Comments on: A call to vendors and readers http://federatedsearchblog.com/2009/03/09/a-call-to-vendors-and-readers/ Covers topics related to federated search and the deep web Thu, 15 Mar 2012 12:26:10 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 By: Sol http://federatedsearchblog.com/2009/03/09/a-call-to-vendors-and-readers/comment-page-1/#comment-21228 Sol Fri, 13 Mar 2009 16:09:42 +0000 http://federatedsearchblog.com/2009/03/09/a-call-to-vendors-and-readers/#comment-21228 Sebastian -- I appreciate your kind words and your blunt feedback. Yes, it is difficult to be a Deep Web Technologies vehicle and an industry blog at the same time. I am working on relationship building with vendors and, hopefully, when a couple of vendors get visibility through the blogs others may become more interested. Time will tell. Sebastian — I appreciate your kind words and your blunt feedback. Yes, it is difficult to be a Deep Web Technologies vehicle and an industry blog at the same time. I am working on relationship building with vendors and, hopefully, when a couple of vendors get visibility through the blogs others may become more interested. Time will tell.

]]> By: Sebastian Hammer http://federatedsearchblog.com/2009/03/09/a-call-to-vendors-and-readers/comment-page-1/#comment-21012 Sebastian Hammer Tue, 10 Mar 2009 04:34:58 +0000 http://federatedsearchblog.com/2009/03/09/a-call-to-vendors-and-readers/#comment-21012 Ok, I'll bite. Sol, you write exceedingly well and your blog is an excellent resource for lots of people. I admire folks who have leveraged blogging to help feed and interact with the community around their company, and who thus give something back to that community while also serving a public relationship role. Kudos. My favorite bloggers represent their companies very well exactly because they're not making a sales pitch. They refer back to their employer or sponsor only extremely sparingly. There's a sort of integrity to that which grabs me better than the most carefully crafted line of copy. Other blogs are essentially pure marketing vehicles -- little more than a place to host press releases and canned marketing-speak. Such sites can certainly be interesting if the product is interesting. If I were to offer a critique of your effort -- and this is with the jaundiced eye of another vendor in the space, if not a competitor (we're in the business of manufacturing tools and supplies for other vendors rather than solutions), it would be that this blog is kind of sitting a little bit between two chairs... I think you'd perhaps like to be more product neutral than you are, but this is very clearly a Deep Web vehicle, and if I were to offer a guess as to why you struggle to attract submissions from other players, that would be my guess. That's not to say that you would be anything less than the most gracious host of other people's neat news, but it would still happen in a context that'd feel less than neutral. More sponsors are a possible solution, but, I think, not an absolute necessity. I've seen purely corporate blogs in our space which maintain the appearance of more rigorous 'journalistic firewalls', if you will, and they impress me all the more for it. Congratulations on a fine blog, and I wish you every kind of success. Ok, I’ll bite. Sol, you write exceedingly well and your blog is an excellent resource for lots of people. I admire folks who have leveraged blogging to help feed and interact with the community around their company, and who thus give something back to that community while also serving a public relationship role. Kudos.

My favorite bloggers represent their companies very well exactly because they’re not making a sales pitch. They refer back to their employer or sponsor only extremely sparingly. There’s a sort of integrity to that which grabs me better than the most carefully crafted line of copy.

Other blogs are essentially pure marketing vehicles — little more than a place to host press releases and canned marketing-speak. Such sites can certainly be interesting if the product is interesting.

If I were to offer a critique of your effort — and this is with the jaundiced eye of another vendor in the space, if not a competitor (we’re in the business of manufacturing tools and supplies for other vendors rather than solutions), it would be that this blog is kind of sitting a little bit between two chairs… I think you’d perhaps like to be more product neutral than you are, but this is very clearly a Deep Web vehicle, and if I were to offer a guess as to why you struggle to attract submissions from other players, that would be my guess. That’s not to say that you would be anything less than the most gracious host of other people’s neat news, but it would still happen in a context that’d feel less than neutral.

More sponsors are a possible solution, but, I think, not an absolute necessity. I’ve seen purely corporate blogs in our space which maintain the appearance of more rigorous ‘journalistic firewalls’, if you will, and they impress me all the more for it. Congratulations on a fine blog, and I wish you every kind of success.

]]>