Paparazzi Use Scenarios
Scenario: Looking for and getting a sense of a particular
blogger profile
Byron Bei
Daily Use Scenario
Tuesday morning: 7:30 am
Location: 3rd floor, Byron's small office (with a window)
Byron has just finished skimming the morning press releases and has turned
his attention to what he considers the "real" industry news of the
day: the blogs. He has recently registered for a new service called Paparazzi.
In the process of registering for the site, he has signed up for four watchlists
that are forwarded to his email account: one that tracks the topic of information
visualization, one that tracks the latest enterprise software news, and a
third that just looks for any mention of his company. Byron notices that a
post from a guy named Xavier has appeared in both the info viz list and that
enterprise software list. Byron seems to recall reading something else from
Xavier last week on some charts that the New York Times had on the presidential
primaries. Both posts were well written, analytical, and insightful. Furthermore,
both linked extensively to a host of resources, such as sites, .pdfs that
looked like research studies, and other blogs.
Intrigued, Byron goes to the Paparazzi site with the intention of learning
more about Xavier and what he knows about info viz, business intelligence
software, or both. Byron looks up Xavier's blog using Paparazzi's blog finder.
He finds a blog profile that includes information on Xavier's readership,
such as statistics or other metrics, and writing topics. Byron observes that
Xavier has a decent sized readership, but is more curious about the type of
readers than just the numbers. Byron considers clicking through to Xavier's
blog site to see the posted comments, but decides to investigate on Paparazzi
a little more.
Using Paparazzi's conversation trackers, Byron can see who has been linking
to Xavier's post and how the conversation has progressed. He can also see
how it connects to related conversations through other blogs. Byron quickly
scans through the connecting blogs and realizes that some of them are frequent
writers on his enterprise software list. Byron doesn't have the time right
now to go through the whole conversation as it's already 8:45 and he has a
9:00 am meeting to get to. So, he saves this conversation for future reference.
On impulse, he adds Xavier to his list of blogs to track.
Byron sees that it's time to get that report printed for his meeting. He
switches to his email client, finds that email that he ignored earlier this
morning. He prints the email in the attachment, grabs his half full cup of
cold coffee, and runs off to the printer. On the way, he can't stop wondering
if Xavier may be the marketing resources he's been looking for.
Scenario: Monitoring specific topics
Sunday morning: 11:30 am
Location: Headquarters for Assemblyman Smith's Gubernatorial Campaign
David Dursley gets up every morning and reads his blog subscriptions over
a bowl of corn flakes. This reading gives him enough to think about when he's
on the bus, riding downtown to campaign headquarters. Every Wednesday, there
is a meeting with the candidate, and Dursley opens this meeting with a rundown
of the latest campaign "news" (read: gossip). He is trying to run
a progressive campaign, utilizing the Internet as a tool to gather voters.
Today, being a Wednesday, is a very busy day for David. He is using his customized
Paparazzi setup to organize his presentation. He needs to find out how many
links his candidate's blog (SmithforCalifornia.com) is getting from other
blogs, as well as its actual readership levels. Smith's opponent also has
a blog (ReElectTheGovernator.com), and so Dursley also monitors the links
and readershp of this blog as well. He specifically needs to know how his
candidate is viewed out in the wild, so today he is writing a short report
on the perceptions the authoritative bloggers have of the candidate. He has
bookmarked a Paparazzi page devoted to his candidate and uses it to find the
most authoritative blogs. David follows the conversations between blogs, reading
and taking notes on his legal pad. He notes that blogs with large audiences
are starting to link to the smaller grass-roots blogs that he has been monitoring
for months. "This will be great news," he thinks to himself.
Dursley copies a few blog entries into a blank document, as he plans to pass
this out at the meeting. Just as he gets up to go to pick up the printouts,
he remembers to check his candidates blog ranking. Up 10 notches!
Scenario: Monitoring specific blogs
Tuesday afternoon: 2:00 pm
Location: Home Office
Abigail Rhode’s weekday restaurant review was published
this morning in the paper, and on her paper’s website. She publishes two
to three reviews a week, typically on Tuesdays and Fridays, though sometimes
in the Sunday magazine, she writes a more general food review with recommendations
on specialty items, and recipes of restaurants she profiles in that more magazine-ish
piece. She’s set up her daily Paparazzi news watchlists to arrive by around
2pm, the time when enough remarks have been made about her work that she can
gage the blog public’s reaction to her work. She also plans her weekend
forays to interesting growers, farmer’s markets and food shops, and so
watches food topic blogs for this information as well.
It’s exhilarating, but also terrifying, this habit
of reading through the conversations her readers have made to talk about her
column. She makes notes about possible reactions she might put into her columns
to both critics and fans. She will think about it for a while, reread those
posts, but it’s become a habit this responding to blogs. She takes to
heart the suggestions by readers that believe she missed important parts of
the restaurant experience and uses her customized Paparazzi setup to organize
posts she finds relevant to her work. She notes the number of people linking
to her column today, and the number citing her name in posts overall. They may
be critical, but she and column are hot topics.
