What is a blog? How would you define an industry analyst blog? What separates blogs from the other online destinations and channels published by the ICT analyst community? Is a blog still a blog without an RSS feed? comments? Is an analyst blog tied to his or her expertise? Yesterday, I asked ten or so analysts and consultants in the US and UK to share their thoughts on what is a blog. They responded with free-range thinking on that and beyond: what is an analyst blog, why do analysts blog, and why does anyone care. Good stuff. Here’s a rough cut of my notes.

Background

My intent is to overhaul the criteria for the Tekrati analyst blogs directory. Already, the conversation offers a rich perspective on grounds for deciding which blogs are listed and why they might be tossed out down the road.

I queried analysts and consultants that are successful bloggers: each has a track record as an individual blogger, and has earned credibility as a thought leader within a professional community of practice.

The analysts are: Carl Howe of Blackfriars Communications, Mike Gotta of Burton Group, Alan Pelz-Sharpe of CMS Watch, Charlene Li or Josh Bernoff (Josh responded) of Forrester Research, Dale Vile of Freeform Dynamics, James Governor of RedMonk, John Blossom of Shore Communications, and Stowe Boyd of The Brannan Street Irregulars.

The consultants are: Jen McClure of the Society for New Communications Research, Jonny Bentwood of Edelman, and Erik SR of Tech for PR.

Again, what follows is a rough cut of the discussion threads. I’m pulling excerpts out of the conversational flow, to make for faster reading. More, and perhaps a little more polished, next week.

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The Tekrati directory of analyst blogs is easier to use, offers more information and is better integrated with its sister directories, on analysts and analyst firms. What’s more, we migrated the OPML to the latest rev and did an extensive housecleaning on the listings. Richard handled the programming effortlessly, as always. I, on the other hand, am still wrestling with a content issue: new rules for separating a blog from any other form of online journal or commentary. I’m asking for help.

You might be thinking that I’m a little slow on the draw, given that I’m just now pondering the universal truths of Blog, some two and half years into publishing a directory of blogs.

Since the 2005 directory debut, my rule has been this: there must be evidence of blog publishing software and/or blog coding and format standards. That’s what split the blogwashers — my term for analysts using web pages that mimic a blog in a cosmetic way — from the bloggers. Only the bloggers that passed this test made it into the directory.

Fast forward to 2007. I’m feeling increasingly self-conscious about this technology-only premise, and that’s not a good thing. More web content seems to be a hybrid, a blend of blog and other content publishing applications. This results in too much dithering on my part. And, I don’t like to guess. Whether a blog is in or out of the directory should be a simple decision. It should not be subjective. (Other elements are subjective, as it is, like who is and who is not an analyst. That’s another conversation.)

What to do? I don’t think that adding more technology to my filtering criteria is the right approach. After all, any kind of page can be turned into an RSS feed, lots of publishing systems allow reader comments, lots of blog templates perform like traditional websites, and lots of analyst blogs don’t accept comments or have feeds that don’t validate.

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You can now search all the blogs listed in the Tekrati directory of analyst blogs — and get seriously good results — thanks to Mike Gotta. Mike, who runs with the Burton tribe these days, has mashed up his own Google Co-op magic with my OPML to create one of his serendipity search sites. I’ll arrange to keep the initial search feature going, and add some features and community, within a few weeks (i.e., after CES). Thanks, Mike.

The results are good, based on my initial test queries. And, it’s easy and free!

If you’re going to use it, here’s some background on the Tekrati OPML piece:

First, a note of caution: This OPML is 1.0 — i.e., out of date. It still works just fine with most desktop readers. I’ll publish a heads up after validating/updating with Dave Winer’s OPML 2.

As with all Tekrati directories, this one changes constantly. Recent incoming: 25 blogs since American Thanksgiving. Recent outgoing: no idea.

This OPML is the only Tekrati directory content that is published as “shared content”.

The analyst blogs directory and OPML has a life and luck all its own. I’ve been awed by the caliber of the people who take time to point it out, suggest improvements, alert me to their competitors’ blogs, encourage me to carry on with it. Just a few of the highlights:

The editor of ResearchBuzz, Tara Calishain, gave it an initial credibility with the Internet research community — a world far beyond my ICT research reach.

Tara’s coverage led Matt Pasiewicz, the content manager at EDUCAUSE to my inbox, with the suggestion to add an OPML, pointers on how to do it, and an offer to test it (this all predated Winer’s first OPML validator).

Redmonk Stephen O’Grady caught and furled an unintentionally exposed Tekrati experiment in exporting the OPML to a weblog for central “analyst planet” style publish, search and cross-link. This inspired many selfless and many more not-so-selfless suggestions on tools and services to try. Sadly, none worked very well.

Which brings me back to Mike’s project. I’m really excited about this. Thanks again, Billy Bob — er, Mike…

This is a great idea, James. Shall I set up a wiki? Seems a good way to go.

Besides enterprise technologists and their providers, this will be useful for analysts too.

I agree with points Alan made in his comment. This business model seems difficult for some people to grasp. Plus, there is some natural uncertainty as to the client experience — whether all research is free, whether there is an expectation for contributing back to the research community as in open source code (as if…).

A guide to the companies comparing their implementations would be a good supplement to the individual explanations in the wild. I still refer people to RedMonk posts like this one for an intro, and lately also to Brenda’s Elemental Links launch, as a good case in point.

Some other people I’d like to tag to contribute to the project would be Dana Gardner, the mwd Neils, and the analyst who sizes the largest analysts and trends buffeting them, Louise Garnett.

There are many other analysts engaged in open source analysis of various sorts in various disciplines — networking, security, etc. If we mandate use of a creative commons license or similar mechanism, then exclusion is simple. Good points for discussion, exploration.

A few readers have asked me what the IT analysts are saying about the Long Tail. After failing to convince them that the long tail is (a) anything written by Thomas Hardy or (b) an equally obscure pun involving a parrot, it occurred to me that the most appropriate answer to their questions could be found in analyst blogs. And, I happen to have addresses for a few of those.

Here’s a very small start on what analysts have been saying about the long tail. I’ll update periodically through the end of the year. You’re welcome to add, comment.

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Larry Greenemeier over at CMP takes the stand that “a new breed of IT analysts is sharing insights over the Internet, leaving traditional research firms trying to catch up using the same methods.” I disagree. Lots of things are shaking up the IT industry research business. Let’s set our standards a little higher than whether an analyst can blog.

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