Unwritten rule #1 of blogging: link to your source. We caught CNET breaking the rule last month. (They actually agreed, and added a link.) Yesterday, MG Siegler thinks he caught Ars Technica:

I saw the map and thought of one thing: the game Risk. As such I wrote a short article on VentureBeat on Friday with that as the main crux: The iPhone is winning at the game of Risk.

Today, Sunday, 2 full days later, Ars Technica comes back with an article, with their own picture dubbed "iRisk."

This case is in a gray area: it's not hard news, just one particular approach to a story.

A commenter is not so sure any copying was done:

You don't seem to be quite as original as you think you are, either. Some site called the iPhone Blog (which I found by Googling iPhone world domination risk after reading your piece) has been playing iPhone Risk --complete with stylized map-- since February, including an update with all this latest info on May 7. Could it be that you and Fortune ripped them off, or could it be that lots of people make the "entering new markets is kinda like Risk" association?

http://www.theiphoneblog.com/tag/iphone-risk/

Matthew Ingram got an explanation from Ars Technica's founder:

[Ken Fisher] said that Siegler wasn't the only blog to make the comparison between the iPhone and the game of Risk...and that therefore he didn't deserve a link ... Ars didn't see Siegler's post and wrote its own version at about the same time (the site said it was published later because editors were busy).

An update to Siegler's post claims lots of support by email:

I'm not at liberty to share many of them, but lets just say A LOT of people, well respected and well placed people working in the industry out there have the exact same thoughts.

But isn't that exactly the kind of (non) evidence that blogs are rightly skeptical about? Ars may well be a repeat offender, but until the evidence is out in the open, I'll stick with "innocent until proven guilty".

Leading VC blogger Fred Wilson posted some advantages of the Disqus comment plug-in that his firm invested in (based on his usage on the blog!):

1) Threaded discussions

2a) Email Replies

2b) Email Replies for Commenters

3) Shared profiles

(Read the post for details.)

In the comments, Abe Murray noted some missing features that are a showstopper for him:

1. Trackbacks. a huge deal, and totally missing.

2. Seamless data portability. Grab all wordpress / blogger comments on setup and create the Disqus comments for these. If I want to leave Disqus, create wordpress / blogger comments so my blog is still complete.

You should win users by being the best, not by being sticky.

Another commenter ("Andy C") linked to his April 9 post of 25 reasons you should use disqus.

Douglas Karr raised an even bigger showstopper in a comment to that post:

One GIANT REASON not to use Disqus: Your site isn't able to capitalize on User generated content since the comments are loaded via JavaScript. Commenting is a powerful tool for search engines - and you're missing all of it!

Now - if someone builds some robust API blog integration where the comments are loaded server-side, that may make up all the difference. For now, though, DISQUS is hurting blogs by hiding this priceless content from the engines

Despite these issues, the plug-in seems to be gaining plenty of converts.

We covered some alternative comment systems back in September: SezWho, BigSwerve, coComment, Co.mments and Intense Debate.

Blogging provides a platform for anyone to cast their views out into the world, whether to share with a few friends, be found by strangers via a search engine, or to build an audience.

Marc Andreessen started blogging last June and has written several posts that are a "must read" for tech entrepreneurs (among others). Today's post is useful for any investor who ventures beyond index funds to choosing specific stocks: In praise of dual-class stock structures for public companies.

A few highlights:

I used to be an absolutist against dual-class stock structures
...
After 15 years in the technology industry, though, I have done a complete 180-degree turn on the topic -- with some caveats.
...
the markets in which companies operate, and Wall Street in particular, throw up all kinds of short- and medium-term noise in the face of every public company, all the time.
...
The huge advantage of a dual-class stock structure is that it lets the company's core management simply ignore most of this stuff and stay focused on the long-term goal.

If you're not convinced, read the whole thing.

Andreessen applies his thoughts directly to current events.

How would you apply this to the drama unfolding around Microsoft and Yahoo?

Well, clearly, if Jerry Yang and David Filo had dual-class-powered voting control of Yahoo, the whole situation there would be playing out very differently.

Microsoft would have been forced to negotiate a purely friendly deal from the very start, and at a price that would have caught Jerry and David's attention from the start. Hostile threats would have been meaningless. ... And the company could have been entirely focused on current operations the whole time -- no distraction.

(An aside: sorry for the long gap between posts; we're scrambling to hire a bunch of people for Blogcosm and other projects.)

Clay Shirky is a noted speaker and consultant on "Economics & Culture, Media & Community". He recently posted a lightly edited transcript of a talk he gave at the Web 2.0 conference.

Jeremy Zawodny posted the video: Explaining the Cognitive Surplus. It's interesting, but here's a shorter version for those who prefer a summary:

Starting with the Second World War a whole series of things happened--rising GDP per capita, rising educational attainment, rising life expectancy and, critically, a rising number of people who were working five-day work weeks. For the first time, society forced onto an enormous number of its citizens the requirement to manage something they had never had to manage before--free time.

