Marketing Is A Conversation

David Giacalone spotted Kevin O'Keefe's new service for lawyers, lexBlog, and called him on it. The good: lexBlog wants to help legal professionals get blogging. The questionable: the service goes beyond the nuts and bolts of putting together a weblog, and offers, in its Plus and Premium services, to provide "Content, Content, Content" written by its "staff of lawyer editors."

In good Cluetrain tradition, David has framed the issues, Kevin has responded, and lots of folks are chiming in in the comments. I'm all for employing talented people to blog on your behalf (in good Gonzo Marketing/Renaissance guild tradition), but I think this fact should be acknowledged. Hiring a staff of ghost bloggers to capitalize on the benefits of weblogging with none of the nasty effort (or authenticity) strikes me as a little like counting cards in Vegas: you might win a few hands, but the consequences are likely to be dire.

[Update, 4/16] I'm happy to say the conversation continued in my comments, where Kevin clarified that weblog material purchased from lexBlog appearing on its clients' sites will be identified as such, so it won't be anonymous ghostwriting but more like "value add." That's great, as is Kevin's likely well-founded hope that once his clients experience blogging for themselves their garrulous nature will take its course.

Shameless Filial Plug

Travel Writer George Medovoy (PostcardsForYou.com) recently had some awfully nice things to say about my Dad, his books (published and forthcoming), and the Inn where he unselfishly donates generous amounts of body weight, hour after hour, in an effort to ensure the bar remains upright: Little River Inn: Coastal Comforts in Mendocino.

Donna Got A Sitdown

Donna Wentworth on GMail: "This week, we sat down with Google and got some preliminary answers." The privacy advice so far: deleting the Google cookie often will help prevent search results from being correlated with an email address. (I bet some smart geek(s) could write a few OS-appropriate automating scripts for this in about 2 seconds, and give them a Creative Commons license, so EFF and others — Google? — could make them available for download. [Update: Oops, forgot, Creative Commons doesn't recommend its licenses for software, but encourages other alternatives.])

How Much Is That Mesothelioma In The Window?

$100 a click, per John Battelle.

Little Party Down In Newport

With apologies to We Quit Drinking, in the ongoing quest for material to sing to the baby I had to look up the Cal Drinking Song (MP3) this morning. (Some context: The Place; The Ferry.)

Happy Easter!