By Miiko Mentz

The 2009 Crunchies award winners were revealed Friday night at the Herbst Theater in San Francisco. This was the third annual Crunchies Awards ceremony put on by TechCrunch, along with its partners GigaOm and VentureBeat. For a third straight year Facebook took home the Best Overall Startup Or Product Of 2009 award. Mark Zuckerberg was on hand to accept the award:

Zuckerberg also sat down for an on-stage interview with TechCrunch Founder and Co-editor Michael Arrington. They discussed Internet privacy and how Facebook has been aggressive on that front. They talked about the future of Facebook Connect and Zuckerberg said that this year Facebook will focus on making it easier for users and developers to use Facebook Connect because “much more is going to be developed outside of Facebook then inside.”

Arrington asked Zuckerberg if Facebook will get more aggressive on acquisitions, in which Zuckerberg commented on the motivation behind Facebook’s past acquisitions. He said the acquisitions “have been primarily to get great people to join the company” and then he went on to talk about each. Watch the full interview here:

And one of my favorite parts of the evening was the Richter Scales performance. Their performance was highly entertaining and lots of fun:

Like last year’s Crunchies Awards, the evening ended with a celebration at the Crunchies Awards after party across the street at San Francisco City Hall’s rotunda. Check out the pictures from the ceremony and after party: Crunchies2009′s photostream.

To see all the nominees, runner-ups, and winners, head on over to TechCrunch; and to watch the recording of the Crunchies head on over to the Crunchies page or TechCrunch’s Crunchies Ustream channel.

Follow me on Twitter: @MiikoMentz

Disclosure: In addition to being a contributor to Bubblicious, I also work at FutureWorks. FutureWorks was the video sponsor for the Crunchies and I was part of the video crew for last night’s ceremony.

Related Links:
GigaOM: DropBox, Foursquare, Facebook Winners at The Crunchies
TechCrunch: The Crunchies Photo Gallery
VentureBeat: Crunchies: Google Voice is coming to the iPhone “one way or the other”
VentureBeat: Crunchies: Zynga’s Mark Pincus sees a future for socially-conscious virtual goods
Bubblicious: A night of reflection and celebration at TechCrunch’s 2nd annual Crunchies

Let’s turn the tables and give the press some love. Here are Marissa Louie’s top picks.

By Marissa Louie, January 9

I’m not a PR person. But I am a CEO who has worked directly with several reporters, anchors, journalists, and bloggers covering national / mainstream, tech, local, and political media.

Take a look at which 15 members of the press are at the top of their game for 2010:

STAR OF THE YEAR:

Kym McNicholas (Anchor / Reporter, Forbes) steps into the minds of the subjects she portrays on camera, like a top actress would do. She makes people feel comfortable: she interviewed Steve Wozniak while riding a Segway and ballroom danced with SYTYCD’s Nigel Lythgoe, for example. What makes her star of the year? Her background in sports reporting and as a local news anchor, her professionalism and razor-sharp intellect, and her ability to get to the very core of a wide variety of subjects ranging from science and technology to professional sports and entertainment. Behind the scenes: Kym wakes up at the crack of dawn every day (including weekends), prepares very thoroughly for each interview, carries around all of her own equipment, shoots videos (with or without the help of a cameraman), and edits up to 2 hours of footage into 2-5 minutes. She is superwoman! Kym on Twitter

MEET THE PRESS (and bring your A-Game):

MAINSTREAM

Lea Goldman (Features Editor, Marie Claire) has taken her pedigree from Forbes (where she had some of the most popular stories and listicles) and brought it to the women’s fashion, lifestyle, culture, and celebrity magazine. She does her research – sometimes months in advance of covering a story. She also makes her interviewees feel at ease as she penetrates deeply into the thought process. The result: she reads between the lines, uncovers underlying emotions, and brings a story to life that is meaningful to her readers. Lea on Twitter

