Wane as the young Blogs comes to sites like Twitter

"I don't use my blog anymore," said Mr. McDonald, who lives in San Francisco. "All the people that I'm trying to reach are on Facebook".

Blog once had the choice for people who wanted to express themselves online. But with the rise of sites like Facebook and Twitter, they are losing their fascination for many people — especially the younger generations.

The Internet and American Life Project, Pew Research Center found that from 2006 to 2009, blogging among children aged 12-17 have halved; 14 percent of children in these age groups who use the Internet now blogs. Among 18-to-54-year-olds, the project said in a report last year, blogging dropped 2% in 2010 from two years earlier.

Former blogger said that they were too busy to write long posts and uninspired by a lack of readers. Others said that they had no interest in creating a blog because of social networking has done a good enough job keeping them in touch with friends and family.

Blogging started his rapid rise about 10 years ago as services such as Blogger and LiveJournal became popular. So many people started blogging — to share stories, political rant about dieting and celebrate their love of cats — that Merriam-Webster dictionary declared "blog" the word of the year in 2004.

The definition of a blog is difficult, but most people think that is a website where people publish periodically the entries in reverse chronological order and allow readers to leave comments.

Yet for many Internet users, blogging is more personal and opinionated writing style. A number of news sites and comments started as blog before you grow into mini-media empires, like The Huffington Post or Silicon Alley Insider, which are virtually indistinguishable from traditional news sources.

Blog went largely unchallenged until Facebook redesigned the behaviour of consumers, with its multi-purpose hub for posting all social. Twitter, which allows messages of no more than 140 characters, has also contributed to the upheaval.

It is no longer a blog to connect with the world in need of Internet users. Instead, they could post hotfixes complain about the weather, links to articles that infuriated the them, comment on news events, share photos or promoting certain causes — all the things I wanted to make a blog.

In fact, small talk moved largely social networking, said Elisa Camahort Page, co-founder of BlogHer, network of blogs for women. Still, blogs remain a home further discussion meaty said.

"If you're looking for the conversation, you turn to blogs," said ms. Camahort page. "You're not going to find it on Facebook, and you're not going to find it in 140 characters on Twitter".

Lee Rainie, Director of Internet and American Life Project says that blogging is not dying, like moving with the times. Entrepreneurs have taken some publicized by blogging features and fabric into other types of services.

"The Act of telling your story and share part of your life with someone is alive and well — even more so than at the dawn of blogging," said Mr. Rainie. "You just morphing to other platforms."

The blurring of the lines is evident among users of Tumblr. Although Tumblr calls himself a blogging service, many users are unaware of the description and are not considered bloggers — raise the possibility that the decline in blogging within the younger generation is simply a question of semantics.

Kim Hou, senior high school in San Francisco, said she quit blogging, months ago, but he acknowledged that he continued to post photographs of fashion on Tumblr. "Is different from blogging because it is more easy to use," he said. "With blogging is to write, and this is just images. Some people write a few sentences or some quotes, but that's it. "

The effect is seen on the companies providing the blogging platforms. Blogger, owned by Google, has been less unique visitors in the United States in December that he had a year earlier — a decline of 2% to 58.6 million — although overall, Bloggers of single visitors rose 9%, to EUR 323 million.

LiveJournal, a blogging service, decided to emphasize the community. Connect people who share an interest in celebrity gossip, for example, provides social interaction that blogging "classic" is missing, said Its Rosenstock, a spokeswoman for LiveJournal, which is owned by SUP, a Russian online media company. "Blogging can be a very lonely occupation; Write the bottomless pit, "he said.

But some blogging services like Tumblr and WordPress seems to have avoided any decline. Toni Schneider, chief executive of Automattic, the company that sells the blogging software WordPress, explains that WordPress is mainly for serious bloggers, not the young novices who are abandoning social networking.

In any case, said bloggers often use Facebook and Twitter to promote their blog post to a wider audience. Rather than being competitors, he said, are complementary.

"There's a lot of fragmentation," said Mr. Schneider. "But at this point, who is taking seriously the blogging — are using different means to get a great deal of their traffic."

While the younger generation is losing interest in blogging, approaching people middle-aged and older sticking with it. Between 34-a-45-year-olds who use the Internet, the percentage that blog increased to six points, 16% in 2010 for two years before, Pew found. Blogging from 46-to-54-year-olds increased by five percentage points, 11 percent while blogging among 65-73-year-olds increased by two percentage points, 8 percent.

Russ Steele, 72, a retired air force officer and aerospace worker from Nevada City, California, says he spends up to three hours per day searching for interesting topics and write about them on his blog, NC Media Watch, covering local issues in Nevada County, northeast of Sacramento. All he wants is to have a voice in the community for its conservative point of view.

