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Jason Calacanis reports that AOL (TWX)  is closing one of the blogs he started while running Weblogs Inc. PVRWire, a blog about digital video recorders, Tivo's and such, is being shut down, he said.  Calacanis also included a chart from Hitwise showing, "PVRWire is clearly on the road to hitting 1M pages a month."

Opportunity is knocking.

If this blog goes dark, somebody who's passionate (or greedy) should start copycatting right away. 

• Register an appropriate domain.
• Buy "PVR" on Google AdWords.
• Write your rear end off today and tonight and tomorrow night to populate the new site.
• Give it a shot.

Disclaimer: I own shares of Time Warner.

Bloggers - Fifth Estate of journalism

Bloggers have become a challenge and an opportunity for the advertising industry.

Their spontaneous, unedited, sometimes emotional "first takes” on new products are substantially impacting business, according to Pete Blackshaw, chief marketing officer of Nielsen BuzzMetrics, a 100-person division which monitors the blogosphere.  He calls bloggers "a kind of Fifth Estate or journalism.”

Blackshaw says bloggers are everywhere, using laptops, video cameras, and digital recorders to publish their comments, reactions, and criticisms. Nowhere was this more evident earlier this month when the Detroit Auto Show, the Consumer Electronics Show, and MacWorld were vying for attention.

Apple's (AAPL) iPhone was the clear winner, Blackshaw said. It was mentioned by more blogs than President Bush and McDonald’s (MCD) for 10 days.  Wikipedia had an iPhone entry within minutes of Steve Jobs' announcement of the product, and YouTube had more iPhone-related clips than for Gucci or the Pope.

"Bloggers have become the ultimate news aggregators," Blackshaw said.  Major media reporters monitor blogs for tips as well as informed-perspective on product features.  A swarm of bloggers posting about new products, often positively, ends up in search engines. "That comes back as search results when consumers do research; the bloggers enthusiasm turns into advertising," Blackshaw said.

Ad agencies and media buyers are trying to gauge what to do about bloggers and other online media.  Since bloggers are looking for Web links to include in their reports, marketers are weighing whether to spend all their money in traditional media or to take some to build a fuller Web site for the brand.

Blackshaw cited Apple Computer (AAPL) for coordinating its online assets for the iPhone introduction.  Product photos, specifications, and narrative about the product were available immediately at Apple.com.  Blackshaw says advertisers in this weekend's Super Bowl should be following the same road, to build interest in their ads.

So it's no accident that Bowl ads for Doritos (PEP), Nationwide Insurance (NFS), and Budweiser (BUD) are already online. Don’t waste money on a Super Bowl ad unless you have these other pieces of the mix in place. You can’t just buy media in a vacuum,” Blackshaw said.  “You have to think about how others pieces of the marketing mix reinforce, amplify and ultimately drive more return on that investment."

Listen to BuzzMetrics' Pete Blackshaw talk about bloggers and their challenge to the media business.

Disclaimer: I own shares of Apple.

Why CES invited bloggers on the floor

This month's Consumer Electronic Show in Las Vegas drew 140,000 attendees, 2,700 exhibitors, and about 4,500 credentialed media - half of whom had an online outlet. Hundreds of them were bloggers.  The organizers liked that.

Some trade shows have been reluctant to let Web loggers on their floors.  They worry the writers aren't really reporters, have no readers, and will take up time and space in the exhibits, and so on.

That was not the attitude at CES this year, on purpose, according to Jason D. Oxman, vice president of communications for the show's producer, the Consumer Electronics Association.

"We think bloggers are a terrific fit for the show," Oxman said. "Their audience is made up of technophiles, and they themselves are familiar with the technology and so are their readers."

There were 20,000 new products announced at CES this year, making it difficult for startups and small companies to get attention.  It's here that bloggers, passionate about tech, have proven to be especially valuable, Oxman said.  "They do pay more attention to new and innovative products. They have, you might say, more bandwidth and ink for that kind of thing," said the CEA executive.

Listen to CES' Jason Oxman talk about bloggers and CES coverage.

Oxman didn't agree that three lines in a USA TODAY story about digital cameras is less valuable than a picture and a brief on Engadget, but he believes both have their place. That gadget blog had almost 1 million visitors during CES week, according to Nielsen/NetRatings (NTRT).

