of condoms. The guy looks at her kind of strangely (she is, after all, over 80 years of age), but politely asks what brand she prefers.

Lady 1: It doesn’t matter as long as it fits a Camel.

p.s.
find cheap cigarettes.

With that post-script of cheap cigarettes, of course, delivering the spam-link payload (which I’m obviously not going to reproduce here).

Really impressive. I recognize the joke, as it’s a rather old one, so in a way, this is not much different than the typical content-scraping spambots do in their attempts to break through the filtering technology. But at least it beats the usual gobbledygook of words/characters that usually shows up in the caught-spam queue. And take note: Combining cigarette-keyworded joke material with a cigarette-related hyperlink is an attempt at Google-like relevance — God help use, the spammers are becoming SEO-conscious!

Not that I’m condoning this activity. Spam is an established pain in the ass, and the less of it that even originates, the better. But as long as it never successfully lands on my site, I can afford the luxury of marveling at this, one of the more creative attempts.