Fortune magazine has a big article about blogging out (here, via Joi Ito), it’s pretty good. There’s a few quotes I really liked that I pulled for everyone’s enjoyment:

• “If you fudge or lie on a blog, you are biting the karmic weenie” — quote from Steve Hayden of Ogilvy & Mather
• “Yes, for all its democratic trappings, there are hierarchies of influence in the blogging world.”
• “E-mail is for old people, says Irving; kids prefer to communicate by phone and IM, and, now, by keeping blogs.”
• “Our legal department loves the blogs, because it basically is a written-down, backed-up, permanent time-stamped version of the scientist’s notebook. When you want to file a patent, you can now show in blogs where this idea happened.” — quote from Marissa Mayer of Google

Email is for old people? What about if I use email to notify me when I get a blog comment? Hm.

The Google comment about timestamping ideas in blogs in especially interesting; I touched on similar issues and themes nearly a year ago in my RSS as Poor Man’s Copyright post. (I don’t know how patentable an idea from a blog might be, though.)

At least according to this Newsweek article on the subject:

In order to crack into the upper strata, you have to post frequently to stay on the fickle radar of this ADD-infested crowd. You have to link prodigiously to other blogs, increasing your profile and increasing the chances for inbound links. And you must hold strong opinions about what you’re writing about—passion is required in a good blog.

Heh.

Interesting article, if a little odd-sided and basic. More interesting to me is that it’s an honest acknowledgement of the dichotomy between the “haves” and the “have-nots” of the blogging world: all too often I’ve seen many of these same A-listers deny there is any such hierarchy. That’s bullshit, of course. I hardly need to point that out. I’ve never been able to figure out why they do that, though.

And what’s up with this?

“If you’re into blogs to make money, you’re into it for the wrong reasons,” says Searls. “Do you ask your back porch what its business plan is?”

Not only does this notion seem quaintly naive, I have to wonder why Doc Searls—of all people, given his background as one of the original Cluetrain authors—is dictating the reasons for people to be blogging. Jeez, get off the high horse. If someone’s into blogs to make money, that’s as legitimate as someone who’s blogging their lives for a few family and friends.

(And speaking of Cluetrain, I’ve got to get this off my chest: I recently read The Cluetrain Manifesto, and while I generally found the core ideas and first couple of essays to be good, mostly it’s overrated. Blasphemy! Yes, overrated; one of the things that really bugged me about the last half is that none of it seemed relevant to, well, the real world, and instead just came off as another business book where the rich guys are preaching their brand of success to that percentage of the upper middle class who are office workers for some big corporation.)

Anyway, the article was via Scoble. Let’s see if I get some link love! :).