Seventy-three people visited this blog yesterday. 73. It doesn't seem like a very big or significant number, certainly not compared to megablogs that have tens of thousands of visitors daily. But considering I started in January with one visitor per day, that's pretty impressive to me. It adds up to more people hearing what I have to say than when I worked as a disk jockey in Clare, Michigan in the mid-1980s. Lets just say more cows listened to the farm reports than farmers.

Is it coming to an end already, though? An article by Newsweek's Tony Dokoupil this week suggests that the cacophony of amateur bloggers and videographers cluttering up the Web 2.0 landscape may be quieted by a new wave of authoritative, expert-driven online information sources.

Fueling all this podium worship is the potential for premium audiences—and advertising revenue. "The more trusted an environment, the more you can charge for it," says Mahalo founder Jason Calacanis, a former AOL executive who was previously involved with several Web start-ups. It's also easier to woo advertisers with the promise of controlled content than with hit-and-miss blog blather. "Nobody wants to advertise next to crap," says Andrew Keen, author of "The Cult of the Amateur," a jeremiad against the ills of the unregulated Web.

It's unquestionably loud out here in the wild Intarweb, with all the blogs and YouTube videos and podcasts on every subject under the sun. Maybe we could use a few people who really know what they're talking about (and don't worry, I'm one of the authoritative experts - it says so on my "Authoritative Expert" certificate). As I've asked before, what happens to real news gathering and reporting when everyone's a blogger?

Much of the desire for "expert" online sources is driven by money. As Calacanis and Keen correctly observe, advertisers want a more defined list of well-trafficked sites in order to get reliable sources of consumer eyeballs. So the rise of sites like Knol and Mahalo - with content edited by professionals with experience in their particular subject - isn't surprising. What's surprising and a bit disheartening is how quick the proponents of these "authoritative" sites are to dismiss the millions of other voices that are now part of the virtual conversation, whether they create one blog post or podcast or video a day, or one a month.

Don't get me wrong here. I prefer to get my news from authoritative sources. I read The New York Times' website daily. I enjoy Mark Halperin's "The Page" political blog on Time.com. I have several other "old media" news feeds in my Google Reader list.

But I also enjoy the free-wheeling and at times scatterbrained approach of the "amateurs." Often a personal blogger will highlight a topic I wouldn't have read about otherwise. Sometimes they have a different point-of-view that I hadn't considered, or which isn't usually covered by the authoritative media. Every now and then a blogger makes me stop long enough to actually think hard about a subject, because it's personal to them in a way that traditional media seldom is. Thinking creates progress, and that's why all the new voices are important.

It's not one or the other, and it's misguided to think all of the amateur voices will go away if faced with more competition from authoritative media sites. We have the tools to easily self-publish our most insightful - and our most banal - opinions. The same tools give professional, expert writers a chance to directly connect, immediately and in a very powerful way, with their audiences. I don't see it as the rise and fall of the amateur, but rather an expansion of an positive, worldwide discussion of issues important to everyone.

Or maybe not everyone, but only 73 people a day.

Photo illustration by Konrad Mostert, Wuppertal, Germany, from sxc.hu

I enjoyed an interview Valeria Maltoni did with broadcast journalist and podcaster Albert Maruggi recently. The podcast and a short transcript of the interview are in a post on her "Conversation Agent" blog.

Albert is the host of the long-running (four years - an geologic era by Internet reckoning) podcast "Marketing Edge," He and Valeria discussed the changing new media landscape. Here are a few highlights that got me nodding in agreement, followed by a link to Valeria's full post.

The whole concept of being social. You and I meeting each other. There is DNA, we are wired as humans to connect - to say we share this planet. Let alone the fact that we are both Italian, writers, and work in marketing and all the other things we may have in common and have yet to find out. At the essence of social media is the need for the human spirit to connect.

Herein lies the challenge for marketers. They are struggling to live in this environment because their mindset is to sell something. And the social media mindset is tell something, share something. The struggle we will have as a profession, as marketers, and the struggle capitalism will have as a culture is how do I participate with a group of people that are of like mind without understanding the benefit to me? In some ways that is a selfish benefit to me.