And what did we do with that free time? Well, mostly we spent it watching TV.

We did that for decades. We watched I Love Lucy. We watched Gilligan's Island. We watch Malcolm in the Middle. We watch Desperate Housewives. Desperate Housewives essentially functioned as a kind of cognitive heat sink, dissipating thinking that might otherwise have built up and caused society to overheat.

...

Media in the 20th century was run as a single race--consumption. How much can we produce? How much can you consume? Can we produce more and you'll consume more? And the answer to that question has generally been yes. But media is actually a triathlon, it's three different events. People like to consume, but they also like to produce, and they like to share.

...

Let's say that everything stays 99 percent the same, that people watch 99 percent as much television as they used to, but 1 percent of that is carved out for producing and for sharing. The Internet-connected population watches roughly a trillion hours of TV a year. That's about five times the size of the annual U.S. consumption. One per cent of that is 100 Wikipedia projects per year worth of participation.

I think that's going to be a big deal. Don't you?

...

I was having dinner with a group of friends about a month ago, and one of them was talking about sitting with his four-year-old daughter watching a DVD. And in the middle of the movie, apropos nothing, she jumps up off the couch and runs around behind the screen. That seems like a cute moment. Maybe she's going back there to see if Dora is really back there or whatever. But that wasn't what she was doing. She started rooting around in the cables. And her dad said, "What you doing?" And she stuck her head out from behind the screen and said, "Looking for the mouse."

Here's something four-year-olds know: A screen that ships without a mouse ships broken. Here's something four-year-olds know: Media that's targeted at you but doesn't include you may not be worth sitting still for. Those are things that make me believe that this is a one-way change. Because four year olds, the people who are soaking most deeply in the current environment, who won't have to go through the trauma that I have to go through of trying to unlearn a childhood spent watching Gilligan's Island, they just assume that media includes consuming, producing and sharing.

It would be interesting to look back and see how much of this essential idea was in Alvin Toffler's Future Shock. Here's a reading list:

At TechCrunch, Henry Work posted a tentative analysis based on year-to-date posts on Techmeme: Who Are The Top Tech Bloggers?

5 people are counted more than once (at different blogs or media sites): Caroline McCarthy, Jacqui Cheng, Larry Dignan, MG Siegler, and Tom Krazit. We left that as is, and used absolute numbering rather than showing ties.

Here's our version of the list, showing Technorati rank (which applies to the whole blog not the person), and FriendFeed links.

