Photo courtesy Thor Swift/Wired.com

Found on the Wired blogs. Google’s Udi Manber spends endless time thinking about how search can be improved. One big reason many searches don’t succeed, he believes, is that despite the 20 billion or so Web pages in Google’s indexes — including the 2 million items in Wikipedia — the information simply isn’t there.

“The process will take 20 seconds with credit cards,” says Knol product manager Cedric Dupont. Phone checks will take a minute or so. This vetting, Manber hopes, will give knols accountability and, in the case of high-status authors, the benefit of a solid reputation.

Update: Here’s Knol from Google.

In his article Rich Men in Uniform, Christopher Tennant details the looks of a handful of the world’s most powerful men. Interestingly enough, these billionaires seem to stick with the same dressed-down looks, no matter the occasion.

Apple’s Steve Jobs prefers the soccer dad classics of a mock turtleneck, Levi’s 501 jeans and white sneakers while grocery store kingpin Ron Burkle looks the part of a weekend warrior in his unchanging black Ralph Lauren polo, boot-cut jeans and classic black Chuck Taylors.

Perhaps the lesson to be learned is that when you’re a billionaire many times over, you have nothing to prove to anyone. And, you probably have bigger fish to fry than trying to decide which pair of handmade Italian loafers you should wear.

If you want to have a truly great blog, transparency is a must. Yes, that’s a bold statement, but it really is the cornerstone of building a solid following.

WHAT IS TRANSPARENCY?

1. Transparency is about being trustworthy.

The easiest way to earn a reader’s trust is to tell the truth. Dave Allen states simply that ‘Being authentic means [that] the blog’s author is a “trusted source” and this trust can never be abused.’ The last thing a blogger should do is fake it because inevitably they will get caught and called out. Once your image is tarnished, it may be close to impossible to regain that former glory. The internet nearly guarantees that past sins will live on forever.

2. Transparency is about being upfront about your sources and affiliations.

If your post is influenced by a promotion or advertising agreement, always practice full disclosure. “Pay per post” takes place when a blogger is offered products or cash to promote an advertiser in their articles. Going down this road can be tricky if you aren’t upfront about it and it has the potential of alienating readers. Clearly differentiate your main content from that of which is paid (and make it clear if there’s any crossover between the two). Most readers understand that bloggers have to make a living too, but it should be an honest living.

3. Transparency is about being upfront with who you are and why you’re blogging.

Give your ‘About’ page some serious thought. After spending some quality time on your site, readers will probably want to know more about you.

Also, what are your reasons for blogging? Are you trying to make new friends? Is your goal to gain new clients for your business? Do you want to earn enough ad revenue to turn your blogging into a full-time job? Is your aim to make new connections in your industry? The more open you are with your readers about what you plan on gaining, the more trusting they will be to what you have to offer.

AVOID CENSORSHIP UNLESS ABSOLUTELY NECESSARY

One of the biggest slip-ups that bloggers can make is to censor those who want to interact in a two-way conversation. The Opinionated Marketers are right when they say that “It’s one thing to write a blog saying great things about a celebrity (or a company or a product). But if you’re going to invite the public to participate, you need to be ready for the bad as well as the good.”

Dave Allen expands upon this concept by explaining that “once a company [or person] opens the doors, it can not close them. If a company starts a blog [and it should] it can not moderate the comments. And the CEO and other executives should not be contributing to the blog if they do not have the right “authority” or “voice”. By that, I mean authenticity. It’s an overused word at times but in the right context, it is completely accurate. If a CEO were to jump on the blog to blow her own trumpet non-critically about a company’s service or product, the readers would see through it immediately.”

Many of the popular bloggers today with massive followings have done so through developing a personal connection with their readers. When readers trust the blogger’s ‘voice,’ chances are that they will want to contribute to an ongoing conversation via comments, email and possibly even a follow-up article on their own blog. For a real conversation to occur, both sides need to be allowed to communicate. Silencing one of the sides won’t allow that organic conversation to develop.

There are times when the deletion of a comment should be considered, but this stance should be practiced sparingly. Obscene comments that contain no value to the conversation and attacks on fellow commenters may warrant action, but if you let everything else flow, chances are that the people who are really passionate about what you do will jump in and defend you.

