Kiwiblog

Whale Oil has hit the No 1 spot at Open Parachute based on sitemeter stats. Well deserved.

Stuff reports:

Wellington technology blog, ReadWriteWeb, consistently judged one of the world’s most popular blogs, has been bought by San Francisco digital publishing company Say Media for an undisclosed sum.

Major US technology website TechCrunch, which itself was bought for US$25 million last year, is reporting the deal is worth US$5 million – about $6.6 million in New Zealand dollars.

Run by Petone’s Richard MacManus since it was started in 2003, ReadWriteWeb has a staff of just under 20, most of whom are based in the US.

MacManus said the site attracted about 5 million page views and 2.75 million unique visitors each month.
It had begun looking for a potential buyer a few months ago, as it needed more resource to grow, he said.

He planned to increase the blog’s technology coverage, including of technology hardware.

Well done to Richard McManus. This is the great thing about the Internet, that someone in NZ can be globally successful from his house in Petone.

Okay, so what are the different bloggers saying on the Labour leadership.

My view was expressed last week where I basically said Cunliffe is the safer option, while Shearer has the greater potential to grow Labour’s vote more. If Labour had got a result in the low 30s, then Cunliffe would make more sense, but with a result in the mid to high 20s only, then Shearer seems the better course.

• Keith Ng backs David Shearer
• Russell Brown appears to lean towards Shearer
• Imperator Fish is undecided after the Auckland meeting
• Chris Trotter endorsed David Shearer
• Brian Edwards now backs David Cunliffe
• Cactus Kate says it should be David Cunliffe. She also reports that some Auckland members are unhappy their MPs are not consulting them on their decision.
• Homepaddock is not giving a preference, but notes that at the Auckland meeting Grant Robertson refused to give an assurance he would not challenge for the leadership before 2014.
• Most of the commenters at The Standard appear to be backing Cunliffe
• Dim-Post is tepidly in the Shearer camp
• Hard to tell Whale Oil’s position – I think he is like Brian Edward’s – was Shearer, and now Cunliffe
• John Pagani backs Shearer
• Mickey Savage is a Cunliffe supporter
• Lew Stoddart supports Shearer
• Phil Quin is in the Shearer camp
• Morgan at Maui Street defends Nanaia Mahuta, saying she was the standout in the Native Affairs debates

Of course only 34 Labour MPs get a vote. Not sure what happens if it is a tie!

The Test Pattern is a new website devoted to debating public policy in New Zealand. It’s contributors are some well known debating names, including:

• Polly Higbee
• Jordan Ward
• Rebecca Mcintosh
• Marcelo Rodriguez Ferrere
• Josh Cameron

Their views on an issue are presented in vertical columns, so you can compare and contrast.

Tom Pullar-Strecker reports at Stuff:

Bloggers are nervously waiting for the publication of the Law Commission’s report on “new media” next Monday.

Former Commerce Minister Simon Power raised their blood pressure when he ordered the review in October last year, commenting that there was a “wild west out there in cyberspace”.

InternetNZ chief executive Vikram Kumar said at the time that if that was what Power really believed, “we’ve got reasons to be very, very worried”.

Power was concerned about breaches of suppression orders, libel on the internet, and whether bloggers and online publications should be subject to oversight by the Press Council or Broadcasting Standards Authority.

Blogger David Farrar, of Kiwiblog, expects a high-brow report but believes it is unlikely the Law Commission will advocate an “uber regulator” for new media.

I wouldn’t say I was nervous about it, but I certainly am interested and looking forward to blogging on the report next Monday. As with most areas of law reform there are likely to be opportunities and risks for those who are online publishers (which is anyone with a Facebook or Twitter account).

A lengthy article in Stuff on bloggers. A good read. They profile Whale Oil, myself, Public Address, Dim Post and Robyn Gallagher.

How fascinating. At the Greens website:

Sign up for email notifications about when political blogs mention our MPs names and Green issues! These timely notifications will enable you to respond quickly enough to be among the first commenters, ensuring high visibility for our views and perspectives.

Personally I find this close to astro-turfing, that fake activism which appears to be grass-roots but is centrally arranged.