#				Person				Blog		T Rank
1				Mike Arrington				TechCrunch		3
2				Erick Schonfeld				TechCrunch		3
3				Larry Dignan (1 of 2)				Between the Lines		298
4				Duncan Riley				TechCrunch		3
5				Marshall Kirkpatrick				Read/Write Web		13
6				Henry Blodget				Silicon Alley Insider		92
7				Mike Masnick				Techdirt		226
8				Thomas Ricker				Engadget		4
9				mathew ingram				mathewingram.com/work		2,923
10				Eric Savitz				Tech Trader Daily		3,515
11				Allen Stern				CenterNetworks		1,167
12				Om Malik				GigaOM		38
13				Josh Catone				Read/Write Web		13
14				Mary Jo Foley				All about Microsoft		871
15				Ryan Block				Engadget		4
16				Joseph Weisenthal				paidContent.org		426
17				Rafat Ali				paidContent.org		426
18				Ionut Alex Chitu				Google Operating System		126
19				Eric Bangeman		?		Ars Technica		8
20				Kara Swisher				BoomTown		1,304
21				Mark Hendrickson				TechCrunch		3
22				Robert Scoble				Scobleizer		36
23				Jacqui Cheng (1 of 2)		?		Ars Technica		8
24				Arnold Kim				Mac Rumors		715
25				Elinor Mills		x		CNET News.com		12
26				Brad Linder				Download Squad		83
27				Sarah Perez				Read/Write Web		13
28				Saul Hansell				Bits		--
29				Ina Fried		x		CNET News.com		12
30				Caroline McCarthy (1 of 3)		x		CNET News.com		12
31				Eric Eldon				VentureBeat		248
32				Joshua Topolsky				Engadget		4
33				Greg Sandoval		x		CNET News.com		12
34				Todd Bishop				Todd Bishop's Microsoft Blog		3,589
35				MG Siegler (1 of 2)				VentureBeat		248
36				Anne Broache		x		CNET News.com		12
37				Ernesto				TorrentFreak		127
38				Paul Miller				Engadget		4
39				MG Siegler (2 of 2)				ParisLemon		11,269
40				Nate Anderson		?		Ars Technica		8
41				Philip Elmer-DeWitt				FORTUNE: Apple 2.0		--
42				Fred Wilson				A VC		829
43				Philipp Lenssen				Google Blogoscoped		5,458
44				Miguel Helft		x		The New York Times		1
45				Liz Gannes				NewTeeVee		835
46				Marguerite Reardon		x		CNET News.com		12
47				Rafe Needleman				Webware		146
48				Martin LaMonica		x		CNET News.com		12
49				Peter Kafka				Silicon Alley Insider		92
50				David Kaplan				paidContent.org		426
51				Nilay Patel				Engadget		4
52				Darren Murph				Engadget		4
53				Owen Thomas				Valleywag		34
54				Erica Ogg		x		CNET News.com		12
55				Matt Buchanan				Gizmodo		4
56				Greg Sterling				Search Engine Land		47
57				Richard MacManus				Read/Write Web		13
58				Caroline McCarthy (2 of 3)				The Social		--
59				Barry Schwartz				Search Engine Land		47
60				Scott Karp				Publishing 2.0		1,464
61				Adrian Kingsley-Hughes				Hardware 2.0		3,089
62				Dean Takahashi		r		Tech Talk with Dean Takahashi		--
63				Ryan Paul		?		Ars Technica		8
64				Danny Sullivan				Search Engine Land		47
65				Stacey Higginbotham				GigaOM		38
66				Tom Krazit (1 of 2)				One More Thing		--
67				Dave Winer				Scripting News		433
68				Jesus Diaz				Gizmodo		4
69				John Markoff		x		The New York Times		1
70				Doug Aamoth				Crunch Gear		115
71				Staci D. Kramer				paidContent.org		426
72				Dan Frommer				Silicon Alley Insider		92
73				Dawn Kawamoto		x		CNET News.com		12
74				Joel Hruska		?		Ars Technica		8
75				Ken Fisher		?		Ars Technica		8
76				Steven Hodson				WinExtra		16,176
77				Dan Farber				Between the Lines		298
78				Matt Marshall				VentureBeat		248
79				Joe Wilcox				eWeek Microsoft Watch		4,237
80				Jacqui Cheng (2 of 2)		x		Infinite Loop		731
81				Jason Chen				Gizmodo		4
82				Caroline McCarthy (3 of 3)				Webware		146
83				Wilson Rothman				Gizmodo		4
84				David A. Utter		x		WebProNews		790
85				Cade Metz		x		The Register		--
86				Karl				dslreports.com		1,680
87				Nicholas Carr				Rough Type		796
88				Stephen Shankland		x		CNET News.com		12
89				Chris Williams		x		The Register		--
90				Peter Ha				Crunch Gear		115
91				Michael Learmonth				Silicon Alley Insider		92
92				Brian Stelter		x		The New York Times		1
93				Enigmax				TorrentFreak		127
94				Nicholas Carlson				Valleywag		34
95				Betsy Schiffman				Epicenter		311
96				Ashkan Karbasfrooshan				HipMojo.com		27,873
97				Tom Krazit (2 of 2)		x		CNET News.com		12
98				Chris Ziegler				Engadget		4
99				Dan Goodin		x		The Register		--
100				Mike Butcher				TechCrunch UK		3,381
101				Jason Calacanis				The Jason Calacanis Weblog		459
102				Adam Ostrow				Mashable		11
103				Stefanie Olsen		x		CNET News.com		12
104				Michael Liedtke		x		News from The Associated Press		--
105				Larry Dignan (2 of 2)				Zero Day		4,689
						Legend
								Blogcosm profile of this blog
								Link directly to the blog
r								Retired
?								Arguably not a blog (what do you think?)
x								Not a blog (at least not by our definition)

Earlier today, Marshall Kirkpatrick posted some great advice at ReadWriteWeb: Five Wrong Ways to Pitch RWW and One Great Way. Here's a quick list:

• Wrong: Email the wrong email address
• Wrong: Phone Calls
• Wrong: Twitter, Especially DM
• Wrong: Facebook
• Wrong: IM

Instead:

A Great Way to Do It: By RSS
...
PR people, please send us the RSS feeds of your clients' blogs and news releases.

That applies for most blogs, not just ReadWriteWeb.

Matt Craven adds some perspective at The Blog Herald:

To this day - almost eighteen month after leaving the editor position here, we still get stories pitched to us at that email address - often on topics that aren’t in any way, shape, or form what we’re interested in blogging about. I never once was sent a RSS feed or an OPML file. And I can’t remember a single story that we ran based on an email pitch from a PR firm - the quality was extraordinarily poor.

(They probably ran stories based on direct pitches from small companies; those tend to be more targeted.)

Alas, some commenters don't get it. Perhaps they've never been on the receiving end of such a flood:

It should NOT matter WHAT tactics people use to pitch something to you.

You both need each other to survive - so stop patronizing others when you yourselves are no less imperfect.

