To My Friends Who Work Outside the Home

To my friends who are mothers who work professionally full time (or more than full time), and often must leave their children:

I have told this story before many times in various ways on various comment sections on various working mothers' blogs, so I apologize if you have heard this before, but it I think it bears repeating.

When I was a poor college student putting myself through school, one of my three jobs was being a part-time nanny, for several years, for a busy professional couple with two little girls. The girls' mother, who loved her children deeply, was a professional writer and small business owner. She sometimes worked from home in her office while I watched the kids, but sometimes her business meant she had to leave, for hours, or for whole days at a time.

When the girls' mother had to leave for work, sometimes, they would cry. They would throw their arms around her and beg her not to leave. As they got older, and could articulate their feelings, they would say things like, "Don't leave me Mommy! You leave too much! I miss you when you're gone."

I could see the guilt and longing in their mother's eyes, on those days, as I pulled her tearful, clinging children away, and she walked out the door to the sounds of their sobs. Not yet having a child of my own, I did not then understand her pain as fully as I do now, but so I could sense that these moments weighed on her — that echoes of her daughters' cries would linger somewhere in a corner of her mind all day.

Five or ten minutes after she left, the kids would recover completely, and start laughing and playing with me just as they did on the days when their mother was in the next room.

Sometimes, the older girl would get out a box and pretend to type on it as if it were a computer.

"I'm a Mommy. I'm working," she would say. "I'm a writer writing things."

And that little girl would sound so proud.

Your children miss you when you cannot be with them. Of course they do. And they miss their Dad when he isn't around (or their other Mom, or their Grandma). And when they're home alone with you, I bet they miss their favorite babysitters and teachers, too. All kids would prefer to have all of their favorite people available 24 hours a day, to be summoned or dismissed at childish whim.

But they love you, the whole of you, more than anything, and even at an early age, they understand that your career — your drive to create things of value with your skills and your mind, not just at home, but out in the wider world — is part of who you are.

And because they know that about you, they also know that one day they can also be great parents AND great workers. They are the girls who will play games of "Office" alongside their games of "House." They are the boys who will see no problem with Daddies who push strollers or Mommies who get invited to speak at conferences.

And they will be women and men who, one day, I hope, will come to understand how you felt (how I've sometimes felt, too) about having to walk out the door on those certain hard days, as your children cried. Who will realize that even on those days you walked away, you were doing it, as you did everything, for them — to support them, to build a better life for them, to change the world, for them.

And I do not think they will hold those times against you.

Still Recovering from BlogHer

I came home from BlogHer to a garden overflowing with green beans and wax beans and Juliet tomatoes and watermelon vines overgrowing into my garden fence in a way I'd decidedly discouraged them from doing just before I left town. (But you know, I was gone, and their Dad was watching them, and so I guess they thought they could get away with anything.)

I came home to an inbox overflowing with email from people I'd met and people I'd re-met and old friends I'd made plans with.

I came home to a husband who was just finally, thankfully getting over a terrible respiratory virus (that the doctor insists is Not Swine Flu) when I left and overdid it playing SuperDad while I was gone by taking the kid to the pool and the mall and a birthday party and is now coughing rather pitifully again.

I came home to a kid who DIDN'T MISS ME and ISN'T WORRIED ABOUT STARTING KINDERGARTEN IN TWO WEEKS and REALLY, REALLY ISN'T TERRIFIED OR IN ANY WAY SENSORY OVERLOADED RIGHT NOW BY SWIM CLASS and is showing all this lack of worry or concern about anything by attaching himself firmly to my hip and glaring at me whenever I get near a computer.

So.

I have some serious thoughts on BlogHer, and some interesting stories to tell. But I've been busy the past few days picking up the pieces of my trip. I hope to have time to write much more here tomorrow.

Conversations with a Husband: BlogHer Bacchanal

WIFE: So, I think I might get my tattoo recolored while I'm at the BlogHer conference. Or maybe get a new one. I don't know. I bet lots of people will be getting tattoos there. I heard there's even a tattoo place giving a discount.

HUSBAND: What kind of conference gets you a discount on tattoos?

WIFE: My kind of conference.

HUSBAND: What else will you be doing up there? Who are you driving with again?

WIFE: I'm going with Kelli. And Kelly. In a convertible. We've agreed to wear Thelma and Louise shades and headscarves. Oh, and there's this other blogger who is going with us not for the conference but just for the parties . . .

HUSBAND: There are people going to Chicago just for the parties?

WIFE: Oh, sure.

HUSBAND: . . .

WIFE: I intend to engage in all manner of drunken debauchery. It's really too bad you can't come along. Maybe I should bring you next year.

HUSBAND: . . .

WIFE: You'd have fun! You'd be surrounded by hordes of hot geeky chicks with laptops.

HUSBAND: Are you sure that would be . . . safe?

WIFE: Are you afraid we'll go into a frenzy and tear you limb from limb as a sacrifice to Dionysus?

HUSBAND: Maybe.

WIFE: You'd still have fun.

Busy Signal

I've been ridiculously busy the past few weeks, growing plants in my basement (no, not THAT kind — organic tomatoes and basil), putting in my new, second vegetable garden bed (and battling sewer beavers) and supporting women's rights in Afghanistan and opposing torture and asking the government to help parents stay home with their sick kids if they catch swine flu and putting on an SEO webinar with Parent Bloggers Network and taking on three brand new SEO clients and, you know, generally plotting to take over the world.

But I haven't forgotten this little blog. My first little blog that could. I have lots of things I'd like to write here, things that don't fit very well in the other, more heavily-trafficked places on the internet I've lately moved into. Things about parenting, about philosophy, about life.

I hope I'll have more time, soon, to write them.

InterPLAY St. Louis

I'll be moderating a panel on search engine optimization and traffic building for bloggers tonight at InterPLAY St. Louis in the University City Loop. Speaking on my panel will be two local SEO experts, Will Hanke and Ellen Gooch. The panel begins at 5 p.m. tonight, and will be held at Screenz on Delmar.

I would be ever so pleased if you could join me.

We'll be discussing the basics of SEO, explaining why bloggers need to care about SEO, giving tips on easy ways to optimize your own site, and teaching ways to protect yourself from content thieves who want to use your work to make ad revenue.

Tomorrow I'll also be speaking on panels about internet ethics and netroots politics. A list of panels is available here.

Go Visit Lisa at Midwestern Mommy

Go there right now and offer her some support. She's just been diagnosed with cancer.

(And she's Twittering from her hospital bed. Because she is hard core.)

I have met Lisa in person and she is one of the nicest people around. No one ever deserves cancer. But Lisa especially doesn't.

On BlogHer: Part Two

BlogHer needs to be two weeks long. I am so serious.

While I was at BlogHer, I wasn't just playing. I was working, for two sites: MOMocrats.com and Predictify.com. For MOMocrats, I was attending political blogging panels, helping to craft a position paper on health care to be sent to the Democratic Party for review in creating this year's party platform, meeting with other political bloggers who are planning to cover the Democratic National Convention to talk about potential cooperation, networking with other political bloggers and bloggers who are interested in politics, etc.

