How to appear in the blogoshere?

[Jed Rothwell]

From time to time I notice that bloggers have established links to our web page. Here is an example:

http://atomicmotor.blogspot.com/

I have been thinking that it would be nice to introduce cold fusion to more people in the Blogosphere, in order to promote the field. The problem is, I know nothing about blogs. I have not read them. A couple of weeks ago I set out to learn more about them. Specifically, I wanted to find out: Which are the influential blogs, and is there a way to contact the authors?

It is nearly impossible to contact influential media figures such as Bill Moyers. They get so much mail, they have to hire flunkies to sort out information and protect them from the outside world. Even if you do get through to one, there is no point, because these people will not risk their reputations to endorse cold fusion -- or even talk about it. However, my guess is that minor media figures might take a risk. Also, it is usually easy to reach them. A column in a regional newspaper such as the St. Paul Star Tribune probably includes the author's e-mail address. I suppose many blogs also include a way to contact the author directly.

Anyway, I set out to learn about these blog things . . . and I was not impressed. Most of them seem poorly written and unorganized. Most appear to be right wing political diatribes, or self-centered gabbing about nothing in particular, or recursive comments about the blogosphere itself.

So, if anyone in the audience here at Vortex is a blog aficionado, please do me a favor and contact them on behalf of LENR-CANR.org and my book. It would probably be better if the message came from other people, rather than from me. I have nothing against self-promotion, especially since I am not charging anything for the book so there can be no accusation of commercial interest or spam. But it still might look better if other people introduce the topic.

There are two reasons I would like to promote the book as opposed to other material on the web site:

1. I would like to expand our audience, and I think the book may have broader public appeal than most of the papers. Perhaps there are other papers on the site that might appeal to a layman. Perhaps we should add some? Plus, as I say in the introduction, the book is intended to be a manifesto. That is, I hope it helps trigger political action. Readers have downloaded 1162 copies. That is gratifying, but it is not enough to have a political impact.

2. Technically oriented people who are looking for information on cold fusion already find us, quite easily, via Google and other search tools. Roughly a third of our visitors come from these sources. This does not necessarily mean readers have decided to look for cold fusion information on their own. My guess is that someone tells his friend, "hey, have a look at this LENR thing on the web" and people go to a search tool first.


By the way, the total number of downloads since we began is now roughly 300,000, and the visitor count is roughly 590,000. The numbers from before last April are impossible to establish, but that is a conservative.  estimate. It excludes things such as one person downloading the same paper several times in one hour, and the many robot readers from Google, Yahoo and so on.

- Jed