Eric Kuhn (Audience Interaction Producer, CNN) isn’t just one of the most influential online journalists in the field today, but has appeared on nationally televised CNN to bring life to his storyline. His on-camera personality is honest and personable, just like his off-camera personality. Hey CNN, here’s a crossover star in the making. No wonder Arianna Huffington calls Eric a “fearless journalist.” Eric on Twitter

David Gelles (Technology Reporter, Financial Times) goes out of his way to cover all angles of a story. In the past year since he joined FT’s San Francisco Bureau to cover technology and startups, he has amassed an impressive network of the most notable web celebrities. In addition to the articles he publishes in the newspaper and online, he also blogs for FT and has contributed to notable places including TechCrunch. He ruminates, takes good notes, digs far and wide to research, and assembles masterpiece after masterpiece. He’s the most eloquent journalist I’ve ever met, on record and off record. He’s Beethoven come to life on the salmon pages (and the web). David on Twitter

POP CULTURE AND MARKETING

Steve Hall (Publisher, Adrants, AdGabber, and ad:tech Blog) describes how he filters the hundreds of stories that fly across his desk every morning: “It’s methodical…I’ve come to just know whether a story would resonate with our readers or not.” His pop-culture spin and no-holds barred, yet cheeky approach are refreshing. At a recent panel we were on at Web 2.0 Expo, an overwhelming 40% of the audience either knew Steve personally or had read Adrants. I’m a fan, too. Steve on Twitter

Sean Percival (Publisher, Lalawag) pumps out pop culture-laced tech news that is one part adventure novel, and one part geek glory. He has sent LA-based Lalawag straight to stardom in just over 1 year, including at places like Techmeme. Sean’s quirky-cool lexicon has caught fire on the Internet: you might have seen the words kitteh, lalawabbit, ohnoez, and Caturday used all over Twitter and Facebook. This badass is a sleek dresser who rocks retro-hipster designer clothes, has the coolest hair (keep it long, Sean!) and makes any event look great together with his lovely wife, Laurie. Sean on Twitter

TECH

MG Siegler (Writer, TechCrunch) adds a refreshing and cool, tech-infused, tongue-in-cheek, Hollywood-esque spin on tech stories. And that only describes the titles of his articles at TechCrunch – his content is carefully considered and an adventure to read. MG is featured in Violet Blue’s “Top 10 Sexy Geeks” for 2010, and according to her, MG “exudes an irresistible combination of young James Spader and Don Draper.” I couldn’t agree more! MG on Twitter

Pete Cashmore (CEO, Mashable) At just 24, Pete has clawed his way from his home country of Scotland onto the top of the pedestal of the world’s technology elite. He’s brought a world class team along with him. His article titles are often hilarious and catchy, and he lead Mashable to cover Twitter extensively before anybody else was doing so. He recently started writing a CNN column about social media and networking. Plus he’s a ton of fun to hang out with in person. I know dozens of girls (and just as many guys – hehe sorry Pete) who swoon for his model looks. And he might comment or like your Facebook posts too, if you know him! Pete on Twitter

Richard McManus (Founder and Editor, ReadWriteWeb) has a thoughtful, relatable, approachable, no-nonsense approach to covering technology. It’s in his blood: his father was a renowned journalist. Richard follows up immediately, and makes sure that somebody checks out your story pitch if you give him a good lead. He crowdsources from his readership too: for example, he changed his Twitter handle from @ReadWriteWeb to @RWW after getting feedback from his followers. Richard on Twitter

Adam Ostrow (Editor in Chief, Mashable) is the sort of guy you’d like to be best friends with, and a deep introspective person. His content is fresh, thorough, charismatic, and to the point. He manages the editorial content that covers the evolution of technology and web trends. The world watches his pen (or is it a sword?): The New York Times, The Washington Post, USA Today, The Times of London, The Globe and Mail, Forbes, BusinessWeek, Newsweek, AdAge, BBC, ABC News, CNN, and MSNBC. Adam on Twitter

