I feel for the Phildelphia bloggers who were subjected to anxiety attacks this week. On Monday, rumors spread that Philly is in dire need of an infusion of cash and that bloggers are going to be taxed. Of course, this kind of news affected not only those located in Philadelphia but bloggers everywhere. The thought in every blogger’s mind: “If this is happening in Philly now, who knows when it will happen in my area as well?”

NY Daily News is one of the sites that published the story about bloggers being taxed in Philly:

How does a financially strapped city with a shrinking manufacturing base and rising unemployment attempt to make a little extra cash?

Tax the bloggers.

Philadelphia is demanding that bloggers pay $300 for a business license, whether or not the blog brings in a fraction of that amount in profit, according to the Philadelphia City Paper.

$300 for a business license??? That is atrocious, to say the least. Even if you didn’t catch the news early this week, you can easily understand why it stirred up the hornet’s nest.

Here’s the good news, though: the rumor is just that – a rumor and nothing else. Interestingly, the news that doused the fires came from The Guardian. Yesterday, they published a story that put the facts straight: there is NO blog tax in Philly. The $300 tax mentioned is actually a lifetime business license fee for anyone who is doing business and making money. This fee can be broken down yearly – $50 annually.

Classic case of people jumping to conclusions. Bloggers, rest easy and please read more carefully next time.

Photo credit : Phillip

It may be a relatively unknown blogging platform, but for sure, the users of Blogetery.com were not happy when they got shut down earlier this month. There were apparently more than 70,000 blogs in the platform when they were denied service by their web hosting company, Burst.net.

As was expected, the sudden shutdown created a bit of noise online. Why did they do it? Why the harsh reaction? There were many speculations, and wasn’t till last week that the real reasons came out.

Apparently, the FBI did have a hand in it, as many were speculating. However, the government agency did not request for the shutting down of the blogging platform. The information that they gave Burst.net was that there were links to al-Qaeda material found on Blogetery’s servers. More so, it seems that there were also assassination lists – with American citizens in them. Aside from that, they also found messages from Osama bin Laden and other al-Qaeda leaders, as well as bomb-making tips.

Upon receiving the information, Burst.net decided to terminate the access of Blogetery on its own. That’s the official announcement. Legally speaking, the information discovered can be classified as a violation of the web hosting company’s terms of service, and they had the right to suspend access. More so, it is said that the owner of Blogetery has had received multiple warnings since December, prompting the suspension of his account. No details have been released as to the identification of the owner.

On another note, another service called Ipbfree.com has also been suspended – a mere few days after the Blogetery shutdown. No information has been released regarding this.

Make love, not war. That’s what I would like to tell the guys at Posterous. Then again, that’s just me. This may be a brilliant tactic to gain more users – who knows?

Anyway, if you haven’t already heard, Posterous recently launched an “attack” on rival Tumblr. It seems that they are taking on a more aggressive stance, and posted something in their blog:

Tumblr is a pretty cool service. They offer easy set up, loads of funky themes and super-simple reblogging.

But blogging on Tumblr is sort of like being in high school. But you know deep-down that you can’t be in high school forever. Eventually, you have to move on.

It’s the same with blogging. After you get your feet wet, you need comments and the ability to moderate them.* You need to add different media types to each post. Your sharing needs are more complex, and your site needs to grow with you.

Face it. You need to leave Tumblr behind and graduate to Posterous.

If those aren’t fighting words, then I don’t know what to say! However, the claims that Posterous is making seem to be unfounded. If Mark Milian of the LA Times is correct, Posterous is NOT ahead of Tumblr in terms of growth. Also, it seems to me that Tumblr has more features that are easily usable as compared to Posterous.

On the other hand, some people think that Posterous really is better than its rival. Nick Saint from SF Gate, for example, thinks that the move is excellent. Then again, he says outright that he favors such tactics.

How about you guys out there? Which platform do you use more? Why? Which is better? And, most importantly, what do you think of Posterous taking this aggressive stance?

Image courtesy of http://static.arstechnica.com

There’s money in micro-blogging. Twitter has made an astounding $25 million (roughly about 15.5 million pounds) just from deals made with Google and Microsoft.

More than half of it is from Google ($15 million), says BusinessWeek, which interviewed two insiders who are familiar with Twitter’s finances — and apparently, the deals made in the boardroom. “The deals were huge,” one says, of the contract signed just two months ago, in October.

And if the numbers are to be believed, he wasn’t exaggerating. With $25 million in just two months it will be interesting how much revenue the company will rake in 2010. Especially since, as Twitter co-founder Biz Stone one said, things are just starting to come together. He’s put a team dedicated to finetuning the site’s “search and discovery perspective.”

The success of Twitter is how it’s turned micro-blogs into an instant feedback system. “Twitter is earning a reputation for delivering real-time results to queries about things that are happening right now.”

Too bad the execs won’t be Twittering if the revenue results are true. The company’s had prior financial struggles, and as recently as November Stone mentioned in his blog that it may use stocks to raise funds.

