Great advertising is back, with the cream of the crop of social advertising, on a fantastic relaunch by Marc van Gurp and his new team (where i’m now proudly included).

Osocio features a new branding and a complete redesign, with several additions such as NGO’s profiles, latest news and agenda or a dictionary on social advertising terms, wraps the previous outstanding content, with advertising that inspires us all.

Whenever you find a great campaign, contact me or post a link to my del.icio.us (for:thedlab) so we could keep Outlust the best website on social advertising (not the Zuckerberg kind). Or join us on Twitter or at Facebook groups Social Advertising and Osocio.

So here’s what Osocio is all about:

Osocio is dedicated to social advertising and non-profit campaigns. It’s the place where marketing and activism collide. Formerly known as the Houtlust Blog, Osocio is the central online hub for advertisers, ad agencies, grassroots, activists, social entrepreneurs, and good Samaritans from around the globe.

Despite there being hundreds of other ad blogs on the web, Houtlust stood out by focusing exclusively on social advertising. Unlike commercial advertising, which only attempts to influence purchase decisions, non-profit ads seeks to connect us with other human beings. Social advertising has an uncanny power to make us stop, think and then take action to help a person, or a group of people, who we don’t even know, who might be from a foreign culture, living thousands of miles away. And for that reason we celebrate these ads, study them and discuss them at length. We hope you will too.

Created by Marc van Gurp in October 2005, Houtlust began as a personal collection of non-profit ads. Originally the site was only written in Dutch, with no thoughts of a wider audience. But the demand for an English version quickly grew. The tiny niche blog got bigger and bigger. And it wasn’t long before Houtlust became known as the authoritative reference of non-profit advertising for the ad industry and socially minded people everywhere.

In the spring of 2007 discussions started on how to take Houtlust to the next level. Interactive agency Onstuimig and branding agency Alef de Jong were quick to volunteer their services to help with the re-brand and re-launch of new website. The result of this cooperation is where you are now: Osocio.

Osocio is more then a blog. It’s a complete resource for all things in the world of non-profit and social messaging. It’s a platform for global and local social issues, both large and small. It’s a community of social thinkers and marketing do-gooders.

While Houtlust was curated by one person (Marc van Gurp), Osocio has several contributors, each of whom are specialists in a specific field of the diverse non-profit sector. We are glad to welcome these experts to the Osocio team (see below).

Of course, we have our own ideas on how to make the world a better place. However, Osocio promises to never push any political agenda of its own. The campaigns we publish in no way directly express our personal stance on a specific issue. Our focus is solely on the communication of social messages.

If you feel you can collaborate in any shape or form, please contact us. We’re always keen on new social campaigns. So please send us the non-profit marketing you’ve been working on, or the work of your agency, along with news, links or tips.

Lucky bastards these folks. Four groups of friends started a journey from Tarifa (Spain) to Murmansk (Russia) with no idea whatsoever of their track and only with 1.400Euros on their pockets.

The 12 spanish backpackers are documenting their journey of a lifetime on blogs (Group Uno, Dos, Tres, Quatro), sharing their experiences and allowing others to comment to help them along.

One of the journey videos, uploaded by Group One

With one of my friends doing the same kind of trip on his own (hope you’re doing well Pedro), i wish he could send updates so often as these groups. Blogs are becoming one of the favorite ways to keep connected, thanks to today’s easy publishing of video and text. Although this trip is co-sponsored by Bacardi, i believe that the tourism industry (in Portugal the most) would greatly benefit if they started to provide digital platforms so their clients could share their holiday memories.

URL: www.murmanskroutebacardi.com
Client: Bacardi
Agency: Seisgrados

Nice to know that portuguese brands are spreading some link love to from national bloggers. Rather than the usual top 100 blogs, the portuguese brewery, is awarding the best portuguese blog with €3000.

From the site:
“Super Bock Super Blog Awards are a tribute to you and all those who celebrate every day the portuguese language and the freedom of speech, helping to create a new Internet, a Web 2.0. Let’s make our own blog party in Portugal, awarding the importance of this (…) platform”.

“With this initiative, Super Bock intends to promote the best Blogs, and invite all portuguese to be part of our national online identity”

There’s not much of a chance for me to win, since they only allow portuguese written blogs. Go figure.
Anyway, if you’re a portuguese blogger, go ahead and register your blog.

My favourite blogging tool has shipped their latest release. Features include:

• Native tagging support (and imports UltimateTagWarrior)
• Plugin update notification (time saver!)
• Canonical URLs (SEO’s rejoice)
• Libraries updated: jQuery, TinyMCE, Prototype and script.aculo.us
• New taxonomy system (beware plugin authors)
• Improved Post and Draft Management
• Pending Review (great for multiauthor blogs)
• Unfiltered uploads (smells like security trouble)

Don’t forget to check plugin compatibility, if you’re planning to upgrade.
Looks like i’ll be having a busy weekend.