Although Facebook has signed up for this month, Mr. Steele said he did not use it much and said that he remained committed to blogging. "I would rather spend my time writing on a blog analysis than a whole bunch of short paragraphs, and then send them to people," he said. "I don't need to tell people that I'm going to the store".

Bits: Google tries to reduce the Rank of low quality sites

1: 18 pm | Updated added quote from analyst.

Google said late Thursday that it had made to its algorithm a big change in an effort to improve the placement of high-quality Web sites in its search results — and reduce the visibility of low quality sites. While the company did not say so explicitly, the change appears to be addressed in the so-called contained companies like eHow, Answerbag, generating articles based on popular searches so that they rise to the top of the rankings and attract clicks.

Google has faced criticism from some users to allow articles that are not useful for clearly visible in search results. That has now changed, according to the company.

"This update is designed to reduce the rankings to low quality sites — sites that are of little value add for users, copy the contents from other websites or sites that are not only very useful," Amit Singhal, Google fellow and Matt Cutts, who directs the Google team fighting spam, wrote in a blog post. "At the same time, it will provide better rankings for sites with high quality — content and information sites, such as research, in-depth reports, original and thoughtful analysis, etc."

Google said that it makes changes to its algorithm about 500 a year, but most are so small that the company does not announce them. This affects 11.8% of search queries, Google said, so it is large enough to significantly alter the results that you see.

Google's announcement does not mention content farms. But Mr. Cutts talked in recent weeks, Google said the problem and was working on change of algorithm for solving the problem. "In general, there are some farms contained that I think would be fair to call it spam, in the sense that the quality is so poor that people complain," said in a recent interview.

While the content of these sites can be useful, much of it is closer in value to the article by eHow on how to make friends in College, which includes tips like "consider joining a sorority or fraternity" and "remember having a good time, smile and laugh". Many of the articles on these sites are formulated as how-tos, and even after the change on Thursday still reveal how best results in searches for how to do something — if someone phrases of a search query in this way, you might want to read an article. In the blog post, Google said that the algorithm updated rewards high-quality sites, so that the effect will become clear over time.

Danny Sullivan, editor of Search Engine Land and an expert in the field, said Google's action "seem to be a P.R. move is a move to improve relevance."

Last week, Google introduced an extension to its Chrome browser that people can use to block certain sites appearing in search results and said it would investigate what sites people block to figure out that those bother users. Thursday, Google said that it did not use the data to change the algorithm, but that the new algorithm caught 84 percent of most blocked websites.

Legitimate sites may have been caught in the crosshairs of Google content Farm

Google (Nasdaq: GOOG) on Thursday began using a new algorithm to get rid of its search results higher than what is described as low quality sites.

This will reduce the rankings for sites that have a low added value for users, those who copy the content of other Web sites or sites that simply are not very helpful.

Simultaneously, the algorithm will improve rankings for sites, which Google defines as sites with content and information such as research, in-depth reports and thoughtful analysis.

The use of the algorithm can be a reaction to companies trying to game Google ranking system, or perhaps an attempt to stem the farms.

However, there is a danger that can be compromised legitimate websites.

Google did not respond to requests for comment by press time.

The new algorithm will impact 12 percent of queries on Google.

It addresses the 84 percent domains several dozen or so high that users of Google Chrome Web browser blocked more personal by using the extension Blocklist Chrome, Google said.

This extension, released recently, allows users to lock or unlock the models of search result, Google then passes them along with the URLs of Web pages where search results are displayed.

Given the status of Google as the first tool that many people use when trying to find something on the Web, many sites have tried to game the Google ranking system URL since its creation. Perhaps the most important in recent months, two were J.C. Penney and Overstock.com. Had allegedly more sites link to them so as to increase their ranking in the ranking. Both companies have, in essence, denied that this was an intentional forgiven by top management.

Among the players more persistent ranking system, however, are known as "content farms."

The definition of a farm is open for discussion appended. Some sites are easier to label than others. Sites where the content is almost entirely repealed by other websites easily fit the definition, as do the sites who churn out random pattern of words satisfying the algorithms, but does not make sense for human readers.

However, the tag "content farm" sometimes also applies to websites that carry content original, readable if this content has been generated by teams of relatively low pay freelancers who write large amounts of text in what critics say is an effort to get the benefit of the algorithms and raise the ranking of the site, rather than providing good information.

Sometimes a company accused of agriculture Media content is required, which oversees the property as eHow.com, Cracked.com, Livestrong.com and Golflink.com. CEO, Richard Rosenblatt, refused the label content farm, but seems to move by Google was a cause for concern for its investors. Stock company lost more than 5 percent in the hours after the announcement of Google, although it has since recovered some of that land. Request Media of IPO happened less than a month ago.

"The whole phenomenon of demand Media and associated content and feed really is a load of this world where everything is out of Google, and the idea is that you're going to respond to every conceivable scenario on Google, and we will take all these eyes because you're responsive and you'll sell all these users," Greg Sterling, founding principal of Sterling Market Intelligence, told TechNewsWorld.