For Predictfy, I was coming up with a series of questions directly inspired by BlogHer events and panels I attended. (In case you'd like to go and make a prediction, I asked two questions about Twitter, one about the national debt, one about government-sponsored universal preschool, one about Clinton supporters voting for McCain, one about blogs at the Republican National Convention, and two about the Veepstakes.)

So I was busy while I was there. Like, super, crazy busy. I brought home a stack of business cards as thick as a Bible (which incidentally I am still going through, so if I haven't gotten back to you yet, do not despair— I'll get to you).

And I was so busy I only got to talk to some people I really, really love to read and had never met before, like you and you, and you for, like, five minutes. And I also only got to talk to some people I haven't really read much, but discovered at BlogHer I clearly need to be reading, for like, five minutes. And some people I have met before but really, desperately wanted to speak with again got the same five-minutes-from-Jaelithe treatment. Which, you know? Kind of sucked.

I barely got three hours total in crowded company with my girl Deb, who begged and pleaded and schemed for months trying to get me to go to BlogHer, who was the person who finally convinced me I should go, damn the consequences, and who was instrumental (along with the other MOMocrats) in getting me there.

I managed to spend about an hour and a half talking to Christina but it was pretty clear to me we actually needed to talk for five days.

And I did fit in some World Domination brainstorming, and a nice discussion about shoes, with a woman who really ought to be elected Queen of the World, because, seriously? If she were, the trains would run on time, and we'd all be given our inalienable human rights back.

The person I got to spend the most time with was my roommate, who took me to visit awesome folks in Oakland, helped me figure out how the heck to ride BART, taught me the history of the yo-yo in the United States, and also regaled me with incredible stories of her brief, accidental encounters with a very famous Hollywood actor I shall not name. Dude. Best. Roommate. Ever.

Anyway, my point is, next year, BlogHer needs to be two weeks long. And somehow magically cheap enough that I could actually afford to attend for two weeks. And also someone needs to make all of BlogHer a national holiday, so no one actually has to take off of work to be there. Because that is the only way I'll have time to go to fantastic panels with wonderful speakers, and witness amazing life-altering community keynote presentations, and also pretend I'm not really stalking my favorite famous bloggers, and hang out with every single one of my friends. And also get swag. And meet Sesame Street muppets.

(Oh, and also, next year? All high school drama needs to be checked at the door. Else I'll be forced to whip out The Mom Voice. And I am a master at The Mom Voice. Kthanxbye.)

(P.S. If I left you out of this post, it was so NOT INTENTIONAL. See above entire post for why my brain was frazzled. Thanks.)

On BlogHer: Part One

The Community Keynote: Twenty-one women and one man, bloggers all (and therefore I imagine mostly introverts and probably mildly terrified) took the stage in front of hundreds of people to read some of the funniest, most revealing and most poignant pieces of writing I have ever encountered.

It reminded me that so many bloggers really are writers. Good writers. Many of the writers on that stage were absolutely as good as any I have seen on a printed page.

But even more than that, it reminded me how incredibly powerful what we do really is. Seeing women stand up on stage and talk about things like mental illness, body image struggles, pregnancy loss and suicide, and then seeing those women receive standing ovations from a supportive crowd, made me more aware than I have ever been that blogging matters. That even what I write here, in a little backwater corner of the vast and varied internet, matters.

Never before in the course of human history have so many ordinary people, particularly, so many ordinary women, been so empowered to share their life experiences through the written word. And it seems to me that, as more voices are amplified and preserved by this extraordinary medium, more people who are yet afraid to speak are discovering that someone else has already told, or is already telling, a story that echoes their own.

On the day when I wrote my very first post here, I was feeling so incredibly lonely. My first and only son, whom I loved more than anyone I had ever met in my life, was slowly starving himself. I didn't know why. I'd taken him to a dozen different doctors, and none of them seemed to know why, either. I felt like a terrible parent. I felt like a failure. Whenever I was around the few other parents of young children I knew in person, I was a terrible person to talk to, and I knew it. All I could think about was the fact that I was failing at the absolute most basic responsibility a mother has: to nourish her child. And so all I could talk about was failure. Failure to thrive. Not my son's failure, I thought. Mine.

No one I spoke with, none of the doctors, not even my own husband seemed to understand at the time how I felt about this failure. How it had not only taken over my thoughts, but possessed my soul.

I wrote about it because I had to. The words were already in my head unbidden and desperately needed a place to go.

I put the words where others might find them because leaving them in journal under my bed or in a file somewhere on my computer seemed almost like leaving them in my head. And I needed them out. I needed the possibility that someone else might read them.

But I didn't really expect anyone to.

And yet, here I am, years later, and several of those who read those first words are still here, reading these words, today.

(Thanks, by the way.)

On one of my darkest days, I shouted my sorrow into what seemed like an empty room.

But there were echoes.

I've been there, too.

I understand.

I can't understand what you're going through, but I'm a mom, too, and I do understand your love, so I still want to help.

It saved me.

There have been plenty of days, since then, when I've forgotten that, a little. When I've questioned the point of my spending all of this time writing here, in this particular forum, not gaining fame, not getting paid.

You see I sometimes think that maybe I don't need you all quite as much as I used to. My son's health is better. My life is better. I'm a more confident parent now.

But the keynote snapped me back to that first post. And suddenly I realized that not only did I still need you all as much as I always have needed you, even before I knew I needed you, but also, some people out there right now might still need me.

I'm not just telling my story. You're not just telling your story. We're telling our story. The more voices, the better.

I don't think I'll ever forget that again.

I'm Going to BlogHer

And I just wanted to mention that I would not have been able to go this year, for the first time ever, if some of my fellow MOMocrats hadn't chipped in toward my flight.

Thanks, friends. You surpass awesome.

While I'm at BlogHer, I'll be making predictions on behalf of Predictify.com which is a totally cool site you should really check out, and I'm not just saying that because they paid my registration fee. Really, it's fun. Look for me under username MOMocratJaelithe.

And also I'll be looking for potential speakers ans sponsors for Inter:PLAY STL on behalf of the St. Louis Bloggers Guild. And I'll be brunching with the Silicon Valley Moms. And possibly stalking some people. Probably mostly Bossy.

Checking Out The Beacon

Last night I went to a little fundraising party at The Royale for The St. Louis Beacon, a new, locally owned and operated, non-profit news publication.

If you visit the site, you'll find that The Beacon follows the typical format of a traditional newspaper website. Only, without the newspaper. The Beacon is entirely online; there is no dead tree version. But many of the Beacon staff writers and editors are traditional journalists with a long history writing for various print publications.

It's an interesting old-meets-new sort of project: Traditional journalists, frustrated by what they see as a general deterioration in quality of a traditional print media struggling in the face of an ever-more-challenging, financially strapped market, turning to the internet in an attempt to provide their audience with the kind of in-depth, locally focused news coverage of a sort that they feel is no longer being offered by the traditional outlets that used to publish their work.

Ever since it launched, I've been curious about how The Beacon plans to interact with local bloggers and social media. I asked a few questions at the party, and I was pleased with the responses I got from Beacon staff.