I welcome commenters of all persuasions and we have many Green voters comment here, such as Toad. but I’d rather not have people who don’t normally contribute rush over just to post comments about how great the Greens are or the like. I prefer people to response because they have read something they want to comment on – not because Green HQ has notified them do go and post supportive comments.

UPDATE: A reader has sent me this (since deleted) showing Labour trying to do much the same in 2009 with the Trade Me forums.

Fran O’Sullivan highlights a wee quote from a well known blogger a few weeks ago:

“I am also pretty sure that Banks and Brash know that electorally they are rat poison as candidates. They are both pensioners, with Brash over 70. They also both know that their best years politically are behind them.”

You can check the link to see who it is. A month later he was singing a whale whole new tune.

Hat Tip: Catcus Kate

I want to know in what currency was he paid off by the American bag-men!

Andrea Vance at Stuff reports:

ACC Minister Nick Smith has asked for an urgent report after it emerged that a senior ACC doctor is suing a sexual abuse victim for $250,000.

The woman, who blogs under the name Jax, says she was denied counselling for sexual abuse, and posted comments about Sensitive Claims Unit senior medical adviser Peter Jansen on a website. …

Ms Sepuloni asked Health Minister Tony Ryall, who was standing in for Dr Smith, if the ACC minister would investigate.

“Does he think fair treatment includes a senior medical adviser at ACC, Dr Peter Jansen, suing an ACC claimant, a victim of sexual abuse, for $250,000 for speaking her mind on a blog about the appalling treatment of sexual abuse victims under his watch?” she asked.

Jax says her blog has only 15 followers. “So let me see if I get this straight … a blog of 15 followers has done more than $250,000 worth of damage to a man who has never granted a single woman seeking compensation for sexual abuse a mere percentage of that amount?”

I don’t know how many followers Jax has, but what she may be over-looking is that if you google “Peter Jansen”, her blog comes up high on the first page of results. This means anyone searching for info on him, will probably see her blog.

I also note that Jax has blogged many many times or Dr Jansen. One of her comments is:

I am not stupid or dumb. Dr Peter Jansen who implemented these “INHUMANE” changes is hoping if he makes things too damn hard we’ll either go away or kill ourselves like two people I know already …

Accusing someone of hoping that claimants will kill themselves is pretty highly defamatory (in my opinion) unless one can prove it to be true. Some of her other comments are as bad.

Jax has every right to rail against ACC. But she would be better to attack the organisation, not individuals within it. It is not totally surprising that Dr Jansen has responded with a lawsuit.

While the lawsuit is not surprising, it is ill-advised in my opinion. The publicity from the lawsuit will result in many many more people knowing about the comments, potentially increasing the damage to Dr Jansen.

Also Dr Jansen may have overlooked that people are quite good at putting things into context. I doubt many NZers would jump to a conclusion about Dr Jansen, just because of the criticisms made by Jax on her blog. It’s not the Lancet. It’s one disaffected person’s opinion.

If I sued for every defamatory comment made about me online, I’d be in court at least once a week.

A possible compromise here might be that Jax refers to Dr Jansen only by title (removing her blog from google searches on his name) and he drops the lawsuit. I don’t know either of them, and they don’t know me, so I doubt my 2c of opinion is of any consequence. if it does go to court, it will at least be an interesting court case.

UPDATE: Dr Jansen has issued a statement:

“It is my belief, supported by independent legal advice, that I have been defamed. All that I am seeking is for the offending comments to be withdrawn and for a public apology to be issued. Money has never been an issue, this is about my professional reputation. If that redress is provided, I will of course halt the legal action that I have initiated as a private citizen.”

Dr Jansen also categorically denies the accusation made by Carmel Sepuloni MP in the House yesterday that he “accessed private information about a victim of sexual abuse and used it to initiate legal action”. He has asked the Chief Executive of ACC to initiate a review of the Corporation’s records to confirm this.

d

Phil Goff is still maintaining that not only did he handle the Hughes situation correctly, not a single one of his colleagues have criticised him. Well, they are not technically colleagues, but lets have a look at what the left are saying.