And...

Anyone at any point in time can have an influential idea. Just because they don't have 10,000 people listening to them or reading, it doesn't mean that they can't have an influential idea. The ability to find that influential idea is important. Just be out there and participate. Jump in the pool so you can become part of the conversation.

New Media - from Radio Broadcasting to Podcasting - by Valeria Maltoni from Conversation Agent

Not all conversations are friendly. Real life conversations can be confrontational, angry, and unpleasant. We often talk with someone who has an opinion different from ours. At the end of the conversation we may have changed each other's minds, or we may come away convinced we never want to talk to that person again.

Virtual conversations are no different, they're just a lot bigger. Anyone can read the conversation and add their own take on the topic by commenting, or they can explain their feelings in a post on their own blog. These conversations are worth having because they put ideas on the virtual table to discuss, and when ideas are being discussed, good things can happen.

An example from today: Mahalo CEO and founder Jason Calacanis wrote a post on his blog on Friday titled "How to save money running a startup (17 really good tips)." Duncan Riley posted a response on TechCrunch shortly thereafter titled "Calacanis fires people who have a life." I'm not going to go in the details of the conversation itself, you can do that by clicking on the links if you haven't already read them.

This real time "virtual conversation" between Calacanis and Riley, made up of their original blog posts, plus many comments on both writers' posts and many other blogs weighing in on the subject, wasn't possible a few years ago. The widespread development and acceptance of social media technology like blogs has created these large-scale conversations. The conversation - and conflict - between the two men was significant enough to make the top of Techmeme's headline list on Friday evening.

I believe it's a positive thing to be able to have a conversation discussing workplace expectations and environment. In the past, someone might have written an article for a magazine on the subject, then people would discuss it around the water cooler or perhaps write a letter to the editor for the next issue (do you read letters to the editor?). Now, however, we have a full-blown debate going on over the pros and cons of what Jason Calacanis believes is the ideal workplace versus what Duncan Riley thinks that workplace should be. It's a bit chaotic, but it does drive a topic to the front of our collective priority list, at least for a short time. In the end, maybe we end up changing each other's minds a little - or we may decide never to read anything either of them writes ever again.

It's an exciting time to be involved with the technologies that make this virtual conversation possible. Employees, customers and prospects are all looking for businesses and organizations that are participating in this upheaval of personal communications. It's time to ask: Am I part of the conversation?

Photo credit: Marcello eM, Poland, sxc.hu

Do you enjoy wine? I don't drink a lot of it myself, I'm more of a beer drinker, but I do like a nice chianti now and then (fava beans optional).

If you enjoy Italian wines, though, a new site called VinoWire.com launched today that's dedicated to bringing you news from Italy's vineyards. The site is a product of what the press release calls a "trans-Atlantic virtual conversation" between Italian wine critic Franco Ziliani and American wine historian and translator Jeremy Parzen. They thought that the North American, English-speaking audience would benefit from an online collaboration between the two men, bringing readers up-to-date news about Italian wines.

"Regrettably," note Ziliani and Parzen, "much of the news that makes the crossing to North American loses something in translation: As a twentieth-century Italian poet once said, there is no greater misunderstanding than the Atlantic Ocean."

Another collaboration that would have been much more difficult a few years ago.

Judith Hizer of the South Bend Tribune wants to know: Are blogs silly?

She's mostly talking about personal blogs. She describes the benefits of having more voices in the mix:

I think of blogs as sort of an extension of conversations with my friends. Only bloggers also are letting people they don’t know into their world. They’re striking up a virtual conversation with people who may connect with a subject, and give a little feedback — maybe even a different perspective. And I’m not so sure that’s a bad thing. We can get terribly insulated in our little bubbles — our family, friends, and those people who think like us. It’s nice reach beyond that comfort zone and “listen” to other “voices.”

I like that, and not just because she mentioned virtual conversations.

You have to log in to the paper's site to leave a comment, but if you're motivated to, here's the link:

SouthBendTribune.com - Judith Hizer - Are Blogs Silly?