I had an engaging chat with The Beacon's Presentation Editor, Brent Jones, who mentioned that he makes a point of manually inputting Beacon headlines into the Beacon Twitter account instead of using a program to update automatically, because he wants followers to know there's a real person behind the account.

We talked about the how the old media tradition of broadcasting information is giving way to a much more interactive news model, and we discussed the often conflicted relations between bloggers and traditional journalists, and the intellecual property dust-ups and territorial fights that have caused resentment on both sides.

Overall, The Beacon's staff seemed receptive to the idea of working with area bloggers to form a postive, mutually respectful relationship, which I think is very good news.

I hope The Beacon's effort to create a viable news publication succeeds. Most St. Louisans I know agree that decades without any serious competition has left our one major newspaper, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, far less than the vigorous source of thoughtful, investigative journalism it once was. St. Louis could certainly use a second major source of printed news. Even if it's only printed on a screen.

As If the Earthquake Weren't Enough Excitement

As my Twitter followers already know, my car was broken into last night at a blogger meetup.

(No, it wasn't a fellow blogger who smashed my car's front passenger window and stole my husband's semi-concealed MP3 player and its radio-broadcaster-hookup doohickey. At least, I don't think it was another blogger. I mean, after all, the officer who took our police report did say it was probably a troubled teen, but Dwight claims he was out of town.)

I will totally blog about this later in more detail. Perhaps when I'm less pissed off, so I can be all perspectivey. And I also plan to finish my gardening series. But, in the meantime, if you're hankering for some lengthy text, check out my mammoth new post on global food inflation over at Momocrats.

St. Louis Bloggers' Guild

There's a lot of talk these days about the power of blogs.

Newspaper editors, public relations executives and marketing gurus all chatter in stage whispers about bloggers and blogging, flashing to the world their newfound hipness to the view of social media as the latest Next Big Thing.

For ordinary bloggers and savvy internet users who follow blogs, of course, social media stopped being the Next Big Thing and became just The Thing to Do sometime circa 2002.

But those holding the keys to the Information Kingdom were bound to notice eventually that legions of formerly voiceless peasants seem to have acquired soapboxes and megaphones.

And now, huge corporations court bloggers' favor; newspapers snatch up blog content to fill out their coverage (and don't always bother to ask permission, or credit the bloggers they "borrow" from); advertising executives create MySpace and Facebook pages, begging people to make friends with brands, and marketing departments pay out millions to social media "experts" for tips on designing the perfect corporate blog.

Among all this talk of "harnessing," "leveraging" and "monetizing" the world of blog content, little attention is being paid to the rights and interests of the people who originally created that world of content: the bloggers themselves.

Newcomers to the blogosphere seeking to cash in on the value of blog content need to be reminded: It's not just blog content that has value. It's bloggers who have value. Without the people who write blogs&mdash without the skill, dedication, and talent blog authors tap to draw in their audiences&mdash there would be no value in blogging.

And occasionally bloggers, too, need to be reminded that they themselves, as content creators, have value. While many seasoned bloggers have come know all too well how important it is to be vigilant about defending one's work, some casual bloggers find it hard to fathom that their little amateur online journal project could really be worth something to anyone other than themselves. They don't understand why big-time publications might want to exploit it, why mega corporations might want to buy it, or why sploggers might want to steal it.

So I'm pleased to announce the formation of a new organization, founded by a group of local bloggers who care about building and protecting the local blogging community: The St. Louis Bloggers' Guild. Dedicated to promoting and protecting the rights and interests of St. Louis bloggers through education, community outreach, and cooperative community-building, The St. Louis Bloggers' Guild will be accepting new members shortly.

Go check it out.

The Business of Blogging at Camp Baby

So, I know it's been a couple of days since I said "I'll post more tomorrow" . . .

I blame my librarian, who made me check out this book, and Barbara Kingsolver, who wrote it. And Spring, for making me need to start seedlings, for my garden.

(And I blame Barbara Kingsolver for making me feel guilty about not starting even MORE seedlings for my garden. All while sort of mocking me for being a vegetarian even though she used to be one. SHAME ON YOU, Barbara Kingsolver. SHAME ON YOU and your glorious descriptive passages and your superior gardening skills. May you be cursed with mountains of zucchini and enough Juliet tomatoes to start a tomato canning factory. Which of course you will never start, because that would be encouraging people to eat processed food. Mwa ha ha!)

Anyway, on to my post.

********

I went to Johnson's Camp Baby with an agenda. And it wasn't just to escape the family, jump on sleep in a big comfy hotel bed, suck down free booze, snag some fabulous (and trust me, it was really fabulous, as in, free Nintendo DS fabulous) swag, and fall into a fangirl swoon in the celebrity presences of Catherine and Kristen.

(What? Did you think I was going to say Ted Allen? Hah. As if I have time these days to watch Bravo. He IS a sweetheart, though. He's recently started a blog, and he asked us all for blogging advice even though he apparently gets paid two dollars a word writing for Esquire. I thought that was rather noblesse-oblige-y of him. In a good way.)

(Can you believe it? Two dollars a word?

Do you think I could convince Esquire that I have a penis?)

(Where was I? Ah, yes.)

I went to Camp Baby with an agenda, and that was, to ask whatever Johnson and Johnson executives I happened across some serious questions.

As the mother of a young child, I wanted to know what Johnson and Johnson has been doing to address the controversy regarding synthetic estrogen mimics, such as paraben preservatives, and phthalates and BPA leached from plastic packaging, in children's cosmetic products.

I wanted to know what Johnson and Johnson plans to do to reduce the presence of potentially dangerous contaminants, such as the carcinogenic petrochemical 1,4-Dioxane, in soaps and lotions for babies.

I wanted to ask where Johnson products are made, and how factory workers are treated, and how the products are tested for safety.

I wanted to ask whether Johnson's has considered introducing a line of plant-based cosmetic products with organic ingredients to offer eco-conscious parents more options.

Liz wanted me to ask an excellent question about whether Johnson and Johnson has any plans to introduce more eco-friendly product packaging.

And of course, as I mentioned before, given the early controversy about the invitation process, I planned to ask about what Johnson and Johnson's plans to do going forward to make sure nursing mothers don't feel discriminated against at future events.

This may not seem like a particularly long list of questions to ask over the course of three days. But, considering that there were 55 or so other outspoken bloggers attending this event, and considering that the event planners had scheduled the event down to fifteen minute increments, packing each day of the conference with speakers and activities, getting my two ten cents in proved to be a little challenging.

I was able to talk with Lori, the person from Johnson and Johnson's communications division in charge of organizing the Camp Baby event, immediately upon arrival at the hotel regarding the nursing mothers situation. And I do mean immediately: having read my blog post the night before, Lori was actually waiting for me in the hotel lobby, ready to have a conversation.

I must admit that I was so surprised by her eagerness to speak with me that, for a minute, I was fairly certain she was about to lead me out the back door and stuff me into an unmarked van bound straight back to the airport for rousing too much rabble about a free, expenses-paid (and did I mention totally free? Plane ticket, too?) three-day conference/vacation.