"We made sure to credential bloggers and make sure they had the same access and resources as traditional media," he said in an interview.  When a blogger requested access, CEA reviewed their Web sites, looked at their hits, and the number of tech-related posts.

Washington Post hosts a blogger meetup

Looks like ad sales for the Washington Post’s online effort are going real well. Which could mean at least big competition if not big trouble for operations like Gothamist LLC, an international network of 15 local blogs and ambitious standalone local ventures such as Pegasusnews.com.

The Post (WPO) invited anybody who has “a blog about D.C.” to a get together at headquarters Tuesday night. About 100 attended, the Post's Marc Fisher reported. "This was a chance for all sorts of local bloggers to hear from Post news executives about how the paper is not equipped to cover the micro-local events and issues that bloggers specialize in, and to explore ways in which the paper, its website and bloggers can collaborate, at least by referring readers to one another's work," he wrote.

Company executives talked about sharing revenues with local bloggers from ads sold by the Post's sales staff - which must be exponentially bigger and effective than any bloggers' effort.  The meet up, coincidentally, came just a few days after Backfence, a local news/blog-like effort co-founded by an online WashingtonPost.com veteran announced a staff cutback and reorganization.

The night also included a Q&A session with Post's online editorial staff, a presentation by a libel lawyer, and a first-look at what was described as a blog aggregation tool, according to Kyle, one of the bloggers who attended.

The Post said it is expanding a local version of Google’s (GOOG) AdWords, but will only show its ads when they are more lucrative for the blogger than Google’s deal.  “The assembled bloggers seemed most interested in this, despite the fact that it'll likely mean a difference of a fraction of a cent per click,” said another attendee, the author of Mainfestdensity.net. “They want to get more advertising,” said one blogger after the event. “They need more places to put advertising.”

Post executives announced they plan to create a directory of area blogs. DCBlogs already has one. But the Post’s will be segmented by neighborhood.  A good idea for readers (What’s happening around the corner?), and an even better idea for businesses like dry cleaners and pizza shops.

The ManifestDensity.net blogger came away from the session with a positive attitude about the value of the Post making an effort to funnel some ad dollars to bloggers.

Disclaimer: I own shares of Google.

Huffington Post adds editor

There's a new staffer and a new look to Huffingtonpost.com. Elinor Shields, the second announced hire in a month, moves into the new position of managing editor at the Web site, leaving a slot with the BBC.  She will be working at the site's New York office. Huffington Post co-founder Kenneth Lerer told Reuters, "We will be launching new editorial features in the coming months as well as new business partnerships."

Meanwhile, the Huffington Post Web site has a new look.  Almost Drudge-ey, with a bank of four headlines across the top of the page.  Each has a "Quick Read" link to a synopsis of the story, and then a link to the full story. 

Below the heads and a top story photograph, the left hand column offers byline opinion, the center has the news of the hour, and the right has gossip and stories about the media.  Just like Drudge, too, the site lists links to dozens of "Blogs," "Columnists," and "News Sources."

All in all, a sprightly little product.  Looks like they hired more than a few editorial types.  Some designer help, too.

Bosses leap the Backfence

The execs at Backfence.com have left the building, says Peter Krasilovsky.  About 10 months ago, I said things didn't look good at the venture.

The departure a few months ago of one of the two co-founders, the news guy, should have been a tip-off there was trouble in startup-ville.  Now the other one, the business guru, has left, and she's taken some folks with her.

Both the founders, Mark Potts and Susan DeFife, are terrific and talented. My guess is that their outside investors began to exert pressure and "somebody" had to give.

The concept of local, local blogs is wonderful.  But it has problems.

• No news operation can rely on part time volunteer reporters.
• Hyper local blogs have a long way to go to get the respect, authority, and credibility that existing media have, as flawed as the "placebloggers" may think MSM is.
• Advertisers can't be bothered wondering whether local blogger's small audiences will make the registers ring.  And they don't trust bloggers, either.

Blogs that do work are driven by strong personalities, either as writers or publishers.  Think Calacanis' Weblogsinc or Denton's Gawker group, Arianna's Huffingtonpost.com (and soon more) or Scoble, Mark Cuban, Daily Koz, and so on.  Backfence's Potts could be one of them. He is a guy with lots of opinions.  Too bad Backfence editorial content didn't seem to have any.