Om Malik (Publisher, GigaOM) picks up his cell phone immediately and gets right on it. He takes things into his own hands and is very thorough. His intelligence seeps through his demeanor, his voice, and even in his stage presence at The Crunchies. He gets primo placement after primo placement. It’s like he’s a highly trained intelligence agent with a sharpshooting eye. It’s no wonder that Om has led The GigaOM Network to reach an audience of over 3 million viewers. Om on Twitter

LOCAL NEWS

Joe Vazquez (Anchor / Reporter, CBS 5) will come out to cover your local story in the San Francisco Bay Area if you have a good spin. He puts you at ease in front of the camera (the spotlight can be glaring, and going on camera can be nerve-wracking), and makes you feel great about working with him. It’s no wonder: this pro has a local TV news career that spans more than two decades. In 2008, he won an Emmy for his 11 o’clock news coverage of the tiger escape at the San Francisco Zoo. If you do a great job and befriend him, he’ll remember you and reach back out too. Joe on Twitter

Tom Foremski (Publisher, SiliconValleyWatcher) always knows the best events in Silicon Valley. His pedigree from Forbes is very evident in his natural, insider-coverage blogging style. You can trust Tom to give you tips on what’s good – often the tips that nobody else will tell you. He teeters on the bleeding edge between technology and media, and brings you right to where you want to be on with an impeccable taste. His cool, James Bond- meets-Tom Ford-meets John Smith nature will leave you wanting more. Tom on Twitter

POLITICS

Maegan Carberry (Blogger, Huffington Post and Causecast, and Co-host, Wilshire & Washington) provokes our thoughts and stirs the imagination of our young, entrepreneurial, cause-devoted “”Millennial Generation.” She has a heart of gold yet a ballsy presentation that gets noticed. See her effervescence shine in her recent article “The 2020 Project: What’s your Perfect Vision for the Next Decade?” Maegan on Twitter

Ari Melber (Correspondent, The Nation, and Columnist, Politico) has a no bullshit approach to politics. He gets right down to the core issues that matter. At his young age, he has accomplished much. On the short list: he has appeared on NBC, CNBC, CNN, C-SPAN, MSNBC, FOX News and Bloomberg News, and has served as a Legislative Aide in the U.S. Senate and as a national staff member of the 2004 John Kerry Presidential Campaign. It’s no wonder he’s a leader amongst leaders and knows the streets of New York like the palm of his hand. Ari on Twitter

Michael Skolnik (Editor of Politics Section of Global Grind) is very real and doesn’t sugarcoat his stories. He weaves a powerful story and relates to his subjects by providing perspective from his own life. He thinks quietly and deeply, then produces a crescendo. In person, Michael is a skilled negotiator amongst a room of diverse opinions. His background as a documentary filmmaker in countries like Swaziland, where a bullet nearly shaved the side of his head, helped him earn his chops. Not only is this man one of the most influential people in the hip hop community, but his character has deep soul. He has the respect of Russell Simmons and dozens of our mutual friends for a very good reason. Michael on Twitter

Are you not on this list, but think you should be? Drop me a line or comment below.

Marissa is a contributor to Adotas and BusinessWeek. Find her on Twitter: @malouie

Marissa Louie is the Founder and CEO of HeroEx, San Francisco’s affordable 1 hour delivery service. Customers order their favorite items at heroex.com, and then crowdsourced Delivery Heroes deliver the items anywhere in San Francisco.

Contact her at (510) 375-1941, or email marissa@heroex.com.

Last Friday was the latest installment of TechCrunch’s Real-Time CrunchUp. All focused on the realm of being “real-time”, this conference brought out some pretty interesting startups who were either launching that day or very soon and gave the press, bloggers and attendees a first glance at what they’re developing.