However, Lori was actually quite gracious, and spoke with me for a full half hour about what she feels Johnson and Johnson has learned about working with mothers of babies from this inaugural event. She also happily accepted my offer to send an emailed list of suggestions to her (which I have, and which she actually read, despite its being, in typical Jaelithe style, about three pages long).

So, mission fairly well accomplished there.

But what about my other questions?

Luckily, I quickly discovered I wasn't the only blogger there with an agenda.

People like Kristen, Izzy, and Karianna wanted to know about synthetic chemicals and contaminants in Johnson's products, too. Plenty of other bloggers besides myself were interested in asking questions about product packaging, product testing, and product safety. Questions about environmental sustainability. Questions about working conditions. Questions about corporate vision, and corporate participation in efforts to improve local communities.

During every single question and answer session I witnessed, my fellow bloggers did me proud, with many intelligent, well-spoken women asking the same sort of questions I wanted to ask, and offering the same sort of feedback I wanted to offer.

Okay, so I still did hog the mic a little.

On the whole, I think the bloggers in attendance presented a fairly united front in favor of:

• Better product labeling, with full ingredient lists available on the internet
• More information about company history, factory locations, employment practices, and production processes on the internet
  
• Safer, more environmentally-friendly production and packaging methods
• More transparency in all corporate communications with the public regarding product information and product safety
• More options for consumers, including fragrance-free products for children with allergies or sensitive skin, and more eco-friendly, plant-based options for environmentally conscious consumers
• More corporate recognition about how production practices affect the surrounding communities

Honestly, it seemed to me that some of the Johnson and Johnson execs and guest speakers were a little taken aback at just how much thought most "Mommybloggers" really do put into their everyday purchases.

During one presentation by a Johnson and Johnson scientist focused on product safety, the presenter quipped that by the end of her presentation, she'd have turned us all into amateur scientists. And I had to stifle a laugh, considering that I was sitting three feet away from a former neuroscientist, and couldn't glance in any direction without my gaze falling on current or former nurses.

To be sure, the non-scientist, non-health-professional members of the group were a majority. But many of them, I am sure, were teachers, or lawyers, or reporters, or professional freelance writers, or ad execs, etc., (and many others, I am sure, had been such, before they became stay-at-home-moms).

The type of people who read Newsweek in addition to People and Vogue.

The type, in other words, who are in fact already pretty comfortable with bar graphs.

During one feedback session, when a PR expert asked the crowd what they look for when visiting corporate websites, I said, "I go to corporate websites to find out more information about the philosophy of the company. I also try to find out where the company's products are made, and how the company's employees are treated, and whether the company tries to use eco-friendly production practices. I also look for ingredient lists, and product safety information."

And the PR expert responded, somewhat incredulously, "Really? Do you really look for all that information before you make a purchase?"

To which not just I, but about half the women in the room, answered, Yes, of course we do, when we are looking for products we plan to use long-term for our kids.

And why wouldn't we? Bloggers tend to be intelligent, educated, curious, opinionated, and tech-savvy as a group. We like the internet, we're comfortable on the internet, and we know how to use the internet to pull up vast amounts of valuable information in seconds with the click of a mouse.

And most mothers I've met are concerned much more than the average childless person about things like product safety and environmental protection, and most mothers I've met make an active effort to educate themselves on such subjects.

After all, it's our kids' health we're protecting with information on product safety. It's our kids' future we're protecting the planet for.

I think most corporate marketing departments have a bit of an unfortunate misconception about Mommybloggers.

They see us writing about chronic sleep deprivation, picky eaters and potty training, and perhaps the prevalence of such quotidian subject matter leads them to believe such mundane matters are mostly what we think about.

But our brains are quite capable of multi-tasking, and many of us are well accustomed to typing research questions into Google with one hand while we rock a baby with the other.

And so it happened that, during the very last question and answer opportunity, this time at Johnson and Johnson corporate headquarters, when Ray Jordan, Corporate Vice President of Public Affairs and Corporate Communications at Johnson and Johnson, asked the bloggers for final thoughts on how Johnson and Johnson can continue to build good social media relations, my last message to Johnson and Johnson was not something that had been on my original agenda.

I said, "Don't underestimate us. There are scientists in this room. There are health care professionals in this room. The bloggers in this room are smart, and educated. We like having access to detailed statistics and scientific information. We can handle it."

To which Ray responded, "So, are you trying to say that Moms have a branding issue?"

Which I think means he totally got me, actually.

So I'm feeling pretty positive about the business side of this event. I hope we bloggers who attended did a good job of representing the concerns of today's moms to Johnson and Johnson.

And I hope Johnson and Johnson was listening to our suggestions.

I really do think that Ray and Lori were listening.

*****

By the by, here are some encouraging facts you may not know about Johnson and Johnson that I learned while attending the conference:

• A founding partner of the EPA's Green Power Partnership program, Johnson and Johnson is one of the largest corporate users of solar power in the United States.
• Johnson and Johnson sponsors the nonprofit group Safe Kids Worldwide, which promotes public awareness campaigns to educate children and parents on how to prevent accidental injury, and supports legislation designed to reduce accidental injuries in children.
• Johnson and Johnson helps fund InfantSEE, a nonprofit public health program that provides free eye exams to kids under the age of one.

I especially encourage my readers to check out the InfantSEE program. The program director spoke at the conference, and I have never seen a man more sincerely dedicated to a good cause.

(I'm still using Burt's Bees lotion on my kid until Johnson and Johnson comes out with an eco-friendly, plant-based line in recycled plastic packaging, though.)

(Are you taking notes, Ray?)

Back from Outer Space

So, I'm back from Johnson's Camp Baby and I have lots and lots of thoughts about the business side of things there. But I'm trying to collect them into some sort of big picture assessment that will be both insightful and fair. As one of the invitees who does NOT have some sort of ad-related restriction on blogging about an expenses-paid event, I feel I have an obligation of sorts to cover this well. Hopefully I'll have a nice, lengthy, typically tortuous Jaelithe-Style post up tomorrow, but right now my head feels like it's stuffed full of cotton.

No, I'm not still hungover. Really!

I suspect it has something to do with the fact that I came home to a house that looked like my son's toys had seen a better party than I had, and a kid who still insists the fact that I left him alone in the loving, perfectly capable hands of his other parent for a total of two and a half days is absolute proof that I no longer love him and am even now secretly planning to run away from home, never to return.

(So THIS the kind of appreciation, devotion and trust sacrificing a full-time career and social life for nearly four years so you can stay home with your kid gets you. NOW you tell me.)

Oh well. It was worth it, damn it. Dana and Lisa and I formed a St. Louis posse, and my two awesome wingladies made it much, much easier to pretend I was an extrovert for three days. Kristen braided my hair. Glennia gave me a hug, and a stack of Momocrats magnets to pass out, which made me feel all giddily official.

Carmen and Karianna and Christina and Lisa all talked with me about raising quirky kids, and in their group presence I felt for the first time since my son's diagnosis of Sensory Integration Disorder like I could talk to other parents openly about my son's sensory problems without providing a book's worth of explanation first. Because they'd all been there, or at least had visited a nearby town.