The stories on Backfence sites are mostly objective, and certainly not provocative.  They are almost "corporate."  No feathers ruffled by these postings. Yawn!

Even though I live 10 minutes from two communities Backfence "covers" I never looked at them. They are just too bland.  Virtually nothing I've seen on them could not have run in the local weekly newspapers.  So, why bother if it's just more blah-blah-blah about why my group deserves these funds, whether we should have a stop light there, or what's new at the library.  Who cares? Better they should call it Blandfence.

Potts is back in charge.  He cares.  I hope he can kick some 'tude into the operation.

How many local blogs are there?

Placeblogger.com - which launched yesterday with pointers to about 700 US hyper-local blogs- now sports more than 1,000.  But numbers aren’t everything. It doesn't appear that Placeblogger's doing any review of the sites being submitted for listing.

Some of the entries take you to "blogs" which aren’t really blogs.  For instance, a Maine’s About Town from the staff of the alternative newspaper in Portland, Maine.  Well, it's not a blog.  It hasn't been updated for three weeks.  The posts, when there are some, come from staffers at the paper, which means there is no driving personality or blog-editor-in-chief.  About Town is a nice add-on to a Web site of the Portland Phoenix, but it's no blog.

Placeblogger.com is a terrific idea.  But don't believe everything you read.  Not all the entries are blogs.  Some of them are just listings, even dead sites, submitted by "old media" looking for a little more Web traffic.

Local news blog directory launches

Placeblogger.com launched early this morning with listings for some 700 "hyper local" U.S. and international news blogs and Web sites.  By early afternoon, it had almost 1,000.

Lisa Williams’ directory of local blogs has had the backing of Dan Gillmor's Center for Citizen Media and the advice and encouragement of NYU Journalism associate professor Jay Rosen.  They are a trio of evangelizers for local journalism on the Internet. Williams, herself, has been publishing a local blog for Watertown, Mass., h20town.

"Local blogs are a way for very hard working people to get information in a way that is convenient for them," Williams said in an interview.   The problem has been finding them. "I'm really interested in helping people get connected to local sources of information."

She began the project several months ago, telling an online journalism conference that Internet search tools had gaps in coverage and "created an ecological niche" for sites like hers and hundreds of (her word) “placeblogs.” 

Listen to Lisa Williams talk about her directory of blogs in the United States and more than three dozen other countries.

Some search engines gauge a Web site's relevancy and importance by the number of links they have from other sites and blogs. "If you're writing about a small area or town, who's going to link to you from outside? You're not very visible."

She hopes Placeblogger.com will solve that problem.  She also hopes a community of local bloggers will form, to share tips and tricks on how to cover news of their neighborhoods and also, perhaps, how to make some money through advertising.

In a comment about Placeblogger.com's launch, Jay Rosen said, "Looked at individually, the sites are interesting. Together, they could be a force."

Blog network: Revenues top $1M/month

In a little noticed pre-holiday posting, John Battelle said Federated Media Publishing's stable of 100 Web sites and blogs had a great '06. "I won't gloat, but ... we beat my year's estimated revenues by nearly 30%," he wrote on Searchblog. He added, the revenue run rate is now $1 million a month.  Battelle also said a moratorium on adding bloggers is over. "By mid-January or so, we'll be announcing an amazing array of new sites joining FM," he said. (Item #17)

WSJ preps a money blog

There will be another Web log from The Wall Street Journal (DJ).   In a q-and-a interview,  Bill Grueskin said he really he likes blogs, especially "pro-sumer" efforts like Rafat Ali's PaidContent.org.  "Those kinds of ventures present tremendous markets, both for bloggers and the MSM (mainstream media) who admire them," said the managing editor of WSJ.com.  "That's why we created Law Blog and the page that surrounds it, and is also why we're rolling out a blog on wealth early next year,” Grueskin told MediaShift.  (Barrons.com, a Dow Jones property, also has a killer blog on investing written by Eric Savitz.)

Did WSJ buy an existing wealth blog or is it building one? We'll have to wait to find out.

Disclaimer: I own shares of Dow Jones.