After having been scouted byBlogger’s Choice Awards for Best Marketing Blog, i’ve now been tagged by “The Marketer” and others, as part of the honorable mention list at Power 150, a global ranking of top English-language Marketing Blogs.

Another portuguese author is also there, the ever inspiring planner Sergio Santos of The Hidden Persuader, but way above me at #64. Hey, i’ve been around for less than a year, so i guess i’m doing fine for a rookie, don’t you think so? At least it’s been a hell of a ride so far, joining Feedurner’s Marketing and Advertising Network, becoming part of crew at Prt.sc, exchanging knowledge with peers and standing on the shoulder of some giants.

Having started more focused on digital marketing, this blog has gradually been expanding to broader themes, including the more mainstream “conversational marketing”, with some insights on traditional advertising and with special attention to what i like to call future marketing.

With online advertising playing an important role last year (specially the big deals by MS and Google), more eyes have been wondering around here. Except for those folks that keep bringing thousands of hits when searching for the “Heroes Soundtrack”. Well, no problem, i guess search engines are building their own long tail at this blog.

Back to the honorable mentions, Gordon Whitehead spreads some link love amongst the bloggers below #150. I’ve tried to do a bit more than that, and actually visited every single one of them (but skimming through the overcrowded PR ones), so here are my own honorable mentions:

• One of my favourite topics at Ageless Marketing
• If i was a agency planner, i would be reading this one
• but I’m more like David, with a little more restraining speaking about client work.
• Just in case any crisis comes along
• Novell’s CMO is blogging
• Poor template. Never mind. Great content
• A regular at my feed reader: Ogilivy PR
• Tasty marketing thoughts at eSoup
• Fine writing at BrandTarot
• Leo Burnett, blogging from Toronto
• Brand storms from the corporate blog of Durbin Media Group
• Well, that’s a fresh view:theclientsideblog.com
• Connecting the dots at Digital Influence Mapping
• Taking notes at the marketing community
• more hot-wiring ideas with mindblob
• Juicy posts at Influence 2.0
• Word-Of-Mouth turns academic with Walter Carl
• The movie of marketing or the marketing of movies?
• More free ebooks, Chip! (pardonthedisruption.com)
• More goodies from Canada
• More conversation
• Bryan know stuff
• Get your hands on these email marketing tips
• if i hadn’t a blog, i would be writing for you guys (specially with such a similar tag line)
• Ernie Schenck, calling advertising
• Adverlicio.us: a longtime favorite Online Advertising collection

I questioned Todd why some blogs sponsored by large media companies are included, and i have to agree with him when he says “every blog should be listed no matter who they’re sponsored by because all blogs benefit the reader”. But the real problem with this particular list is that it just ruined my feed reader, with a lot more blogs added and fewer sleeping hours.

So now I really have to THANK YOU, dear readers, for pushing me to keep writing and inspiring for almost one year. If this blog reaches the top 150 next year, then it’s because we both had fun at this humble place.

So don’t forget to visit the coolest blog from the list!
(Hey, sometimes we need to indulge ourselves a bit, right?)

Today’s marketers need to integrate crowdsourcing, co-creation and collaboration as part of their vocabulary, as Drew McLellan, Gavin Heaton and fellow co-authors seem to do, successfully releasing their book “The Age of The Conversation” yesterday, a 3 month collaboration between 100 bloggers.

The resulting book, The Age of Conversation, brings together over 100 of the world’s leading marketers, writers, thinkers and creative innovators in a ground-breaking and unusual publication. And in the spirit of conversation, you can follow-up and extend your interest in the topics covered in the book at the Age of Conversation blog — www.ageofconversation.com.

With articles by personal favourites such as Greg Verdino, Cord Silverstein, David Polinchock, Richard Huntington, Tom Fishburne, Gareth Kay or Roger from Creative Think, the book has also some interesting contributions such as a google map with all the authors or the cover by the ever inspiring David Armano.

Over 100 of the world’s leading marketers contributed with a chapter, with part of the profits going to a children’s charity fund. As i’m inclined to save some trees (and it’s cheaper), i’ll get myself an electronic version at lulu.com/ageofconversation.

It’s not as big as Wikipedia, but it’s a damn fine example of “architecture of participation“.

You probably have already visited some of the blogs at 9rules or Weblogs, Inc but have you ever stopped to think about what makes a blog network ?
Let me answer that … well, I’m getting myself in trouble in trying to define a concept that even Wikipedia hasn’t answered, but at least I’ll give it a try.

Basic Conditions

First thing first, the network members should write blogs, in the form of a daily journal with original content updated regularly. If we agree on this obvious premise, that immediately excludes networks such as MyBlogLog or social bookmark services such as Digg. Also excluded are multi-author blogs since these are themselves a author network.