And on the way home I made it all the way through airport security wearing a Mominatrix t-shirt. Which I figure was practically like making out with Kristen and Debbie at the same time. And what could beat that?

Reservations Made, with Reservations

So, I'm off to Johnson and Johnson's Camp Baby tomorrow. A two day conference, all expenses paid.

As any Mommyblogger who has been paying attention knows, there has been more than a little controversy surrounding this event, largely because of Johnson and Johnson's decision to ban all children, including nursing babies, from the event. Many better bloggers than I have already written in depth about this subject, so I find myself without much new to say.

Before the controversy broke, I had been getting pretty excited about going to this event. First of all, it's a free trip, and who doesn't get excited about being offered a free trip? And secondly, due to several random unfortunate events, I haven't been able to make it to a BlogHer convention yet, and so Camp Baby presented itself as a fine first opportunity to finally meet several of my favorite fellow bloggers in person.

I was a little disappointed, mind, that some of my friends who had also been invited hadn't been able to register in time and wouldn't be able to go, and I understood their frustration at being shut out before the registration deadline. But when I found out there had only been 50 spots available, I could understand why the event had filled up quickly, and though I wished J&J had been more clear to invitees about how limited the space was, I understood why they couldn't accept every reservation.

However, when I first found out that some nursing mothers (of very young babies) had been enthusiastically invited to the camp, had registered, and then had essentially been disinvited from the camp after asking that arrangements be made so that they could bring their nursling infants, I was seriously upset.

Upset enough to email my contacts at J&J to ask them flat out why a company that focuses on making products for infants wouldn't be concerned enough about the health of infants to want to encourage breastfeeding by treating nursing mothers with respect.

Upset enough, in fact, that for a little while I considered canceling my reservation.

But then, two things happened to change my mind.

The first thing that happened was that one of the women in charge of organizing Camp Baby, Lori, responded rapidly to bloggers' complaints. She responded to my email. She responded to other bloggers' emails. She sent out a general apologetic email to the entire list of invitees.

She started calling several bloggers in person to apologize for the missteps, and wrote about the problems on Johnson and Johnson's own company blog, openly admitting that the J&J had made a mistake in not making the event requirements more clear from the beginning.

It seemed to me that Lori did feel sincere regret that some invited bloggers had been offended, and it seemed to me that the event organiziers at Johnson and Johnson sincerely did want to learn from their mistakes.

And the second thing that happened was that I talked to my mom.

My mom nursed me, and my little sister, back in the early eighties, when nursing in public was far less acceptable than it is now, and nursing mothers had far less support. She nursed all three of her children past their first birthday. She was a lactivist before lactivist was a term.

So I was interested in what my mother would have to say about this issue. And when I talked to her about it, she said, "If this is an all-expenses paid trip, surely, if you cancel, Johnson and Johnson can find another blogger who doesn't care nearly as much as you do about making life easier for nursing moms to take your spot in a heartbeat. Since they seem contrite and willing to listen, why don't you go on this trip, and talk to them while you are there about ways they can do more to accommodate nursing mothers in the future?"

So, that's what I'm going to do. But I'd like your help.

What would you like me to say to the event organizers at Johnson and Johnson about ways to better organize future bloggers' events?

And are there any other queries you'd like me to shoot their way while I'm in New Jersey tomorrow?

(Don't worry about asking me to ask whether they plan to try to reduce the presence of phthalates and parabens in their baby soaps and lotions. It's already on my list.)

Better Know a Delegate*

In February, I received an email from a local group of fellow Obama campaign supporters and volunteers mentioning that the Missouri State Democratic Party would be holding caucus meetings in March at the ward and township level to elect delegates to the Missouri State Democratic Convention.

Even though I would consider myself to be a pretty well politically engaged citizen— I follow political news closely; I research political candidates; I attend political rallies; I vote regularly in both national and local elections; I have been known to voluntarily watch CSPAN—I had never been to a Missouri caucus meeting before. As a matter of fact, I had never really considered going to my home state’s Democratic caucus before.

Why not?

Well, in Missouri, we hold a Democratic presidential primary, and the number of delegates assigned to each candidate is determined by the results of that primary. The Missouri caucuses are held, not to choose a candidate, but to choose which Democratic party members from each ward, district or township will be sent to the Missouri State Democratic Convention as delegates pledged to vote for a particular candidate, and then to select a small number of those state-level pledged delegates to be sent on to the Democratic National Convention.

In the past I have trusted that, if I voted in a primary, my voice would be heard by the state party; the election of delegates seemed little more than a symbolic process to me. In recent decades, most Democratic presidential primaries have been decided long before the Democratic National Convention, and the delegates who attended most recent national conventions have done little more than ratify the ascendancy of an already chosen candidate.

But, as any Democrat with a television or internet access knows, this election cycle, things are different.

This time, the fight for the 2008 presidential nomination may well continue right into Denver. And even if it doesn’t, the 2008 Democratic National Convention is certain to go down in history, either as the first to nominate a woman presidential candidate, or the first to nominate an African-American presidential candidate.

This year, I found myself very interested in the Missouri caucuses.

And so, I went to my township caucus meeting, where, much to my surprise, I was elected a state-level delegate on the spot, without even having to plead my case—the turnout at my township meeting was so low that I was basically pressed into service. My husband was also named an Obama delegate at the same meeting.

Thursday night, we attended the Congressional District Caucus Meeting for Missouri's First Congressional District.

If you'd like to read my account of the national-level delegate selection process there, go and check out my very first post at Momocrats!

I'm really honored to have been invited to join this group of passionate, intelligent, opinionated women bloggers. Whether you're interested in a parental perspective on progressive politics, or you're just looking for more news and views about this year's historic Democratic presidential primary race, if you haven't visited Momocrats yet, you don't know what you're missing. Go check it out!

*As always, props to my secret lover Stephen Colbert.

Blog Blast Update

Remember when I posted a lengthy series recently as part of a St. Louis bloggers' blog blast about BlogNetNews, an "aggregator" site that seems to be walking CROSSING a very fine line between blog aggregation and splogging?

The inimitable Queen of Spain recently discovered her blog content is being scraped by BNN's parenting site.

After reading Erin's post, Victoria from Anachroclysmic also wrote a post detailing her recent confrontation with BNN's quickly-becoming-infamous Dave Mastio.

And the expanding conversation about the BNN controversy has now come full circle, as Buster of InMuscatine, one of Mastio's earliest and most vocal critics (and a blogger I singled out in my series as one whose original work Mastio repeatedly refused to remove from BNN) came across Victoria's post, which linked back to both Erin's post, and mine.

Buster has issued a modest proposal some bloggers who have been unable to get their content removed from BNN may wish to consider.

Personally, I think the best way to stop BlogNetNews from taking advantage of and disrespecting bloggers is to keep blogging about how BlogNetNews takes advantage of and disrespects bloggers, thereby forcing BlogNetNews to display content about Dave Mastio's own devious and inappropriate behavior.

