Continuing from yesterday’s post, here is a list of the blogs deleted from the directory during March, April and May.

The list is a bit long. It includes normal archiving — bloggers leaving analyst jobs, starting new blogs, restricting reader access. Plus, it includes my first pass at culling blogs that had grown dormant, based on the published blog roll logic. Even then, I made exceptions as seemed appropriate.

In a few cases, analyst bloggers have signaled that they intend to revitalize their blogs. Some are shifting to other types of social media.

Let me know if you disagree with your blog (or any other blog) being on this list. Flag up those that ought to be. Your comments are welcome.

In no particular order:

Craig Burton: logs, links, life, and lexicon
CCID Consulting’s Blog

Open Source Unleashed
The Going Visual Blog
Dan Sholler’s Musings
straydogz
The Ombudsman Blog
Content Technology CTO Blog
Inescapable Data
MobileTV-View
Ubertrends
My Lappy
ReinventingSF.com
China Trends
JupiterResearch Conversations
Storage Takeaways
David Adams’ MobileStartup
Tabor Research Blog
IPNetworkView
Dortch’s Digressions
JupiterResearch Weblog - Peter Sargent
JupiterResearch Weblog - Joe Laszlo

Blackfriar Blog
Forrester Infrastructure and Operations Council
Nick Selby’s Blog
Soreon Web-log
I, Analyst
My Life as a CRM Diva

I’ve finally defined the new, improved “blogroll logic” for the Tekrati analyst blogs directory. The first rule going into effect disqualifies all blogs that have not had at least two posts per month for the last four months. These blogs will be gone by Monday morning, San Francisco time.

The complete qualification logic with regards to positing activity:
* Blogs have at least two original posts per month for the last four calendar months.
* Newly minted blogs get a four-month honeymoon, starting with their inaugural posting.
* Blog deletions will be listed in the monthly “directory update” post, here in the Keeping Tabs blog.
* Send requests for inclusion/re-listing in the blogs directory to me at editor, here at tekrati.

Grab the OPML today, if you want your own personal archive of those sleepers.

Your thoughts on this policy are most welcome.

During February, I added 9 blogs to Tekrati’s Directory of Analyst Blogs, and archived 1.

February adds

Some are new, some are newly discovered.

Company: FAO Research
Lisa Ross formally announced her first blog, Outsourcing Perspectives. It debuted with quite a bit of content and comment.

Company: Forrester Research
The title says it all: George F. Colony’s Blog: Counterintuitive. He launched the blog with several posts about Davos — personal takes on the who and why, a bit about his own agenda there. The blog will feel familiar to fans of his long-running “My View” columns and newsletters.

At this point, Green IT Sourcing by Euan Davis and Christopher Mines, is added as a vote of encouragement. Don’t let this one die.

Also, check out Wicked Flavory, a personal blog on local/organic foods, by Kerry Bodine. Hat tip on that one to Jeremiah Owyang, who solicited coworker blogs and faves for submission to Jonny Bentwood’s Top Analyst Blogs.

Company: Greentech Media
Scott Clavenna and (primarily) editor Daniel Englander have been busy blogging at Green Light, an extension to the company’s cleantech/greentech industry media and research.

Company: Guidewire Group
The original company blog has been replaced with The Guidewire, written by CEO Chris Shipley and analyst Carla Thompson. Also, check out Carla’s personal blog, Sharp Skirts.

Company: Jupiter Research
At last, a Jup analyst with a personal blog. John Lovett’s personal blog, Musings on Web Site Technologies and Operations, came to my attention when he criticized and linked to one of my posts.

Company: RedMonk
Greenmonk Associates, a blog by RedMonk James Governor. Hat tip to Jonny Bentwood’s Top 100 Analyst Blogs, for finding this one.

Blogs archived in February

Just one: Chris Shipley’s Guidewire Connection, replaced by the new blog.

This is a community directory. Please help.

On February 29th, the directory contained 267 blog listings. Those with valid feeds are also included in Tekrati’s blog rolls and the directory OPML.

The Tekrati Directory of Analyst Blogs and OPML is a freely available service.

Please support this effort by sharing tips on blogs/bloggers that are missing, acknowledging your use of the directory/OPML as appropriate, and spreading the word.