Not one to offer a little deviation, the hosts, Erick Schonfeld and Steve Gilmore, included several panels in the day’s events, including a one-on-one discussion with Salesforce.com CEO, Marc Benioff. Other panel talks included how to avoid the noise in real-time, discussing media and geo streams and financing companies that focus on real-time. Michael Arrington even participated in a few lively discussions and actually began the conference by sitting down to chat with Twitter’s new chief operating officer, Dick Costolo to talk about…what else? Twitter.

Compared to the last CrunchUp, this time had another surprise: two members of the audience were picked that day to present their pitch to the group! With little notice, the names were picked and during the demo sessions, these individuals got up on stage and showed off their latest developments.

Here’s some photos from the event:

Team TechCrunch is ready to blog – Leena Rao, MG Siegler & Jason Kincaid.

Michael Arrington & Steve Gilmore interviewing Dick Costolo, Twitter’s COO.

Erick Schonfeld & Steve Gilmore moderating panel on Filtering the Stream. Feat. Jason Shellen, Kimbal Musk, Bret Taylor, Loic Le Meur, Chris Cox, Lili Cheng, Ron Conway, Amit Singhal, Jason Hirschhorn, Michael Arrington, Ken Moss and Edo Segal.

Salesforce.com CEO Marc Benioff

A CrunchUp presenter.

Another CrunchUp presenter.

One other CrunchUp presenter.

Robert Scoble got to participate in the CrunchUp by offering his thoughts on the “super Tweet”.

Marc Benioff was giving away free copies of his book to the attendees.

TechCrunch CEO Heather Harde & Co-Editor Erick Schonfeld

You can view more photos from the TechCrunch Real-Time CrunchUp by clicking here.

All photos shown here were taken by Kenneth Yeung.

This past week, the third annual TechCrunch50 event was held at the San Francisco Design Center. Of course it wasn’t always known as TechCrunch50 – but the format still remained the same: 50 startups were selected by the event committee (specifically serial entrepreneur Jason Calacanis and TechCrunch founder Michael Arrington) to present their startups and demonstrate their product to the audience and 100 different startups were also selected to pitch their wares to the crowds in the “Demo Pit”.

As this was my first time attending TechCrunch50, I was hoping for something different from the numerous conferences I had attended previously. I really wasn’t disappointed since this exclusively focused on companies that were specifically launching something that day. Whether it was a new product or it was a new company that they wanted to promote, they were there. It wasn’t a lecture circuit like typical other technology conferences and there weren’t any panel discussions. Instead, there were expert judges on stage to critique each startup – almost like it was a tech version of American Idol to help the audience make an informed decision about the viability of the startup.

Amazingly the Internet connection was not something to even be concerned about since it seems that the fine folks at TechCrunch put in some additional dollars (rumored to be about $56,000) on running ethernet cables throughout the conference hall and upgrading their bandwidth. Even Arrington remarked that he was surprised it held up as near the end of the conference he was quoted to have said something along the lines of:

I was watching from the back and noticed that someone was watching the live stream [via Ustream] on his laptop…

Each day presented something new and exciting to talk about. But rather than blabbering on, here are some photos of the event to help tell the tale:

1938 Media’s own Loren Feldman made an appearance at TechCrunch50.

The event hosts of TechCrunch50: Jason Calacanis & Michael Arrington.

Michael Arrington trying to weasel out some information from Mint.com’s CEO, Aaron Patzer, after it was officially confirmed Intuit was purchasing Mint.com.

Some of the fine folks in attendance at TechCrunch50.

One set of panel experts including Google’s Marissa Mayer, Roelof Botha, Marc Andreessen, Lior Zorea & Zappos’ Tony Hsieh.

Hanging out with great people at one of the many TechCrunch50 after-parties.

Kevin Rose

Chamillionaire made a special guest appearance to be a judge.

Girls in Tech at TechCrunch50.

The winners of TechCrunch50 and $50,000 – RedBeacon – with Heather Harde & Jason Calacanis.

View more photos of TechCrunch50 by clicking here for the first day or the last day.