But Buster's idea might work, too.

In case anyone missed it, here are the posts from the original St. Louis BNN Blog Blast (if I've left anyone out, as I'm sure I have since I'm half asleep, do tell me and I'll add you in):

News-Bitch
Little Bald Doctors
Mamalogues
Super Fun Patrol
Slacker-Moms-R-Us
A Bun's Life
The Broad Brush
Prologos
Highway 61

Also, this is the post on the St. Louis Post-Dispatch Virtual St. Louis blog, tentatively proposing a joint venture between the Post-Dispatch and BNN, that prompted me, and other local bloggers, to investigate the new BNN St. Louis site in the first place.

And here is the paper's reaction to our reaction.

(Fifty points for anyone paying attention who can catch the irony inherent in that second Virtual St. Louis post's title.

Not that my post titles were that original, or anything. I'm just sayin' . . .)

The Fine Line Between Aggregation and Splogging: Part Four

Crossing the line

In the three previous posts, I've discussed the some of the similarities between blog aggregation and splogging, and also pointed out the some of the differences that set well-intentioned blog aggregation sites apart from sploggers. The key differences in my view are:

• Reputable aggregator sites ONLY POST SHORT EXCERPTS; sploggers post excerpts of any length and/or full posts, often including photos, from the blogs they scrape.

• Reputable aggegator sites ALWAYS ATTRIBUTE COPIED CONTENT TO THE ORIGINAL AUTHOR; sploggers may not attribute the content, or may deliberately give the content a false attribution.

• Reputable aggregator sites LINK BACK TO THE ORIGINAL SOURCE WITH PROMINENT, EASILY FOUND LINKS; sploggers may not.

• Reputable aggregator sites PROVIDE CLEAR BENEFITS TO BLOGGERS AND BLOG READERS; splog sites may not.

• Reputable aggregator sites DO NOT PRETEND TO BE SOMETHING THEY ARE NOT, while pretending to be something they are not is, in fact, the very essence of what sploggers do.

• Reputable aggregator sites DO NOT MISLEAD USERS into believing that the scraped content they present is produced by the aggregator site, or in any way affiliated with the aggregator site; they make it absolutely clear that the aggregator is meant to serve as a portal to the original content; splogger sites intentionally leave the relationship between the original authors and the site presenting the content unclear.

• Reputable aggregator sites ALLOW BLOGGERS TO OPT-OUT, AND MAKE OPTING OUT A SIMPLE EFFORT; sploggers do not.

But, what about sites that meet some of the "reputable aggregator site" criteria listed above, but not others?

BlogNetNews.com/stlouismo is one such site.

Recently debuted, BlogNetNews St. Louis is one of the latest in a series of BlogNetNews sites run by journalist , newspaper opinion page editor, and former Bush administration speechwriter Dave Mastio.

BlogNetNews St. Louis scrapes feeds from blogs and aggregates them on a single page. Like a reputable aggregator site, BNN only posts excerpts, not full posts.

However, BNN also scrapes and posts photos from blog posts. Not just thumbnails, but nearly-full-sized photos. And BNN hotlinks to those photos, which means that every time a photo is viewed on BNN, bandwidth is being used on the original blogger's website. This may not be a big deal for people hosting their photos on really big sites like Blogger or Flickr; however, if a blogger is hosting his or her blog on his or her own server, hotlinking can be a fairly serious issue. Hotlinking photos is widely considered to be bad internet manners.

BNN does link back to the original sites that it takes content from. But the links on the site are somewhat confusing.

For example, BNN has a blogroll running down the right side of the page. The blogroll is titled "BNN Blogs." It lists all the blogs that are featured on the BNN St. Louis site. But if you click on one of those links, the link takes you, not to the original blog by the original author, but to another page within BNN.

Which brings me to the next way in which BNN St. Louis strikes me as being little too much like a splog: through misleading layout and language, BNN St. Louis, in my opinion, will mislead users into thinking that the bloggers listed in the blogroll are affiliated with the BNN site.

BNN is not organized like a directory.

Take a look again at Alltop. Look at the way the blogs are broken down into categories. Look at the way the clean, simple layout focuses on the links to the blogs themselves, and nothing more. Look at the way the excerpts there don't appear unless you mouse over a link that takes you directly to the original blogger's site.

Now, take a look again at BlogHer. Remember, BlogHer is a community-based blog network. It was founded by women bloggers, for women bloggers, to address issues concerning women bloggers. Participation in the BlogHer network is entirely voluntary. Decisions at BlogHer regarding advertising content on the site are made only after examining the collective input of the entire community.

Look at the Journals page on CafeMom. Now, CafeMom did not start as any sort of grassroots organizing effort. It's a top-down community building effort, funded by a marketing company. But participation in the CafeMom community is, again, entirely voluntary. CafeMom does not scrape bloggers' posts for content. The journal authors at CafeMom are choosing to host their journals there on the CafeMom site.

And look again at BNN. From a visual standpoint, which type of site does BNN resemble more closely? A directory-style aggregator, like Alltop? Or an opt-in, voluntary community building site like BlogHer or CafeMom?

I'd vote for the latter. BNN is organized, not like a typical directory, or a blog search engine. Not even like a typical web-based feed reader. BNN is visually organized like a community-based blog network. And it's there in the name, too. BLOG (news) NETWORK.

But BNN is not a blog network. The bloggers on the "BNN Blogroll," by and large, did not choose to be involved. The blogs on the site were picked by Mastio. The bloggers did not volunteer.

How do I know this? Why, I emailed him to ask about it! And this is what he said:

I build each of our sites by hand, looking at each blog myself and gathering all the publicly available email addresses that I can find for the authors. Upon launch and sometimes before launch, I email all of those people with an explanation of what we are doing, how it works and what we hope they will get out of it.

Now, that doesn't sound so bad, does it? I mean, he is taking the content without permission, and he is presenting it in a sort of misleading fashion that implies that the bloggers whose content is on the site are somehow involved. But after he takes the content, he does at least email the bloggers he took content from to let them know he did it, right? That's what he said he does, in the email he wrote me.

But I must say, I found that response to be a bit suspicious.

Because the thing is, I know a lot of St. Louis bloggers. And not just casually, over the internet. I have, in fact, met many St. Louis bloggers in person. And I would consider more than a few of them to be friends.

But in fact, NONE of these friends of mine had mentioned to me that their work was being featured by BNN St. Louis. Which was a bit curious to me, given that the local blogging community has been all atwitter about BNN ever since Kurt Greenbaum posted about it on the St. Louis Post-Dispatch's Virtual St. Louis Blog.

(And not just because a headline on the Post-Dispatch website misspelled the word "bane." I know, I know. Everyone makes typos now and then, including and especially me. But this typo's been driving me nuts every time I link to it. Because bane is one of my Favorite. Words. EVER.)

So, I emailed several of my friends who were listed on the BNN site to ask them whether they had even been notified that their content was being used on the site. All of the people I emailed list contact emails on their blogs in easy-to-find spots. So, if Mastio had really been "gathering all the publicly available email addresses" he could find in order to contact the authors featured on the BNN site, then these bloggers should have been contacted, no?