It was a good idea — but apparently, Yahoo! didn’t think it was worth keeping. The social networking widget My BlogLog will be shutting down by January 2010. The service was actually innovative. It allowed bloggers and readers to “meet” their blog visitors, by letting them view user information and even profile pics. For many bloggers it was a chance to really study their fanbase and even connect to them on a personal level. It also had the potential to be a really powerful marketing and research tool.

Yahoo! first acquired the technology for this 5 years ago, when it bought it for $10 million. Unfortunately it did not invest in MyBlogLog any further, considering the rich potential in it. There’s only one word for that — STUPID. Marketers spend millions trying to get a hold on their consumer’s demographic and psychographic information. The data becomes even more and more crucial now, considering how crowded the market is with websites competing for people’s attention. Be relevant or be forgotten is the blogger’s motto. MyBlogLog helped them stay relevant, without having t spend millions on some nationwide survey.

Yahoo! had a great tool (possibly one ahead of its time) but instead of nurturing its profit potential (we assume that money is the reason for its cancellation) they kill it. DUH. No, double-duh. That’s like slaughtering the golden goose because you don’t have money to buy it food.

The news is bound to have bloggers up in arms, or at least, slapping their foreheads in disgust. Yahoo, what are you thinking?

Even with millions of bloggers, a big majority of them still have trouble putting ads on their blogs. That’s lost revenue for them, especially those who are enjoying decent internet traffic.

One company that seems to have picked up on this problem — and also seen a window of opportunity in terms of added online advertising is Amazon. The company has recently announced that it is going to make it easier to put its ads on Google’s Blogger.

Here’s how it works. Bloggers who create an account with Amazon Associates will be able to easily make links from their blog directly to related products in Amazon.com. Bloggers can then earn referral fees for every transaction that is made. Making the links is as simle as highlighting text within the blog and these can be turned into links with just a couple of clicks.

The whole impetus behind this new feature is to make Blogger the best platform on which to earn money. I feel their new policy is really going to entice bloggers to open up an account in Blogger. I know I would.

Bloggers are becoming the favorite target of lawsuits.

A local business owner in Salisbury has filed both a criminal and civil lawsuit against a news blogger.

John Robinson, the owner of Robinson’s Jewelry and Clock Store, filed the lawsuits against Joe Albero, a Delaware native. Robinson claims that Alebero has been harassing his family and has published defamatory statements about them for more than two years already in his blog. The civil lawsuit also charges Albero along with two other contributors to Albero’s blog.

It will be interesting to see where these lawsuits will lead. Most defamation cases, according to the Media Bloggers Association, never reach the trial stage because the case is either dropped or settled out of court.

It’s not unheard of for a person to gain notoriety for writing a blog. There’s just so many examples all over the world that you can probably name one yourself. Most of these “notorious” bloggers have parlayed it to fame and popularity. But not everyone enjoys popularity and obscurity at the same time.

One of these people was the blogger who hid under the pseudonym Belle du Jour. Her titillating blog, Belle de Jour: Diary of a London Call Girl, chronicled her experiences working as a call girl. It was such a huge success, the blog was collected and published in two books, and was even turned into a hit TV series “Secret Diary of a Call Girl”. But for years, no one knew who she was, which even led others to doubt if her blog was just a work of fiction.

But after years of speculation, Belle du Jour finally outed herself. Dr. Brooke Magnanti, a research scientist, finally revealed that she was the woman under the nom de plume. She revealed that it feels better not having to hide and tell lies to her family anymore.

I think it’s a brave move on her part to reveal her true identity considering how polarizing her journal is. It does make you wonder why she decided to reveal her true identity at this stage. But then it’s her life. She’s been non-apologetic about her past, why should she start doing so now?

College Blog Network recently announced that it has transitioned into its new site CollegeBlender.com.

According to CollegeBlender’s Spencer March, the new site will still have all of the blogs visitors have come to love and are faithfully following in College Blog Network. But the blogs have also undergone major improvements in terms of tagging, advance comments, and an iframe toolbar. Other improvements include new ranking algorithms. The blogs have also shifted focus to enable it to grow into an online community, especially with the addition of updated profile settings and other features.

The guys at CollegeBlender hope that the new site will evolve more from College Blog Network’s initial objective of being a home for college bloggers. The goal for CollegeBlender is to become the online home for all things connected to college media.

CollegeBlender still maintains a strict registration process. Only real students can register in the site and this is enforced by requiring registrants to provide a .EDU email.

TypePad has been a reliable blogging service and it has been faithfully catering to bloggers who are willing to pay money to use a blogging platform. But recently, as part of Six Apart’s attempt to probably expand its service offerings, it is introducing TypePad Micro.

TypePad Micro is a new service that will cater to very casual blogging. The first version of this service will be offered for free. Micro is described as a feature-reduced version of TypePad Pro.

TypePad Micro is going to be aimed at quick and informal blogging and photoblogging. Think of it as a service that straddles both blogging and Twitter-like status updates. This is actually not a really trailblazing service because Tumblr has already gotten to the microblogging idea first. The company thinks that existing TypePad clients will appreciate having a new platform for microblogging and who want to start a microblog site. They also think that current TypePad community members who don’t blog will be enticed to blog this time.