Thanks!
Barbara

During January, I added 14 blogs to Tekrati’s Directory of Analyst Blogs, moved 2 bloggers to new companies, and archived 10 blogs.

January adds/moves

Some are new, some are newly discovered.

Company: Alfred Poor’s HDTV Resource Center
HDTV Almanac by Alfred Poor

Company: AMR Research
Blogging Phil Fersht came out of the Tekrati archives when he returned to the analyst ranks in January:
The Outsourcing Blog Horses for Sources
IT Services and Outsourcing, hosted at ZDNet

Company: Broadband Directions
Will Richmond replaced the BroadbandVideo360 blog with VideoNuze

Company: Brockmann and Company
Welcome Peter Brockmann to the Tekrati directories. He blogs at Communications

Company: Chilmark Research
John Moore is another analyst who emerged from the Tekrati archives in January. Welcome his new company to the Tekrati directories and catch up at Chilmark Research

Company: Corporate Integrity
Michael Rasmussen moved from Forrester Research to the independent life in December. He’s blogging at: Corporate Integrity, LLC

Company: Farpoint Group
I finally caught up with Craig Mathias’ blog, hosted at Network World: Craig Mathias’s Blog

Company: Forrester Research
Tom Grant joined Forrester and launched the new Forrester blog, Forrester Product Management Blog
James Kobielus, still a poet at heart, made the switch from Current Analysis to Forrester. He blogs on at James Kobielus’ Blog

Company: Gilbane Group
At Gilbane, new practice area = new blog: XML Technologies and Content Strategies, led by Bill Trippe.

Company: Hurwitz & Associates
Marcia Kaufman joined other Hurwitz bloggers: Marcia Kaufman’s Weblog

Company: Monash Research*
Yet another blog by Curt Monash: Strategic Messaging

Company: NPRG
Terry Barnich and Craig Clausen are podcasting. Registration required: NPRG Conversations

Company: Opus Research
A long overdue welcome to Dan Miller and Opus Research. Dan and Greg Sterling blog at Local Mobile Search

Company: Pacific Data Works
Binstock on Software by Andrew Binstock. I had listed him under Camden up until this year.

Company: Storage Strategies Now
Finally, welcome Deni Connor to the official analyst ranks and analyst blogger ranks to boot: Storage Strategies Now

Blogs archived in January

Digital Investor blogs: all listings archived, due to change in business focus
Forrester Applications and Program Management Council: subscription required
3D3G: blogger left Pyramid Research
/Messengers: Stowe Boyd has replaced this particular blog with Facebook presence as an experiment
Semico’s MAP Model blog: replaced by PDF
Peter Lacy’s Weblog: no longer an industry analyst
Anatomy of a Shovel News Feed: Robyn Weisman no longer associated with Beagle Research
Graham Brown’s Journal: company sites taken down for relaunch

This is a community directory. Please help.

On January 31st, the directory contained 259 blog listings. Those with valid feeds are also included in Tekrati’s blog rolls and the directory OPML.

The Tekrati Directory of Analyst Blogs and OPML is a freely available service.

Please support this effort by sharing tips on blogs/bloggers that are missing, acknowledging your use of the directory/OPML as appropriate, and spreading the word.

Thanks!
Barbara

Ed: Corrected “Monash Information Services” to “Monash Research”. 5 Feb 2008.

Several industry analysts leverage their blogs for building business and reputation. When you think about it, blogs are a natural communications tool for achieving many influencer business goals. Assuming that you are already doing what it takes to create a blog worth reading, why not go the extra step to get the most bang — the most marketplace exposure — from the blogging effort?

One tactic that I often recommend to analysts is to syndicate (republish) blogs on 3rd party sites, with appropriate demographics and an appropriate roster of contributors. It’s a good way to ensure that a wider audience encounters the blog.

Here’s the starter list of my personal recommendations. Your comments on the experience of re-publishing on these media sites — plus additions to this list — would be great.