1. Tim Watkin says that Goff’s line about not intereing with a Police investigation is “spin” and that Goff had no plan for how to respond
2. Russell Brown flays Goff and says they are a “shambles”
3. Bomber at Tumeke says that if Labour are not questioning the leadership of Phil Goff, then they “are officially the most stoned Caucus in the history of the Westminster system”
4. Chris Trotter blogged that it is the moral duty of the Labour caucus to remove Goff if they don’t think he can lead them to victory
5. Matt McCarten says Goff’s performancee has been appalling
6. Lew at Kiwipolitico says that anyone who failed to understand the politics (like Goff did) of what happened “has no business running strategy for a Sunday book club, much less a political party which aspires to government”
7. Danyl at the Dim Post also rubbishes Goff’s claims of natural justice coming first, citing numerous examples to the contrary, and in another post says “in the UK they have a competent opposition party, while [Labour] are Really. Fucking. Terrible.”
8. Idiot/Savant at No Right Turns blogs that Goff has “established a consistent pattern of poor decision-making”
9. Robert Winter says “The onus is on our parliamentary caucus to provide us with that national leadership that we deserve.”
10. Psycho Milt (who is left) at No Minister says “ there should be wholesale ritual suicide in the Labour ranks”

This is essentially what Labour’s friends are saying about Labour’s leader, not Labour’s opponents.

Mydeology has done a comparison of how four blogs covered the Worth scandal in 2009 and the Highes scandal of 2011, by counting up the number of posts they made over the first two days on the scandal. Their findings:

• The Standard – 11 posts on Worth, 1 on Hughes
• Tumeke – 6 posts on Worth, 1 on Hughes
• Kiwiblog – 5 posts on Worth, 5 on Hughes
• Whale Oil – 6 posts on Worth, 11 on Hughes

Their conclusions:

• Pro-Labour blogs will comment heavily (5 or more articles) when a scandal is anti-National, but very lightly (less than two articles) in comparison when it is an anti-Labour scandal.
• Right-wing blogs will comment heavily when a scandal is anti-National, and heavily when it is anti-Labour.
• Pro-Labour blogs produce around 10 anti-National scandal articles to every one anti-Labour scandal article.
• Right-wing blogs produce between 1-2 anti-Labour scandal articles to every one anti-National scandal article.

 Their post made me wonder what was my first reaction to the Worth scandal. It was:

Now this is just ridicolous. You can’t have a secret resignation – or a resignation for undisclosed reasons. The Government is bonkers if they think the reasons won’t come out, let alone that they do not have a duty to disclose them. And refusing to state the reasons will keep it as a story for days and weeks, instead of a three day wonder.

If you resign as a Minister, you need to say why you are resigning. Not the full details, but at least some reason.

So I was actually pretty harsh on the Government’s initial response.  I followed up saying:

The more I think about this, the more stupid it is not to state why he has resigned. As in majorly stupid. The public will wonder what the Government is hiding, the Opposition will assume the worst, the media will dig up dirt until they find the reason, and the Governments looks shifty. Before it is too late, the Government should arrange for either Key or Worth to explain why Worth resigned – the public have a right to know.

Whale has blogged about the Get Frank site, and use of bloggers material.

A number of bloggers back in 2007 gave permission for Get Frank to to use some of their posts on their site. At least one blogger was told:

as our adver­tis­ing grows we will be offer­ing all con­trib­u­tors the chance to take 50% of all adver­tis­ing rev­enue from their page(s) on a CPM basis.

I was one of those bloggers who gave permission. I can’t recall whether or not my e-mail made any mention of revenue sharing. I suspect I said yes on the grounds of liking to help a new site.

But Get Frank has gone on to be commercially successful, and the Bloggers Union (which is compulsory – like student associations) has been saying that those who provide the content should be getting a share of the revenue, which has been declined. So Whale has gone to war in his normal subtle way.

By coincidence, I had noticed around six months ago that Get Frank were still using my content and I made a mental note to myself to email them at some stage and say I think it is time to stop using my content, especially as I do get advertising revenue on my own site. But it was not a priority so I had not got around to it.

This flare up has been the catalyst for me to do so, and hence the permission has been terminated.

Cactus Kate has blogged on this also.

I blog primarily because I enjoy having a say. I do make some “pocket money” from advertising but on an hourly rate it would come to less than the minimum wage. So my motivation is not commercial. But I’d rather increase the money I made from my content, than have others do so, and receive nothing at all myself.