Posted by: SearcH◆ EngineS WEB | April 18, 2008 8:52 AM

I sounds as if you want everyone else to do your information management. It's true everyone is overloaded with information these days and finds it hard to cope.

But you shouldn't ever take it out on the people who are contacting you.

Posted by: Haniff Din | April 18, 2008 9:29 AM

I'll give sarahintampa the last word:

Everyone, Please Breathe. Chill.

It’s just a suggestion people. Take it or leave it.

Just…doesn’t it make sense that when you’re telling a blogger about a new service/product that you would also encourage them to subscribe to the companies feed(s)?

Bloggers are rightly suspicious of mainstream media sites that add blogs. The mechanics are just a starting point: reverse chronological order, a stable permalink, archives by date, etc. Much more important is the culture or philosophy of blogging.

Unwritten rule #1: link to your source.

Blogs are part of a conversation. They are (in part) a reaction against the old media model of a professional news organization deciding what stories to cover, and what information to include in each story. In the world of blogs, anyone is welcome to add to the conversation -- as long as they link to their source. That link is both a "hat tip" to give credit to someone who had the story earlier and an invitation for readers to dig deeper on their own. It overthrows the notion that the writer (journalist, reporter, blogger) is the sole interpreter and packager of what's important.

Today's violation: Martin LaMonica at CNET News.com's "News Blog": Gold-plated support comes to Amazon Web Services

Looking to take on more demanding customers, Amazon Web Services on Thursday rolled out two paid-support plans that give customers access to its engineers to resolve glitches.

OK, that's interesting. How much does it cost? Where do I learn more?

Not from CNET, so let's look at a few real blogs:

Stacey Higginbotham at GigaOm has the prices:

It’s offering two different service levels: One starting at $100 a month and the other, at $400.

Josh Catone of ReadWriteWeb covers a related announcement:

Amazon is also beefing up support options for free customers with the release of the new AWS Service Hearth Dashboard that monitors the status of all AWS services. Amazon says that during outages, users can expect to see updates from the team every 15-30 minutes until things are fixed. Status updates can be accessed via the page or by RSS.

Don MacAskill, CEO of SmugMug, offers his perspective as a customer:

I’d still like to see a pay-per-incident model, personally, even with an extremely high price-tag for each incident. We rarely use support for AWS, but at the same time, we’re very big customers of theirs, so the monthly price is quite high. But if we really come up against a big problem, it’d be nice to know I could pay for support just that one time. I imagine most of their customers will like their Silver and Gold monthly packages, but for us, they’re just not quite the right fit. Do they work for you?

Each of these bloggers linked to Amazon's detail page or to today's post on Amazon's very useful Web Services blog (or both).

That's how to blog. Maybe CNET should take lessons.

Sphere announced today that they've been acquired by AOL:

We think it’s a huge advantage to become part of a suite of services that understands how Internet users access/ consume content, and how to intelligently monetize in tandem with that content. This is a win-win for our partners, AOL and Sphere.

Speaking of "monetize", here's some background from their about page.

The four of us (Martin Remy; Steve Nieker; Tony Conrad; and Toni Schneider) founded Sphere in 2005. We originally built a blog search engine. We decided that wasn't very interesting.

My translation: "we decided that it was very hard to make money from a blog search engine".

Even after Sphere changed focus, their site included a search box. Did anyone notice when it was removed? Archive.org's records stop at Aug. 1, 2007.

Michael Arrington of TechCrunch covers some of the history:

When Sphere first launched as a blog search engine they were already late to the blog search game. Technorati and others had been around for some time already, and even Google Blog Search was nearly eight months old. Sphere had some nice features, but it was in a tough and competitive space.

But CEO Tony Conrad, a former venture capitalist, quickly adapted to the changing market and focused on delivering blog results relevant to content delivered by big news and content sites.

Om Malik of GigaOm adds a personal note.

Here are some numbers:

Gawker Media has just gotten rid of 3 blogs:

#				Blog		T Rank		Alexa		Primary Category
1				Wonkette		91		23,311		Liberal
2				Idolator		1,431		47,937		Music
3				Gridskipper		1,603		43,171		Travel

Silicon Alley Insider has more numbers and is one of many blogs that published Nick Denton's internal email:

• IDOLATOR is going to Buzznet, a music-focused web and social network. Buzznet recently acquired Idolator's chief rival, Stereogum, and received a big investment from Universal Music Group.

• GRIDSKIPPER isn't going far: it's being taken over by Curbed, the network founded by Lockhart Steele, in which Gawker Media is a shareholder.

• WONKETTE is being spun off to the managing editor, Ken Layne, former founder of one of the web's very first news sites, Tabloid.net. The title will become part of the Blogads network of political sites, which includes Daily Kos, among others.

As for the rest:

The dozen sites that remain represent some 97% or our 228m pagevi