Bloor’s IT-Analysis
eBizIQ
IT Business Edge
ITtoolbox
Knowledgestorm
ZDNet

Some analysts/consultants have banded together for self-syndication. Two examples:
Enterprise Irregulars
Technology Pundits

The one caveat I’d put on this is that syndicating blogs on 3rd party sites complements — but does not replace — fundamental blog presence tactics. I wouldn’t neglect links and feeds at the analyst company website, Tekrati and other directories, Technorati. Plus, no skimping on tagging, blogrolls, participating in blog conversations, trackbacks, and the like.

Carter Lusher, who heads corporate analyst relations for HP, shared some choice and candid insights on the inner workings of big-vendor analyst relations programs at his blog this week. One of the posts is about industry analyst directories.

It takes courage for vendor-dwelling analyst relations professionals to admit that they are not the walking, talking AR equivalent of Burke’s Peerage & Baronetage. If you’ve held an inhouse AR job, or interviewed for one, you know what I’m talking about. The mere mention of an AR job title brings out the name dropper in otherwise rational and likeable people. Management and marketing and sales all expect their AR team to know every analyst who’s “anybody” — and many analysts who haven’t quite “arrived”.

In his post, Carter encourages analysts to cooperate with those of us who publish the analyst directories. I think that’s good advice, but let’s face it, I’m biased. I’ve had some very funny experiences publishing the Tekrati analyst directories.

For example, one up-and-coming analyst company was keen to participate in Analyst Profiles. They just didn’t want to list any of their analysts. I politely responded that it is, in fact, a directory of people. They were equally polite in explaining that yes, they understood all that, and yes, they wanted to be included. They just didn’t want to list their staff. The clincher was that they used that tone of voice — the one analysts use when they decide they’re talking to really dense vendor spokespeople. I laughed so hard, I cried — and decided to find a way to list them. At Tekrati, irony earns its own rewards.

The blogs directory is very slippery. For example, one of my intentions is to require that each blog have at least one named, regularly contributing author. This seemed like a no-brainer. Did you know that several analyst firms consider their blogs authored by their “services”, not by their “people”? Ponder the implications of that.

Most analysts are cooperative with publishers like me. They don’t want to be misrepresented in these directories. Some are adopting open policies toward publishing staff credentials. Some are supportive in other ways.

Of couse, some are real jerks.

More than one analyst has taken the time to let me know that as far as they are concerned, the Tekrati directories — and every other analyst, media, and IT directory — are nothing more than sleazy grifts. I would have been offended, too, but for the biographies and contact info attached to their emails.

Interested in the upshot of that Forrester Research survey that included readership of analyst relations blogs? Well, don’t hold your breath. Sources inside Forrester today confirmed that the survey, which was scooped by the ARmadgeddon blog, was conducted for internal use only. In other words, the survey wasn’t part of Forrester’s market research for clients. It was part of Forrester’s market research for itself. Currently, there are no plans to publish the results. Therein lies the moral of the story.

It’s about time to stop pretending that the roles-based research services are nothing more than packaging exercises. Gartner and Forrester — two of the most powerful market research companies in the high tech world — have declared formal entry into horizontal market segments. They intend to exert greater influence over ICT decisions and deployments, job by job, or role by role.

It’s time to wake up and smell the councils. Is your company in one of the designated “role-based service” horizontals? If so, you may just find you’ve already been included in market research destined not just for publication — but for internal use by the analyst company. Armed with this information, the analyst company is going to do… what?

This roles-based services model puts a new wrinkle in the AR game. Whatever AR blog you read, it’s worth discussing the implications for research cooperation and (as Noorda would’ve said) co-opetition.

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.

Read the rest of this entry »

It’s that time of year again. Time to decide which industry analysts called the shots, gave the answers, and made the time often enough to earn an IT research and advisory contract for 2007. My advice to analysts this year: publish proof points showing your accuracy, timeliness, objectivity, engagement. Put forward some well researched — not just well rehearsed — reasons for us to believe.

Analyst bashups, in general, are nothing new. Historically, the most damage was done by competitive sales teams and word of mouth — the kind of thing you find in any industry. A few journalists would take the time to sleuth planned budgets or controversial practices, and that was pretty much the extent of it.

Blogs have changed the old analyst bashups. More people than ever are publishing anecdotes about smart and not-so-smart analyst opinions, research, forecasts.
Read the rest of this entry »