If Get Frank (or anyone) are interested in a commercial relationship in the future, my door is open.

Simon Power has announced a review of new media:

Justice Minister Simon Power has asked the Law Commission to review the adequacy of regulations around how the Internet interacts with the justice system.

“I’ve ordered this review because it’s imperative the law keeps pace with technology and that we have one set of rules for all news media,” Mr Power said.

I am a supporter of there being a review, and have in fact advocated for it. But I have to say the way the Minister has framed it is regrettable and rather confrontational.

First of all it may make a nice slogan, but the status quo doesn’t have one set of rules – broadcast media have very different rules to print media.

“At the moment we’ve got two tracks – conventional media and the so-called ‘new media’ – intersecting with the justice system, and it’s not sustainable.

“It’s a bit of a Wild West out there in cyberspace at the moment, because bloggers and online publishers are not subject to any form of regulation or professional or ethical standards.

This is another slogan which means little (and remember I do actually favour a review). First of all bloggers are subject to the law – as have been demonstrated of late. The notion of regulating bloggers (beyond the normal requirement to obey the law) or imposing some sort of “professional standards” on them is ridicolous fancy. Bloggers are simply citizens having a say. Simon Power makes it sound like he thinks you should have to apply for permission to have a voice online. Now that may not be Simon’s intent, but the way he has framed this issue is incredibly bad.

“Issues I’m concerned about include how trials can be prejudiced by information posted on websites and seen by jurors, real-time online streaming of court cases, breaches of court suppression orders, and re-publication of a libel.

Issues which I helped facilitate discussion of at last year’s R v the Internet seminar. They are good issues to discuss.

It will focus on whether either of the two existing industry watchdogs – the Broadcasting Standards Authority and the Press Council – could provide a suitable vehicle for regulating unregulated forms of new media.

Yeah, and lets also give them the power to fine MPs if they say nasty things on their Facebook pages.

Having said that, it is worth noting the Press Council is self-regulation, not external regulation. One could discuss options such as allowing bloggers to voluntarily sign up to the Press Council, if they wish to do so as a way to enhance their reputation. But you then have issues around who covers costs of the Council – considering most blogs are non-commercial.

Mr Power says the public will have the opportunity to have their say when the commission releases an issues paper by December next year.

That is December 2011? Good – this should not be rushed.

As I said I am pleased the Law Commission is doing this review, as there are potentially even benefits for bloggers in it. But the way the Minister’s press statement has framed the issues is not good, and likely to rub a lot of people up the wrong way.

I will be advocating to the Law Commission, and InternetNZ, that they look to convene some workshops next year to discuss and define some of the issues.

For those who like their art and fashion, you may want to check out Here Comes the Sun, which is run by Kiwi Amanda Thomas, and has a lot of overseas followers.

Wellingtonians may wish to subscribe to WCC Watch. It provides detailed analysis of who is standing for Council, and related issues. Every local body should have a blog like this.

My only criticism is that the site is anonymous. I trust people – I don’t trust URLs. For all we know, one of the candidates runs it. It leans left, but seems pretty fair with their comments.

Colin Espiner does a final blog:

So this is it. The last post, if you like, from On the House.

It’s been more than three years and 378 blog posts since the Stuff editor asked me to write a blog on politics, and it’s been a hell of a ride.

Even though Colin departed from the press gallery some months ago, I still found his blog a must read. As a political blogger he stood out from his colleagues – both with frequency of posts, but also his willingness to stae what he really thinks, and engage with the commenters.

So the Stuff editor and I thought it was probably time to lay On the House to a well-deserved rest.

But the good news is that out of the ashes a new politics blog will rise – keep your eyes peeled for more on that soon. I certainly hope many of you will check it out and continue your arguments – sorry, discussions – in the new forum.

I’m hoping to start up another blog at some point myself, though I’m not sure on what yet. I’ll let y’all know.

I look forward to the new Stuff politics blog, and also any future blog from Colin. I’d be interested to read a blog about life in a newsroom.

Danyl blogs:

City Paper reports:

For the past three years, Marilyn Bess has operated MS Philly Organic, a small, low-traffic blog that features occasional posts about green living, out of her Manayunk home. Between her blog and infrequent contributions to ehow.com, over the last few years she says she’s made about $50. To Bess, her website is a hobby. To the city of Philadelphia, it’s a potential moneymaker, and the city wants its cut.