My second premise is they should have some sort of quality control, with a human authority determining which blogs are included and assuring premium content, leaving out networks such as Blogger.
Following the same line of thought, but with a more technical focus, the network should not enforce any platform or domain name, leaving out Wordpress.com or Instablogs for example. Both power and identity should be distributed across the community, so it makes no sense to require members to adhere to a particular set of tools.

One thing I’m not considering is the quality of blog content as a determining factor, since it’s subjective and biased to each network.

Having focused on the blog side of things I’m moving now into the network aspects. One thing that arises above all aspects is the community building, the conversational network, the bonds that establish between the blog members, way besides link-baiting or SEO concerns. I truly believe that you can only become a blog network if the members are passionate about it, help each other and feel responsible for the future of the network. One example that stands out amongst all them is 9 rules, that has a devoted community, greatly supportive of the network initiatives.

Being a network also means that you are able to aggregate information or have a global overview of content stream, whether through aggregating portals or tools such as widgets or rss feeds, allowing readers to browse the blogs from a nuclear location. That alone leaves a big player such as Gawker out, that I’ll rather classify as a media network.

As Duncan puts it, these are my basic criteria for being considered a blog network:

• network members are individual blog authors
• admission isn’t automated but based of human judgment
• network does not enforce publishing platform
• encourages community building
• nuclear aggregation of content

Classification

If a blog network complied with the previous conditions, then it could fit in one (or many) of these classifications:

• Category Network: network members write mostly about a particular topic. Examples include SBNation, a blog network discussing sports;
• Affiliated Network: that shares a common feature between bloggers: Example includes Prt.sc, where all authors are Portuguese;
• Local Network: members write about local subjects, geographically determined. Example includes MetroBlogging;
• Commercial Network:Network generating revenue to their members either through advertising revenues or paying their authors for published content. Examples include b5media.⁽¹⁾

Advantages

• For Blog authors: they apply or are invited to become part of a blog network with the perspective of increasing their audience and gain some additional advertising revenue;
• For Blog network owners/promoters: with dimension comes personal visibility and advertising opportunities;
• For Readers: they can find good blogs on a particular topic (by aggregation or hyperlinking between network members), a task increasingly difficult with today’s information overloa;.

One thing i must address here is that a blog network that doesn’t promote their own internal community (blog authors) has few chances of being successful, since no synergies or innovation occurs.

Ranking

Although some have tried to rank blog networks, there is much work to be done. Weblogs SL from Spain is in the right path by distributing metrics provided by third media parties (Nielsen Netratings), and it would be interesting if there was some way to judge blog network reach and frequency besides Technorati or Alexa.

List of Blog Networks

• 451 Press, http://www.451press.com
• 9 Rules, http://9rules.com
• Corante, http://www.corante.com
• Fodder Network, http://www.foddernetwork.com
• MetroBlogging, http://www.metroblogging.com
• Podcast Network, http://www.thepodcastnetwork.com
• Prt.Sc (Portugal), http://www.prt.sc
• SBNation, http://www.sbnation.com
• ShinyMedia, http://www.shinymedia.com
• Web2.0 Workgroup, http://www.web20workgroup.com
• Weblogs Inc, http://www.weblogsinc.com
• Weblogs SL (Spain), http://www.weblogssl.com
• TC Magazines Network (Germany), http://www.tcmagnet.com/

(*) Note: the list above is incomplete, so feel free to suggest any other networks that meet the criteria.

References

• http://tihane.wordpress.com/2006/12/24/3-blog-community-paradigms/

This is a work in progress and perhaps i’ll even submit it to Wikipedia, so let me know in what you think, and what other issues i should address.

(1) Deleted the Advertising Network (blog networks can exist without advertising, it’s not a common feature), and is now included in the Commercial Network, since by legal reasons no advertising revenue can be collected without a owner or company.

Interesting study by ZenithOptimedia, found at Julio Alonso’s blog, with several questions to proeminent spanish bloggers and more than 2.000 phone interviews.

Favourite insights:

• Most people get to know blogs through friends
• Users read mostly their friends blogs, followed by tech blogs
• 44% of interviewed users admit they might change brand due to comments read on blogs
• LiveSpaces and Blogger are the dominant publishing platforms
• Advertising is well accepted, as long as not too intrusive
• Users see blogs as an independent medium, with participation as the main feature

Link to study (4Mb pdf).

Many books have been written based on blogs, but few actually receive my respect. Seventy-nine Short Essays on Design is the result of many writings by Michael Beirut at the outstanding blog Design Observer, with 272 pages discussing design with no pictures at all (only 79 different typefaces).

Michael made an interesting point on why to write (a book or a blog) :

“I’ve found that writing is a way to slow things down again, to question my own premises, to force myself to pay attention to things I might otherwise file away after the quick glance. (…)  I discovered that putting the words on paper changes the claim those words make on your attention. Is it better? Is it worse? The answer may be different for every reader. As a designer, I am very grateful I’ve been given the opportunity to let you see for yourself.