Transparency can’t be bought and it can’t be earned overnight. Transparency takes equal amounts of time and honesty to develop and is worth its weight in gold. Because, with transparency comes trust and respect. And, with trust and respect, loyal fans will follow. And, with loyal fans, a tight-knit base for your brand credibility evolves.

Other than an elongated literary adventure through Cormac McCarthy’s ‘Border Trilogy,’ reading ‘All The Pretty Horses,’ ‘The Crossing’ and ‘Cities of the Plain’ in the summer of 2005, followed in 2006 by reading McCarthy’s masterpiece, the aweful ‘Blood Meridian‘ [and I use aweful by way of its true Middle English definition - "Filled with awe, especially: 1. Filled with or displaying great reverence.",] I’m not inclined to reading novels. McCarthy’s ‘The Road’ and ‘No Country For Old Men’ were both outstanding and Martin Amis turns out great work but I prefer non-fiction; currently I am buried in E.O.Wilson’s ‘Consilience’, re-reading Robert Wright’s ‘The Moral Animal’ and am halfway through John Gray’s ‘Al Qaeda And What It Means To Be Modern’ having finally finished his ‘Straw Dogs: Thoughts On Humans and Other Animals’ for the third time. This summer’s less than light reading list just grew by two - the Amazon package today contained John Gray’s ‘Black Mass: Apocalyptic Religion and The Death Of Utopia,’ and ‘Heresies: Against Progress And Other Illusions.’

Otherwise I’m keeping an eye on the Madonna - Guy Ritchie marital farce.

This might work. Let’s not forget that women/sex always sells. I found the ad on one of my favorite spill-the-beans web sites, Hipster Runoff. Although why the thong needs to be organic I have no idea….

I’ve been a proponent of the Long Tail theory since stumbling upon Chris Anderson’s blog of the same name. Reading the book affirmed some thoughts I’d had about how certain niche products found a life online that they most certainly would not have found in a regular bricks and mortar retail outlet.

Granted, because of my background in online music distribution the theory immediately appealed to me. I saw it as an idea that would help unlock the gatekeepers stranglehold over the discovery of music either as CDs or legal music files. Those gatekeepers being terrestrial radio, the record companies and online music retailers such as iTunes who wrapped their music files with DRM.

A simple explanation of the Long Tail theory is that the internet gives us unparalleled access to more products across the “tail” and doesn’t just expose us to those mass products at the “head.” It suggests that people are willing to search and pull a song from say, Tortoise, an alternative music outfit that sells modestly, rather than sit back and be bombarded by iTunes trying to sell them, or push, a song from Coldplay. As the theory goes, Tortoise could make a living selling its music vertically in its slice of the tail.

Like any good theory it is open to question and discussion. This is where Anita Elberse steps in with her article in the Harvard Business Review entitled ‘Should You Invest in The Long Tail?’ Meanwhile Chris Anderson has been gracious enough to accept the challenge to his theory by responding to it on his blog.

I need to spend time with the article as it is not only lengthy but includes a lot of data and links to sources, as well as concluding with advice to different businesses on how or not to include the Long Tail in their marketing efforts. Anderson’s responses will take some digestion too. Perspective and insight is required before comment. That’s why it’s frustrating to me that people like Lee Gomes of the Wall Street Journal’s Portals column has jumped in gleefully accusing Wired magazine [where Chris Anderson is Editor-In-Chief] of having a “template” where they “take a partly true, modestly interesting, tech-friendly idea and puff it up to Second Coming proportions.”

Gomes is of course allowed his opinion of Wired magazine articles but I wonder if he has really had time to read and digest Elberse’s paper as well as study Anderson’s responses. It’s also odd that he blames bloggers for “talking up the theory, which is no wonder considering how it held out the promise that even the most obscure among them could win a robust audience.” As a columnist for the WSJ he has been happily debunking the Long Tail theory since it inception as he did in this article from July 2006. Is he more fearful of the Long Tail theory or of the bloggers who may gain audience share along the tail away from the WSJ head?

Whatever the outcome of the debate between Elberse and Anderson I doubt that there will be immediate agreement on the benefits or not of the Long Tail. One things for sure, it is way too soon to be joyfully jumping upon its supposed grave.