HW 16: The Five Pillars

After reading "Blogs: Humanizing the Face of Corporate America", an interview with Robert Scoble, Scoble presented a very good argument. The basic rule of blogging is to humanize it in order to succeed in the blogosphere. Scboble plays a large role in the blogosphere, supporting Microsoft as the tech evangelist. His ability to communicate with customers, give support and feedback has drawn in much attention. The evolution of blogging goes along with honesty and getting your voice out there. Through RSS, "really simple syndication", technology has given corporations the opportunity to make their company hot, like the five pillars that have made blogging hot. Scoble presented the five pillars involved in RSS as the "ease of publishing", "discoverability", "cross-site conversations", "permalinking", and "syndication". The first pillar, "the ease of publishing" refers to the simplisiness of creating a blog by the click of a button in order to publish your thoughts. The second pillar, "discoverability", refers to the ability to "tag" another blog or website on your own blog. With this tool you can easily be linked to other blogs related to yours in order to discover and browse other's thoughts. The third pillar, "cross-site conversations", refers to being able to track and view others blogs, who have also viewed yours. In this sense you can see who is interested and may have something to say about what is posted on your blog. The fourth pillar, "permalinking", is entering a URL, another website, into your blog so that you can easily access a post of blog you are talking about so others can easily view it as well. The fifth and last pillar is "syndication". Syndication comes directly from RSS, in which you can simply "watch" a favorite blog by adding them to your own site so that you can keep track of the various amounts of blogs you are interested in through a more organized way.