An almost complete listing of the TC50 list was published today – the first of two days dedicated to spotlighting some of the world’s most innovative and exciting startups.

Here’s the list as it stands:

• Story Something
• Clasemovil
• ToonsTunes.com
• Sealtale
• iTwin
• iMo
• FluidHTML
• Toybots Woozees
• Spawn Labs
• Clicker
• 5to1.com
• DataXu
• SeatGeek
• HealthyWage
• RackUp
• Udorse
• Yext
• localbacon
• RefMob
• TheSwop.com
• MOTA Motors
• Redbeacon
• ClientShow
• Metricly
• AffectiveInterfaces
• Penn & Teller
• CitySourced
• Trollim
• CrowdFlower
• cocodot
• LearnVest
• BreakThrough
• Glide Health
• Sprowtt
• Thoora
• Insttant
• Perpetually.com
• AnyClip
• Crowd Fusion
• Hark!
• Threadsy
• Lissn
• Radiusly
• Stribe
• Clixtr
• The Whuffie Bank

Connect with me on:
Twitter, FriendFeed, LinkedIn, Tumblr, Plaxo, Plurk, Identi.ca, or Facebook

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Now available! (click below to purchase the new book or poster):

Twitter is making some hiring changes. According to TechCrunch, Dick Costolo has taken a position as Twitter’s new Chief Operating Officer. Dick is the co-founder and CEO of Feedburner. Costolo left Google (which purchased Feedburner in 2007) left Google in July.

Costolo was an early investor in Twitter and, according to Arrington, has “actual experience building scalable infrastructures.” Twitter’s existing operations head, Santosh Jayaram, will most likely remain with the company and report to Costolo.

Twitter is smartly expanding their senior staff, including a new General Counsel and new people to work with their Search capabilities.

Sourced from TechCrunch and PR 2.0

At the Real-Time Stream Crunchup on Friday in Redwood City, Erick Schonfeld hosted a panel of industry heavyweights who are either building solutions or defining how they’re used in the world of business communications and customer service.

The panel included:

- Porter Gale, Virgin America
- John Ham, Ustream
- Eric Marcoullier, Gnip
- Ross Mayfield, SocialText
- David Sacks, Yammer
- Max Ventilla, Aardvark
- Maynard Webb, LiveOps
- Tim Young, SocialCast

The discussion was representative of the ever-changing flow of real-time streams, covering everything from the infrastructure of social technology and enterprise adoption of new tools and processes to how brands listen and engage in the social Web.

For the sake of brevity and focus, let’s zero-in on the conversation as it relates to the title of the panel, “Real-Time Business.”

Social Media has evolved beyond a series of platforms that enable content publishing, sharing, and discovery into a genuine, peer-to-peer looking glass into the real world conversations that affect the perception, engagement, and overall direction of the brands we represent.

Socialized media didn’t invent “conversations,” it simply organized and amplified them and established an opportunity for learning and collaboration.

Twitter and Twitter Search have ushered in a new genre of not only communications and associated search technology, but also dedicated ecosystems that transform and support how we as consumers share and discover relevant information in real-time.

Online discussions, rants, and observations are either alarming and motivating brand managers or fooling them into unforeseen entrapment. But the reality is that real-time dialogue is fueling connections and perceptions in the statusphere, blogopsphere, online communities, and the social web in general. It’s this swelling tsunami of chatter that will only intensify and heighten as it forces a new genre of Social Customer Relationship Management (sCRM). Social CRM is no longer an option. It necessitates brand involvement to proactively share answers, solve problems, establish authority, and build relationships and loyalty, one tweet, blog post, update, and “like,” at a time.

In the world of business, social media, led by Twitter, forced companies to augment the offshoring of reactive customer service with the nearshoring of proactive customer engagement. The conversations that power social media sparked a sense of urgency to identify influential voices and talk to customers where and when relevant conversations are transpiring.