As it turned out, most of them had not been contacted. Most of them, in fact, had no idea that BNN was scraping and reposting their blog content until they were informed of that fact by my email.

And most of them shared my opinion that the format of the site was confusing and misleading, making them look like they were affiliated with some sort of network that they actually had nothing to do with.

A "network" bearing, incidentally, enormous banner ads on every page:





Now I've done some research, and I came to discover that this is certainly not the first time BlogNetNews has met with some controversy.

Bloggers in some other cities where BNN operates have complained that they feel the BNN ranking system is unfair. When one blogger in Virginia who felt the BNN site was treating him unfairly asked to have his content removed, Mastio refused, citing fair use, and the frustrated blogger decided to shut down his RSS feed to prevent Mastio from continuing to scrape his site.

When a different blogger in Iowa asked Mastio to stop using his content because he felt that BNN's business model was exploitative, BNN responded by mocking the blogger over email and continuing to post the blogger's content.

When a blogger in Georgia asked to have his content removed from a BNN site there because he felt his girlfriend's blog had been unfairly excluded from the BNN site, Mastio again refused to remove the blogger's content, and mocked the blogger in the comments section of the blogger's own blog, saying: "When we didn’t cave, Rusty came up with the picture and launched his widdle cyber tantrum."

Does this sound like the operator of a reputable blog aggregator to you?

Because it sure doesn't sound to me like Dave Mastio has that much respect for the bloggers whose original work powers his site.

If Mastio's BNN venture isn't actually about promoting blogs or bloggers' interests, what is it about?

Could it be about drawing traffic to those banner ads I mentioned?

Or could it be about drawing traffic to those banner ads, AND drawing traffic away from blogs, to the newspaper websites Mastio has a history of partnering with? Propping up the struggling dead tree media outlets with fresh, popular blog content, for free?

I don't know. I'm not Dave Mastio.

But if I were Dave Mastio, I would think very, very carefully about trying to be nicer to the authors whose work I wanted to use.

The Fine Line Between Aggregation and Splogging: Part Three

Blog Aggregating Websites

Pretty much since the dawn of blogging, there have been attempts made, by bloggers themselves and by readers of blogs, to organize and network the blogging community in ways that make it easier for bloggers to find other like-minded bloggers, and easier for blog readers to find blogs about subjects that suit their interests.

The blogroll is, of course, one of the earliest adopted and most commonly used tools for that purpose. Bloggers make a list (or sometimes multiple lists, organized by region or topic) of links to other bloggers that they themselves like to read. Blog readers often use these lists to find other bloggers whose work they might enjoy.

Blogrolls have the added advantage of boosting backlink ratings for the blogs they list. Backlinks are links to a site from another location, and search sites like Google use backlinks as one indicator of a site's popularity. A high number of backlinks may positively influence a website's search ranking, especially if those links themselves are coming from a highly influential site.

In addition to the blogroll, another organizational/networking tool that has arisen organically within the blogging community is the blog network. Originally, blog networks were started voluntarily by groups of bloggers, usually bloggers who had similar interests or wrote about similar topics, who decided to band together and create a site together, a site dedicated to a particular region, topic, or cause.

BlogHer is one example of such a network, which focuses on women bloggers. Started by bloggers, for bloggers, as a place to promote discussion about women's issues among bloggers, BlogHer has grown to include an ad network and a successful national blogging conference series. Participation in the BlogHer network is entirely voluntary. Members can choose whether or not to contribute original content to BlogHer's blogs and message boards, and they can choose whether or not to link to their own original blogs in their BlogHer profiles.

Crazy Hip Blog Mamas is another blog network started by bloggers for bloggers. As the name suggests, it focuses on Mommyblogs, and again, participation is entirely voluntary. CHBM hosts blog carnivals, where all members are invited (but not required) to write posts on their own blogs covering the same topic, and members are encouraged to vote in weekly contests that nominate a "Member of the Week."

Sites like BlogHer and CHBM provide members with opportunities to discover and network with like-minded fellow bloggers, and help blog readers find collections of similarly themed blogs. Such community-based sites often also make a profit for their founders, from ad revenue; the large, sophisticated audiences they draw are a prime target for many major advertisers. However, since participation in networks like BlogHer and CHBM is entirely voluntary, and since members of community-based sites like these are usually given a good deal of say in any major marketing decisions, this is not generally seen by members as a conflict of interest. In fact, ad revenue often allows community-based blog networks to offer even more services to their members, generally benefiting the community.

Alongside the community-based blog network, two other popular methods of organizing blogs have emerged: the blog search engine, and the blog aggregator website.

Blog search engines are just what they sound like: search engines that specifically search only blogs. Google now has its own blog search engine. Icerocket is another blog search engine. Both find search results by searching through blog web feeds. If your blog doesn't broadcast a web feed, it won't get picked up by these engines.

Blog aggregator websites are a little more difficult to describe, in part because there are so many different varieties of websites that aggregate blog content. Some blog aggregators are basically blog directories that offer links to blogs organized by topic or category, and also provide some of the features of a software-based feed reader by notifying users when a listed blog updates.

For example, there's Technorati, which combines its own blog search engine and a well-organized link directory with a front page showing a constantly-updated display of brief excerpts of blog feeds from some of the internet's most popular blogs, right alongside excerpts from news articles. Technorati also allows site users to create personalized user accounts, where blog readers can set up their own customized pages to track their favorite blogs using web feeds, just as one can using a software-based feed reader, and blog owners can declare ownership of their own blog profile if they find it listed in the Technorati directory.

Technorati also rates blogs for what it calls "authority." This rating, similar in ways to Google's PageRank, is based on backlinks from other websites.

And then there's the recently launched Alltop aggregator of blogs and news stories, a Guy Kawasaki effort that is described on own Alltop's own About page thusly:

You can think of an Alltop site as a “dashboard,” “table of contents,” or even a “digital magazine rack” of the Internet. To be clear, Alltop sites are starting points — they are not destinations per se. The bottom line is that we are trying to enhance your online reading by both displaying stories from the sites that you’re already visiting and helping you discover sites that you didn’t know existed.

Alltop does not use an objective popularity-based rating system to decide which blogs to list. Rather, as far as I can tell, it seems to pretty much just list those blogs that Alltop's founders like, plus any popular blogs that are either highly recommended by Alltop users, or specifically request to be included.

Like Technorati, Alltop also uses web feeds to provide up-to-the-minute updates for the blogs it lists in its directory. Alltop shows post titles for the last five posts from each blog; when a user mouses over one of the titles, a brief excerpt from the post is shown. However, Alltop is a much simpler site than Technorati; it does not allow for custom web-based feedreading pages like Technorati does. Nor does it have a search engine function.

The Fine Line Between Aggregation and Splogging

Okay, let's pause for a moment here. Reading that section just above about blog aggregating websites, did you notice something?

Blog aggregating websites like Technorati and Alltop scrape bloggers' web feeds for content, and post that original content to their own sites, just like many sploggers do.