- Set up watchlist for 2pm daily delivery to watch herself
and references to her columns, and foodie news.
- Read her readers reactions to her, her column, and related foodie news
and information
- Look at food blogs such as ChocolateandZucchini.com and
SauteWednesday conversations for latest foodie news and pointers to new ingredients,
recipes, restaurants and industry news.
- Follow conversations, reviewing Paparazzi’s list
of links to an author and their blogs to check out authority.
- Check out her competition: the food reviewer at the other
newspaper in the area is also discussed in food blogs and so she watches references
to his work as well.
- Notes a conversation where his recent review of a small local restaurant
was in direct opposition to the latest Zagat’s which came out just
after the review. He then re-reviewed, and bloggers took note of his reaction
to the people’s review.
- Notes that these kinds of interactions between traditional and non-traditional
media are becoming more common.
- Think about what it would mean for her to blog, and decides to discuss
this with her editor. The blog focus would include information that is
non-traditional and therefore not appropriate for her traditional newspaper
column, and yet interesting for her foodie fans.
Scenario - Browsing for information on a specific research
need
Sunday morning: 1:30 am
Location: Serena's studio apartment
Serena is deep in thought, but nearly dozing off. She's been up way past
her bedtime the last few nights trying to find inspiration for a new research
topic. There is a stack of education journals on the floor next to her desk,
none of which provided any great ideas. She went to the journals first, as
they are the most authoritative source in her field. But since they didn't
seem to provide any help, Serena decides to see what her fellow students have
been discussing online in their blogs. She has been using the Paparazzi service
to monitor education blogs, so she pulls up that watchlist.
Serena knows that her friends' blogs are listed in the Paparazzi directory,
and often show up in topic searches on education issues, as several of them
are very respected bloggers. She browses the 'Education' themed blogs, but
decides that she doesn't have time to read them all (since it is getting late).
She sorts the blogs by the hottest topics, in the hopes that maybe some new
policy news has come out that she isn't aware of. The topics shown don't appeal
that much to Serena, simply because it looks like a lot of these are being
discussed by people who don't know much about education policy, and the reliability
of sources is important to her. She goes back to the list of blogs and picks
one by an author she knows personally, a professor at a major research institution
and university. Serena quickly skims his entries, along with the entries posted
by those responding to her friend. One of these responses is very intriguing!
She follows up by reading the entire response, and then begins reading this
man's blog, taking note of the large number of other blogs that link to his
blog as listed on Paparazzi. "He definitely has an interesting perspective,"
Serena thinks to herself. She adds his blog to her watchlist on Paparazzi,
and heads to bed--but first making a note to send the author an e-mail with
some questions about his views, as Serena thinks that there is definitely
some research to be done in this area.
Scenario: A blog "superstar" monitors topics,
specific blogs, and links to his own blog
Jon Taxen
Daily Use Scenario
Sunday night: 11pm
Location: Bedroom computer at home
Jon Taxen is surfing the blogs, his usual reads, as well
as mainstream media. He’s working on a post, and wants to see what others
have been saying on the same topic. He’s found those blogs via trackbacks
and with other blogger’s blogrolls, but he’s well aware that trackback
doesn’t work well and so he has trouble finding all the times people link
to him in their conversations about his topics: gadget-geekery, new technology,
gaming, programming and blogging. He keeps up by visiting the same blogs every
day, and yet, he thinks, there must be a better way to know who’s talking
about what, and where to find them.
Visiting a blog one day, he notes a post that talks about
Paparazzi, a new blogging aggregation tool. He visits the site, discovering
that he can put the url of his blog into their search tool and – exciting!
– see who’s linking to him. Jon also finds that if he “claims”
his blog, he can get a notification every time other blogs link to him. He can
also set up lists to monitor his favorite topics or to follow other blogs.
- Join the Paparazzi members area, list his blog, and insert
a small piece of code into the sidebar of his blog, so that each new post
will notify the Paparazzi service for immediate inclusion into the conversations
listed there.
- Noting again the links to his blog, he’s realized there is a whole
world of conversation going on, that he was halfway apart of because they
were speaking to him, and now he can finally find them and join in.
- Set up watchlists for various key word searches and other blog communities.
He plays with Paparazzi’s search tool, to see what kinds of results
come up, before using just the right combination of words to get the kind
of conversations that matter to him.
- He then adds the Paparazzi watchlist output via XML to his news aggregator,
so that he can read the watchlist results as he reads other blogs and
news feeds he subscribes to during the day and evening.
- After seeing the aggregator results of his watchlist choices,
Jon realizes that reaching his goals for becoming a writer and making money
through his blog may be closer than he thought, not to mention enlarging his
circle of friends and colleagues, and learning some new programming and tech
skills from these people.