Yesterday Australian social media strategist and blogger Laurel Papworth created a “flame war” online when she singled out the English speaking world’s number one marketing blogger Seth Godin for not publishing comments on his site.

Seth Godin, for the benefit of the rare few who haven’t heard of him, is a longtime blogger, web company founder and author of over a dozen books who has helped popularize Web 2.0 marketing styles via his innovative thinking and writing.

Laurel Papworth’s issue with Godin is primarily that he doesn’t allow or publish comments on his phenomenally popular blog. She claims “No Comments? Not a blog!” Then says:

Please remove Seth Godin from the Advertising Age Power 150 top spot? It’s not really a blog if there’s no comments and it’s also not playing fairly.

Not really a blog? Not playing fairly? Does that mean there are now rules we have to follow?

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Originally uploaded by kate e. did

Ever so slowly they are starting to emerge. Businesses, media and agencies in the Newcastle area are starting to toy with the idea of using social media in their marketing and communications.

When Gordon and I started exploring social media on behalf of Sticky 2 years ago it was barely heard of in Newcastle. Mid way though 2008 we struggled to find many people in the region on Twitter, and still very few blogs were emanating from the corporate world.

But now they are emerging. And I think 2009 might see rapid growth of the Newcastle corporate social media community.

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For the last few years many Gen X pundits (like myself) and rising Gen Y influencers have been predicting the imminent demise of the traditional media. While these two transitional generations are witnessing the steady move to a more digital future there is another generation that is oblivious to the change and will wonder what we were ever debating.

Millennials are history’s first truly digital generation and over the next two decades they will increasingly influence the future of media. Bad news traditional media – you are not even on their radar.

This wasn’t a planned post. I am writing this during my Christmas holidays on a brilliant sunny morning whilst watching my 6 year old son play with my iPhone. He does it intuitively, in a way that would frustrate Boomers, and many Gen X adopters of new technology.

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When I set out to determine the best Australian media and marketing blog post of the year, The Moggy, I didn’t realise what a difficult task it would be.

Firstly there were dozens of great nominations, some by the authors, most from readers, that I had to sift through in order to whittle down to a worthy Top 10. That itself was a challenge as I wished to display the wide variety of blogging styles and content. I am sure that some might disagree with the final ten, but I was satisfied that it was representative of the quality and variety in the Australian blogosphere.

I enlisted the help of three judges who were involved in the media and marketing blogging community and had journalistic background. Mark Chenery (ex-Adnews), Kate Kendall (Marketing Magazine) and Mark Jones (ex-IT editor for AFR) then scored each of the Top 10 finalists looking at the quality of the post and the contribution to media and marketing discussion online.

proudly supporting The Moggy Awards

I thought that would have produced a clear winner, but when I tallied the scores it became apparent that 2 posts were well in front of the rest but still locked together. A tie breaker was needed. Fortunately, I had formulated an additional criteria in case it came down to this. Rather than me deciding which of the final two I preferred (and they are both very good for very different reasons) my criteria would be to look at the reaction both posts created. After all, a well written piece that few people read or respond to isn’t one which is making a significant contribution to the conversation.

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After being inundated with dozens of entries for the inaugural Moggy Awards for the best media and marketing blog post of 2008, I have managed to whittle down the entries to a Top Ten. This was no easy task due to the high quality of most entries. Some bloggers were nominated several times as well, so I had to make a judgement call on which was the best post to consider.

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NBN has ended the 2008 official survey year with a 31.7% share across Northern NSW and the Gold Coast, Australia’s fourth largest television market.

The PBL Media owned station dominated the region with its 6pm – Midnight audience share of 31.7% , 7.0 points above Prime’s 24.7% and 10.5 points above Ten’s 21.2%.

In the core demographic, viewers aged 25-54, a solid 31.7% share was 1.4 points up for NBN on last year whilst Primes 24.9% was down 2.5 points year on year Southern Cross Ten finished with a 24.1% in this demographic.

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I am a big fan of Al and Laura Ries’ dissection of the marketing world. I also tend to agree with their theory of divergence (despite maybe making the wrong call on the iPhone) which says that new products and channels will continually splinter away from their ancestors and evolve.

There is probably no better place to explore the divergence theory than in the media. We are constantly being told that traditional media is dying and that new media is on the rise. But while that is somewhat true, what isn’t highlighted enough is that “new media” consists of a plethora of options and delivery systems rather than one or two all powerful mediums.

The truth is that we may never see a handful of dominant mediums again. What we are now witnessing is the rise and rise of micro-media.

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I recently posted that the economic crisis could provide a turning point in marketing and media history and based most of my commentary on observations of how the media would be affected at a critical time when emerging media and technologies were gaining a foothold in the marketplace.

Just over a month later I would suggest my observations were closer to realisation than I anticipated, and not just due to the economy.

In that time we have seen the first black man swept into power in the USA on the back of some amazingly effective groundswell marketing and fundraising that has re-written political campaigning forever.

And now the trickle of news indicating change was underway has become a torrent of commentary and press releases, especially in America.

Here are just some of the stories that have caught my attention in the last few weeks. You don’t need to read the entire articles, just the headlines, to realise that something big is happening:

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Franklin D. Roosevelt was radio president. Kennedy was the first television president. Reagan the first movie-star president. Will Barack Obama be America’s first web president?

The 2008 US Presidential Election will be a referendum on many things – the war in Iraq, the Bush years and now the economy – but it can also be viewed as a referendum on old versus new media.

While the 72 year old, admitted technophobe McCain is the default old-world media candidate, Obama has been the new media superstar, embracing web 2.0 technology and techniques with aplomb.

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Seth Godin is an International thought leader, blogger and author who has helped redefine marketing over the last decade. Seth’s posts are some of the first I read each week amongst the dozens of feeds I have streaming in. One of his recent posts, subtly plugging his new book Tribes, explains the typical marketing cycle and how social media may have finally broken the cycle.

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