The company said Thursday at the Google ad with a blog post from Larry Fitzgibbons, executive vice president of media and operations, in which he says that the company's sites to create original and useful content.

Quinn Daly request Media spokesman declined comment.

The debate on what types of content should be targeted breeding can achieve even sticky.

After all, many news sites integrate stories across multiple e-Zines. That is considered copy content? And what about news aggregators like Popurls or shopping site aggregators like Amazon (Nasdaq: AMZN) and Newegg? They do not contain very much original content.

Sterling "which is a nebulous term, and it is subjective, even if they are to get feedback from users of their extension Chrome on some sites, so it is not purely a Star Chamber," he said.

"The objective of this action was to target very specific companies that make a life tyres up to the first page of search engine rankings and most importantly, to score a big win of PR," Joshua Bixby, Strangeloop co-founder and President, told TechNewsWorld.

However, there is a danger that legitimate sites could be targeted for the new algorithm.

"Like all previous changes, this algorithm will probably catch the good guys," Bixby opined. "Some SEO (search engine optimizers) have reported seeing 40 percent of traffic towards their sites already."

The problem arises because the definition of Google is hazy.

"There is an enormous amount of gray area here," Sterling said. For example, one of the sites blocked by blocking spam site that blekko based on user feedback is Buzillions.com, he said.

"I talked to chief marketing officer of Buzillions, and he doesn't care about blocked by Blekko because it is a small player, but he's not happy to have your site labeled" spam, "Sterling said.

Again, sites like Digg and Reddit cannot fall prey to the new Google algorithm.

"There is enough original content there that they probably would not be subject to the algorithm," said Sterling. "Google's position is the philosophy of content creation, how about the mechanics. They always ask ... is expressed in value and users are going to take advantage of it, or you're doing something quickly and superficially to capture search traffic? "

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' Murder ' on Google brings to the sites of abortion

By Rosa Golijan

Now if you search for the word "murder" on Google, the first result will take you to the Wikipedia entry for the term. The second result will take you to the Wikipedia entry for abortion. What's going on here?

Boing Boing reports that commenters in the Internet community Reddit people seem to have noticed this phenomenon before and explained that it is probably the result of Google-bombing.

Google-bombing is a way to influence Google search results using as search engine algorithm ranks the links. You see, most frequently a particular phrase or word link to a specific site, the more likely looking for a phrase or a Word will take you to the site — even though the two are not linked at all.

There were several incidents of Google-bombing of the past that may have heard:

There is no word on who is behind the murder/Google bomb abortion like no particular group took credit for the Act. The folks at blog of interest of the woman Jezebel suggests that most likely is a group of anti-abortion activists — which sounds like a reasonable guess just like no one else has anything to gain from the whole thing.

Related articles:

Rosa Golijan writes about tech here and there. You may be obsessed with Twitter, but still loves to be liked on Facebook.

Hackers hit Canadian Government sites

Malicious hackers can be based in China that managed to fool Canadian federal, your IT staff to provide access to computers of Government, leading to severe Internet restrictions on Board of the Treasury and the Department of finance, CBC News reported last week.

Artwork: Diego AguirreAlthough the Government has so far provided little information on violation, CBC said the attack first emerged in January and cut off Internet access to thousands of public servants, even if the service has been slowly returning to normal. There was no confirmation so far that the personal information of Canadians have been compromised or lost.

What the CBC described as an attempt to "Executive spear phishing, hackers used fake emails to switch themselves as leaders for it staff at the two federal departments and the password prompt, while other agents have received email with attached documents.

In response to media reports, Treasury Board has issued a brief statement acknowledging he had detected an "unauthorized attempt to gain access to its networks", but not provided more details. "The employee Internet access was limited for the moment," said spokesman Jay Denny.

Toronto Star said former Federal Secretary, CIO and Treasury Board, Michelle of Auray asked staff for a list of websites that they believe are essential to their jobs.

Sources told CBC that it is not clear that cyber-attackers are Chinese. Servers based in China can simply were used to route the attacks from elsewhere. Chinese officials denied any connections to attack immediately.

"The claim that the Chinese Government supports Internet hacking is groundless," Foreign Ministry spokesman Ma Zhaoxu told reporters at a regular briefing, according to the Hindustan Times. "The Chinese Government attaches importance to the security of computer networks and calls for computer and Internet users to comply with laws and regulations".

For years, Auditor General Sheila Fraser has been warning about "flaws" that could potentially put the Federal Government is infrastructure at risk. More recently, as CATA Alliance groups have called for Canada follow the example of the United States in the appointment of a coordinator of computer security to ensure a unified response to security incidents, build partnerships between government agencies, encourage new technologies and raise awareness of safety issues.