In May, the city sent Bess a letter demanding that she pay $300, the price of a business privilege license. …

She’s not alone. After dutifully reporting even the smallest profits on their tax filings this year, a number — though no one knows exactly what that number is — of Philadelphia bloggers were dispatched letters informing them that they owe $300 for a privilege license, plus taxes on any profits they made.

Even if, as with Sean Barry, that profit is $11 over two years. …

A privilege license? Is there no end to the ways some governments will try and extort money from its citizens and residents?

I’m a bit gutted to be away when Wordcamp NZ is on. Wordcamp is for users and fans of WordPress, which is what this blog uses.

I would have loved to attend (7 and 8 August in Auckland) as I know I’d pick up heaps of good ideas for plugins and features etc.

There is talk there may be one in Wellington later this year or early next year. I hope so.

Andrew Cushen’s thesis studying the NZ Political blogosphere has been published and is online. Many (160) bloggers and (789) readers took part.

It is a weighty 252 pages, and has taken a while to get through. I’ve extracted some of the stats I find more interesting:

• 24% of bloggers are aged under 25 and 87% are aged under 50
• 79% of (political) bloggers are male and 21% female
• 23% of bloggers earn more than $100,000 a year and 24% earn less than $20,000 a year. Only 9% earn between $20,000 and $40,000
• Most of the low income bloggers are students (16/25)
• 69% of bloggers have a degree, half being a post-graduate degree
• 32% of bloggers are self employed, 26% work in the public sector, 29% work in the private sector, and 12% work for NGOs
• 69% of bloggers have been a party member or volunteer
• 34% of bloggers are in Wellington, 29% in Auckland, 11% in Canterbury, 6% Otago and 9% are overseas
• 5% of political bloggers blog only on politics. 38% blog between 75% and 100% politics.26% blog between 50% and 75%, 24% blog between 25% and 50%.
• 19% of bloggers explicitly support National, 16% Labour, 12% ACT, 12% Green, 4% Maori Party, 5% Progressive, 17% other parties and 50% do not support a party. Half the others are Libertarianz.
• 46% of bloggers blog under their own names
• 7% of bloggers have been blogging for 5+ years, 30% for under 1 year
• 17% of bloggers update more than once a day, 12% daily, 40% several times a week, 11% weekly and 21% greater than weekly
• There is a clear correlation between posting frequency and readership levels
• 15% of bloggers spend over 10 hours a week blogging, 38% of bloggers spend under two hours a week
• 16% of bloggers make money from advertising on their blogs
• 18% of bloggers have 5,000+ unique readers
• 96% allow comments
• 6% of bloggers feel they have a leading influence upon political discussion, 18% a major influence, 30% average influence and 43% minor influence

And similar data on blog readers:

• 78% of readers are male
• 14% of readers earn under $20K and 21% over $100K. Most earn under $60,000
• 71% of readers have a degree, and again half are post-graduate
• 22% of readers are self employed, 40% work in the private sector and 31% in the state sector
• 43% of readers have been a party member or volunteer
• 36% of readers in Wellington, 28% Auckland, 10% Canterbury, 5% Otago and 7% overseas
• 86% of readers read blogs as they offer alternate viewpoints on news and issues, 60% cite the fact they like the opinion of the author
• 60% of readers read blogs more than once a day and 25% daily
• 28% of readers spend over 5 hours a week reading blogs
• 69% of readers have left a comment on a blog
• In terms of inaccuracy of media types, 14% of readers said blog were inaccurate compared to 45% who said TV news was inaccurate
• 52% of blog readers say blogs are very entertaining, compared to under 5% for all other media types. This is a fascinating stat – people enjoy the blogs far far more.

If you have the time, the full report is worth a read.

Tumeke has the announcement, plus their own comments.

The winner is Cactus Kate. I think this is a great choice. Not only does Catcus have a superb writing style, but her business stories some of the best in NZ. She has shed light on many issues around NZX, the Securities Commission etc.

Runner up is the Dim Post. No need to explain why. As I have said before, someone should be paying him for such good satire. If there was a comedian’s union, they’d be trying to knock him off for giving away for free, what others charge for.

