Nik Rawlinson

The internet will bring about the end of society as we know it. That's what people used to say.

They predicted we would spend all of our days alone, in our homes, communicating with the outside world through a keyboard and a screen.

They also predicted that the birth of the weblog was the death of the printed periodical. I predicted they would be proved wrong. But perhaps they won't.

You see, it's happening already. Gone are the days when playing games with a friend meant at least sitting in the same room; when grocery shopping involved aisles and a trolley; when to see Madonna live in concert you had to stand for an hour in the rain queuing for tickets, and then two rainy hours more watching the show.

That's all old hat now. And so, it seems, are book tours. The book tour used to be the staple of a publisher's promotion of new novels.

Beyond the billboard ads and magazine inserts, many considered getting the author onto the high street shaking hands and signing copies to be a cost-effective way of drumming up new trade.

But as bookshops close in the face of competition from the likes of Amazon, the publishers are changing tack. The book tours are going online.

Using a simple idea dreamed up by Kevin Smokler (www.wheretheressmoke.net), large publishing houses - self-publishers are excluded - may propose whichever of their authors they don't have the budget to market on a grand scale for their very own tour.

The Virtual Book Tour organisers put them in touch with 10 'cutting-edge' weblogs which they supply with a copy of the book and, sometimes, a recording of the author reading an excerpt.

A month later, the tour begins. Each blogger gives some space to the author to talk about the book, post anecdotes, or just chat online.

It's pretty much exactly what would happen in a real-world book tour, but it costs far less, can be done from home and requires only that the author has internet access, not an unlimited budget for airline tickets. All that's missing is a virtual pen to virtually sign the books.

It's a clever idea, and at heart it's subliminal advertising, but it makes you wonder whether this is how we'll find out about all new products in the future.

Blogs cost next to nothing to run so don't need to support themselves with paid-for advertising. The currency of blogdom is the reader.

Every blogger wants more visitors, and guest entries from a well-known author could provide just that.

Association with the blogger is good for the author, too. Bloggers build an affinity with their audiences, and so a guest appearance is akin to a personal recommendation.

Some online are already talking about expanding this idea. If bloggers are trusted by those who read them, what's to stop manufacturers giving them products to mention on their sites?

Macromedia could give Jason Kottke (www.kottke.org) copies of Dreamweaver and Flash, safe in the knowledge that he is read by designers, and a few good comments here and there could do no end of good for the profile of the software.

And if the blogger could be in-house, and able to leak authorised information onto the site ... well, Phil Wolff (dijest.com/aka) sees it as a reason for picking one job applicant over another.

"Companies have always hired people who are prominent in their profession and visible in their communities," he said.

"Blogging is fundamentally no different than appearing on local news television, writing for trade publications, or joining industry organisations. Some firms even pay bonuses for positive publicity."

So were the doom-mongers right? Is the internet going to change society as we know it, and am I picking up on the vibe 10 years too late?

Will we be buying products simply because virtual friends 5,000 miles away said they liked them, regardless of the fact we have no idea what these friends look or sound like?

And will the number of people you attract to your site do more to determine your job suitability than your past experience?

Sebastien Paquet (radio.weblogs.com/0110772 /2003/06/09.html) believes it helped him.

"I wouldn't go so far as stating that my blogging activity got me a job, but I'm pretty sure that it was a significant factor in the decisions to invite me for an interview and subsequently to hire me," he explained. "Who is it that said that blogging doesn't pay?"

And why not? It works the other way round. Rather than paying several thousand dollars to place an ad in a paper, Quovix CEO Martin Morrow posted his most recent vacancy on his blog (radio.weblogs.com/ 0113399/2003/07/01.html) and prefaced it with his reasons.

"I'm tired of paying Monster and Flipdog to post job openings and then sorting through 400 CVs to find two or three folks to interview," he said.

"The best people are ones we know or know people who know them. So, why not use blogging to find the right person?"

It's all marketing at the end of the day. How much of an impact can you give a company's products, and how large an audience can you deliver?

So, if you really want that new job, perhaps it's time you paid attention to the digital prophets' predictions. The web is changing society, perhaps for the better, but probably not in the ways they'd expected.

Like this story? Spread the news by clicking below:

 del.icio.us     Digg this     reddit!