For example, during its on stage demonstration, Peoplebrowsr showcased the ability to monitor sentiment associated with keywords. It also highlighted the ability to analyze conversational sentiment by industry through the alignment of positive, neutral, and negative conversations and perception by brand. One such demo was an overview of airlines currently on Twitter and where they stacked up against each other as represented by dialog and emotion.

Porter Gale of Virgin America (@virginamerica) represents one of the companies that understands the promise, prospect, and value of listening and responding today and tomorrow. And, judging by the snapshot of customer sentiment presented by PeopleBrowsr, people on Twitter agree.

Moderator Erick Schonfeld asked Porter how her team mines Twitter for the perception of the brand and also for determining how they contact customers.

Porter revealed that the Virgin America team is small and applies roughly the equivalent of 1.5 people to monitoring and engaging on Twitter and other social networks. To her and the team, social media is representative of not only a listening system, but also a complete engagement channel. The word “marketing” doesn’t even enter the mix.

With more than 20,000 followers, Virgin America is galvanizing a vibrant and active community of people who will respond in “Twitter time,” thus alleviating the modest team from having to engage in every discussion, whether it’s positive or negative.

The most common example Porter shared was a response to the question, “Should I fly Virgin?”

“The community closes the sale,” exclaimed Porter.

She also shared a story of how Virgin America invests in the good will of customers, simply by publicly acknowledging and supporting them in the same channels where they’re communicating.

During one flight, a woman who just graduated medical school to become a doctor, had tweeted her excitement about graduating and also flying @virginamerica. Instead of simply responding with a congratulatory Tweet, Porter and her team retweeted and asked someone on the flight to buy her a drink (the benefits of offering inflight wifi).

To her surprise, Porter triggered an immediate response, “Row 11 is going to buy her a drink.” And, to her further astonishment, the person who sent that Tweet was live in the audience at the Real-Time stream event.

Alexia Tsotsis, tech writer at the LA Weekly, shouted from the first row, “That was me!”

We were witnesses to a real-time demonstration of how interaction online extends into real world experiences.

More impressively, is Virgin America’s use of the social Web for real-time customer service. They’re actively monitoring issues, frustrations, and recommendations to solve challenges as they arise. In several such instances, Virgin America has used Twitter as a real-time guest service recovery system in flight to address concerns and problems by contacting service staff in the air to alert them to issues – again, the perils and associated benefits of offering inflight wifi.

Ross Mayfield, founder of SocialText offers a dashboard for enterprises that wish to collaborate internally with coworkers and externally with customers and stakeholders.

Ross referenced the engagement iceberg, where he observes only a smaller portion of customer conversations and engagement as truly visible, with most occurring beneath the water line and thus, out of view.

He then discussed the nature of the dialogue and how conversations require more than one person or department to engage.

He’ s right. In my research and experience, we’ve identified that every online conversation worthy of response directly matched specific divisions within an organization and usually rank in this order:

1. Support
2. PR
3. Marketing
4. Sales

It highlights the reality that every depart eventually needs to socialize.

Ross then asked his fellow panel members as well as the audience, “Who’s going to own Social Media and the process of responding?”

My answer? No one.

Social Media, is for the time being, tuning-in new channels of influence for incorporation into the brand and marketing mix. While it takes a station manager to receive the signals and in turn, coordinate outward broadcasts, it is the divisions within each organization that will need to shift from an introspective support infrastructure to an extrospective union of proactive collaborators.

And as Ross cautioned businesses and eager social media teams, “Before they collaborate with the community, they have to collaborate with themselves.”

If responsibilities and workflow isn’t established and most importantly, if guidelines aren’t drafted and disseminated company-wide, the intention of helping influential customers and advocates can quickly transcend into social, and very public, chaos.

We need rules of engagement.

As Erick pointed out in the discussion, “It used to be unhappy customers who would call into customer service lines to express frustration. Now if businesses don’t immediately respond with resolution and nip these issues in the bud, they have the potential of spreading and going out of control. And at the same time, companies need to identify and amplify praise as it happens.”