But, before David Sifry and Guy Kawasaki start sending me hate mail for trashing their sites on my blog, let me just say this right now: I believe that most blog aggregation sites should NOT be lumped in indiscriminately with the sploggers.

Most blog aggregation sites have an entirely different intent, serve an entirely different purpose, and treat scraped content differently than sites run by sploggers.

Many blog aggregator sites, like Alltop and Technorati, provide valuable services to both blog readers and bloggers. Blog aggregating websites can help blog readers find new blogs that may interest them by organizing blogs by region or topic. They can help bloggers by exposing bloggers' work to a wider audience, and also by providing valuable backlinks to the blogs featured on the site. The benefits of blog aggregating websites are, in many ways similar to the benefits of feed readers and community-based networks, in that they bring more readers to blogs by making it easier for blog readers to find, read, and manage blog content.

And sites like Technorati and Alltop treat the content they scrape very differently than the way sploggers do. Unlike many splog sites, they post excerpts only, and not full posts. Unlike many splog sites, which show content without attribution, or even in some cases deliberately, falsely attribute stolen work to a different author, all excerpted content on Technorati and Alltop is credited, and prominent links are provided to lead users directly back to the original site.

Both Alltop and Technorati are organized in such a way as to make it absolutely clear to users that the sites are intended to be used as portals to the original content they feature. They are explicitly designed to help readers find new content, and help bloggers find new readers. The sites LOOK like directories. And they WORK like directories. They are not pretending to be anything other than what they are.

And, importantly, both Alltop and Technorati allow bloggers to opt out of being featured on their sites, and post clear instructions on how to do so. (See links in previous sentence if you're interested.)

It is nevertheless undeniably true that blog aggregators' business is built on the original work of bloggers. Any and all sites that aggregate blog content without the original authors' express permission must walk a fine line, in my view, between helping bloggers, and exploiting them.

And some do sites cross that line.

The Fine Line Between Aggregation and Splogging: Part Two

Web Feeds

Most bloggers, whether they know it or not, already publish something called a web feed, with every single post. The two major web feed formats are called Atom and RSS (hence the commonly used term "RSS feed").

Depending on how a site author sets it up, a web feed sends either an excerpt from each new post, or a full-length copy of each new post, out to feed readers. Feed readers are software applications (like FeedReader) or web-based applications (like Google Reader) that collect information from web feeds and present it in an organized, easy-to-read format. (Feed readers are also sometimes called feed aggregators, because they aggregate information from different sources in one place.)

I say most bloggers publish a web feed whether they know it or not, because many big blog hosting sites such as Blogger broadcast web feeds automatically as a default option. If you use one of the major blog hosting sites and you don't want to broadcast your feed, in many cases, you have to go into your blog settings, find the feed option, and manually turn the feed off.

Now, there are several advantages to broadcasting a web feed from your blog.

Many blog readers regularly follow upwards of twenty or thirty blogs. It can be very time consuming for a person who reads that many blogs to visit each and every blog they read every single day to check for updates.

However, if a frequent blog visitor downloads a feed reader, or joins a web-based feed reading service, all he or she has to do is subscribe once to the feed of each of her favorite blogs, and thereafter, the feed reader will alert the blog fan whenever one of his or her favorite bloggers makes a new post. This allows blog audience members to spend less time hunting for posts, and more time actually reading them.

Plus, software-based feed readers can actually download posts and excerpts directly to a user's computer. This allows blog readers with limited or spotty internet access to save blog posts while connected to the internet, and read them later while offline. This also allows blog readers to circumvent their employers' efforts to block employees' access to social media sites at the workplace (which may be bad for certain employers' productivity, but can be good for blog traffic).

In many ways, web feeds can be a win/win for blog readers and blog authors in that feed readers make blog reading easier and less time-consuming. It stands to reason that if more readers have more time to read more blogs, more bloggers can attract a larger audience.

However, let's say you happen to be one of the many bloggers who support their blogging habit via ad revenue.

What happens if a number of your readers start reading your web feeds on their feed reader, and STOP visiting your site?

If you have ads on your site, but a sizable chunk of your audience is reading your feeds exclusively and not ever visiting your site, that means those users of your site are never even seeing your ads. And in many cases, blog ad revenue is based either on click-thru rates (i.e., how many visitors to the blog actually click on the ad to see what it's about) or page impressions (i.e., how many times a web page is viewed).

This is why many bloggers who do host ads on their sites opt to limit their web feed output to excerpts only. This option allows you to send feed subscribers a heads up when you write a new post, along with the title of the post and a brief excerpt that shows what the new post is about. But in order to get the full post, subscribers have to click through to your actual blog. Once there, they see your ads.

However, this also keeps readers from being able to download your full posts and read them at their leisure, and it also keeps readers from reading your full posts in an environment where access to social media sites has been blocked.

So, bloggers who host ads on their sites and depend on ad revenue have the following options when it comes to allowing feeds:

• Offer greater convenience to readers by posting full feeds, which might in some circumstances wind up drawing a larger audience overall, but which also carries the risk of taking traffic away from the blogger's main site, thereby decreasing the potential for ad revenue.

• Limit some readers' ease of access to the blog's material by limiting feeds to excerpts, but prevent use of full feeds from drawing traffic, and therefore ad revenue potential, away from the main site.

• Eliminate feeds altogether, which may prevent many readers from reading the blog altogether, but also provides the best insurance that loyal readers will always visit the author's original site.

Some bloggers have started trying to circumvent the Larger Audience from Feeds v. Greater Revenue from Site Visits issue altogether by providing full feeds, but embedding ads in the feeds themselves, to ensure that the original blogger receives some ad revenue regardless of whether a post is read on the original site or in a feed reader.


Web Feeds and Splogging

So, I've already discussed the inherent advantages and disadvantages to broadcasting a web feed from your blog.

But there is a much more insidious disadvantage to broadcasting your feed that I have yet to talk about, and that is the connection between web feeds and splogging.

You see, the way many sploggers acquire the original content that they copy, without permission, to their spam sites, is by simply subscribing to the bloggers' own web feeds.

A splogger subscribes to a blogger's feed in the same way a reader would. But instead of reading the content, the splogger uploads that content to the splogger's own website.

One way to protect yourself, as a blogger, from splogging is to stop broadcasting feeds from your website. But this may upset some of your loyal readers who rely on feed aggregator services to organize and monitor their favorite blogs.

And the fact is, sploggers can also acquire content fairly easily without using web feeds. There are all sorts of programs out there crawling the web right now, even as I type, that do nothing but find text-rich web content, copy it, and upload it directly to splogging sites.

There is no way to stop sploggers entirely from stealing your content. Even if you found a way to block splogger bots from scanning your site for text, a splogger could still manually copy and paste your content in seconds flat.

The only currently effective way to fight sploggers that I know of is to go after them after they take your content, either by pursuing legal action, by contacting other bloggers who are being exploited by the site and asking them to help you put collective pressure on the splogger to desist, or or by complaining about the splog site frequently on your own blog, thus forcing the splogger to display negative content about his or her own site, on his or her own site, if he or she wants to keep stealing your content.