The Slashdot Report Part I

This week’s column is about The Slashdot Effect, (subscription only, I’m afraid) which I’ll mention in more detail in subsequent postings. This first supplement is about the commercial potential of blogs, and a case study those of you reading blogs will probably already know about:

Is it possible to harness this new kind of information flow for business ends? You bet. But it's not easy. Here's one success story, and it has as much to with patience and luck as budgets. DL Byron, principal of Seattle-based of website designer Textura Design Inc, came up with an idea for a better way to seal plastic bags - the Clip-n-Seal. He used Clip-n-Seal's own blog to talk about the product, and told one or two of his blogging friends, who blogged and told their friends, until one day they hit the mother lode: Boing Boing, and two similar other big directory sites. Retail sales went through the roof, but that was just the beginning. "Great for traffic," Byron recalls, " but what really happened was a new market found us that we never anticipated." As Clip-n-Seal climbed the Google search page ranks, industrial customers discovered them and suddenly organizations from crime scene policemen to biomedical companies were placing orders. Byron's conclusion: Better to spend time on getting noticed in the blogosphere than spend money on traditional advertising. "I can say from our experience that a blog post will outsell a ad. Guaranteed."