Equal third place getters were No Right Turn and Whale Oil. Very different styles, but both must reads that have a significant impact on our political system.

Congrats to everyone who entered, and to the organisers and judges. Hopefully this will become an annual event.

Thanks to the many people who e-mailed or commented regarding my bot request. Rather than reply individually (yet), I figured I would explain more about what I was thinking of.

Tumeke, Open Parachute and Half Done all publish ratings of NZ blogs. A great service they provide, and I hate to think how much time it takes up.

The Tumeke ratings are based on:

1. Daily visits
2. Technorati links
3. Average posts/week
4. Average most comments on a post/week

Half Done ratings are based on:

1. Alexa global rating
2. Alexa NZ rating
3. Technorati authority score (no of incoming links)

Open Parachute ratings are based on:

1. Visits/Month
2. Page Views/Month

What I have in mind is a ratings site which combines the best of all three sites using a bot that could scan all NZ blog sites and pull up data for each blog from publicly available sources so that people don’t have to spend hours and hours producing the ratings. What are the criteria I would use:

Visits

1. Total Visits for Month – this is the hard one. This data can be reverse engineered from Alexa but Alexa isn’t the most reliable. If sites use Sitemeter, then this could be automatically read, and Alexa is no Sitemeter.
2. Total Page Views for Month – as above
3. Total Unique Visitors for Month would also be useful, but unlikely to be available without access to Google Analytics for a site

Links

1. Alexa Sites Linking In
2. Technorati authority score

Posts

1. No of posts in the month

Comments

1. No of comments in the month
2. Average comments/post
3. No of unique commenters

One could then develop a formula along the lines of calculating each stat as a percentage of the average for that stat over all blogs. So if the average no of posts in a month is 50 and you post 150, then your score is 3.0 (or 300%).

Finally you’d weight the criteria. I’d suggest:

1. Visits 40%
2. Links 25%
3. Post 20%
4. Comments 15%

One could also weight the sub-categories if you really wanted to.

So the idea is that one could just feed a list of sites into the bot, and hey presto it would dig up the raw data which could be exported to Excel, where they could be converted to scores and ratings.

I don’t have a budget for this, as it is non profit. So my preference is bored geeks wanting a challenge. If none of them exist , then I can probably throw some dollars at it, but it won’t be a lot.

Feedback is also welcome on the proposed data to be collected, and suggested scoring and weightings.

Is there anyone out there that could put together some code for a very simple program that can scan a blog, and calculate for a period of time (say a month):

1. Number of posts made
2. Number of comments made
3. Number of unique commenters (based on name of commenter)

If so, please let me know.

There have been 32 entries in the Air New Zealand* Best Blog Awards.

Through the awards, I’ve discovered some great new blogs, and have also enjoyed reading the submitted entries. My RSS feed has just got larger.

I think the Judges will have a damn tough job of deciding a winner, as there are many great quality entries. Hopefully they may award some runner up prizes, and/or finalists.

While the Air New Zealand Blog Awards started as a humourous reaction against the Qantas Media Awards selection, the quality of the entries has shown that the many in the blogosphere have got in behind having blog awards.

Perhaps in future years, the Judges could create a number of category awards, as well as the overall Best Blog Award. Some possible categories are:

• Best Business Blog
• Best Economic Blog
• Best Legal Blog
• Best Political Blog (could also have right/left/centre)
• Best Photo Blog
• Best Tech Blog
• Best Personal Blog
• Best Humour Blog

Anyway well done to those who submitted entries, and well done to the NZ Bloggers Union for organising the awards. Good luck to all those who submitted.

* Air New Zealand is not the official sponsor of the awards. But they have been good enough not to sue for use of their name, as it is a wind up against Qantas.

Gman has organised bloggers drinks in Wellington:

This coming Thursday, June 3 we will be having bloggers’ drinks at the Occidental, Wellington.

http://www.theoccidental.co.nz/

All bloggers, readers, fans, trolls and stalkers are invited. And a splendid time is guaranteed for all.

On site wi-fi included.

Left wing loonies to Right wing nutbars, all invited.

Date Thursday 3 June, from 5.30 pm to whenever

Occidental bar and restaurant, Wellington.

Hope to see some of you there.