Virgin America’s Porter Gale is trying to rally her team as well as the other departments that are affected by real-time conversations and the issues they raise. She hosts brownbag lunches, where PR, customer service, and other teammates discuss what’s happening with Twitter and other social networks. They also share and review strategies and tactics to teach and learn from each other based on their experiences.

There are social networks, there are tools in which to identify conversations and facilitate interaction, but everyone agreed, that in the world of new service and marketing, we need to improve the literacy and education among the teams who occupy the front lines.

The “now” web is powerful. It’s building new bridges, networks, and channels. It’s absolutely changing the way people communicate, research, and ultimately make decisions.

Yes, the real-time Web is powered by conversations. But, what’s important to remember, is that conversations are personal and therefore sacred.

Broadcasting messages, or even worse, sponsored messages as a form of resolution or participation is foolhardy.

Companies such as Pizza Hut that relegate Twitter interaction to a summer “Twintern” will indubitably get what they pay for. We’ve already witnessed the public backlash when a twintern abuses Twitter on behalf of an unsuspecting brand. #habitat #hashtagabuse

The point is that it’s not whether or not an intern or junior staffer on the marketing and communications team is competent or incompetent. The reality is that businesses should view the role of engaging with customers, prospects and influencers as a strategic competitive advantage as well as an earned privilege.

As panelist Maynard Webb of Liveops pointed out, “A brand can get damaged faster than ever nowadays.”

The true shift represented by the social and real-time Web is not simply the ability to surface relevant conversations as they happen, it represents the opportunity to learn from public sentiment and create a more aware and adaptive organization that leads communities through action.

We’re moving away from an era of monitoring to an age of engagement.

To see more pictures from the Real-Time Stream Crunchup, please view my album on Flickr. For more on Social CRM, please read, “Time to Put a Stake in the Ground on Social CRM” by Paul Greenberg.

Connect with me on:

Twitter, FriendFeed, LinkedIn, Tumblr, Plaxo, Plurk, Identi.ca, BackType, or Facebook

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Now available (click to purchase):

Good: Amazon launched a new beta program that lets you offer your blog on the Kindle. I love that. I always wondered how certain blogs got in there and the rest of us were left without an option.

If you go to the Kindle Blogs page, you’ll see a link for the beta program in the left-hand colum. Just click it to to sign yourself up. Fill out all the required information, include images, and agree to the Terms of Service, and your blog will be available within 12-48 hours.

Amazon sets the price (not you) and there’s no way to give your blog away for free, which I might have done had I the option. Instead, Amazon set the price for my blog at $1.99 and I get 30% of that subscription price whenever I acquire a new Kindle reader.

This is not a viable income option, really, so don’t go there. It’s more of a nice surprise. Once your blog is approved, it’s available in the Kindle store. I have to admit, it’s kind of neat seeing my blog available for the Kindle but at the same time, I dread any user comments that might appear. Once you’re on Amazon, you open yourself up for user reviews.

Bad: I could have added any blog. Any. Bub.blicio.us is technically Brian’s blog, but I could have added it and collected the money for myself. As TechCrunch discovered, anyone can add TechCrunch even though it’s already one of Amazon’s featured blogs. Amazon is depending solely on the Honor Code (the ToS states you must own the blog).  Hmm … how trusting of Amazon.

Amazon told TechCrunch that

Occasionally, people publish material to which they do not have rights, in violation of the Terms and Conditions for Kindle Publishing for Blogs. In these cases we react vigorously to remove unauthorized copyrighted material.

The listing of a few unauthorized blogs was unfortunate and we have subsequently removed those titles.

So whether you decide to publish to Amazon or not, make sure you pay attention that no one else publishes your blog for you.

__

Contact Michelle with news, stories, events, and more.
Email: michelle[at]writetech[dot]net
Twitter: @writetechnology, Friendfeed: michellel
Sites: Write Technology, Wine-Girl.net