So, some of you may have noticed that our lovely little blog is hosted by Tumblr, whereas others may be thinking, “Isn’t that what I drink The Macallan out of?” Tumblr is a platform for tumblelogs (also sometimes called microblogs), which are basically just shorter-form blogs. Tumblr was founded in 2007, and we have been using it for FWD Thinking since May 2008. As far as we know, we’re the only PR agency that hosts its blog on the platform, as it seems that Tumblr has gotten a bad rap as “not good for business.”

In the span of its short life, Tumblr has become known as the territory of urban hipsters who post photos of themselves every Wednesday and create themed blogs that eventually get book deals. But what it comes down to is that it’s just a platform. There are actually a wide variety of bloggers on Tumblr, and not all of them are wearing skinny jeans. I’m a huge Tumblr evangelist, because its one of the most forward-thinking, innovative blog platforms out there, and it just keeps evolving.

Plus, Tumblr is ahead of the curve in two developing Web trends — brevity and sociability. Especially due to the popularity of Twitter, people are moving away from long-form blogs and instead sharing briefer updates through microblogging or lifestreaming. I think people often become overwhelmed with the thought and the time it takes to write a long blog post, so they don’t post at all rather than posting shorter updates throughout the day or week.

In addition, almost every Web service these days is introducing a social aspect, whether it’s sharing, following or liking. I believe Tumblr was the first blogging platform to allow you to “follow” other bloggers and easily repost (“reblog”) their content, but Blogger implemented following capabilities soon after. There’s even a new tumblelog competitor on the scene called Posterous, but I remain devoted to the original.

I hope the misconception that Tumblr is not appropriate for hosting business blogs will soon change — and I think it will, now that companies like Newsweek, BlackBook and the Travel Channel are jumping on board. If you know of any other corporate Tumblrs, please let us know in the comments. Who knows, maybe they’ll inspire you to start your own!

—Alyssa

While everyone was stuffing themselves with barbecue and watching fireworks this weekend, The New York Times published an article that’s a must-read for all PR folks. The piece examines how the profession of public relations is changing in the digital age — it’s becoming more about bloggers and online influencers and less about just traditional print and broadcast journalists. Yet publicists are still necessary, because someone needs to know who these people are and how best to reach them.

The article also briefly touches upon the need for a new system of PR metrics, which is a topic we are constantly exploring here at M Booth:

Instead of calculating the impressions an article gets by estimating a publication’s circulation and pass-along rate, [Brian] Solis counts the number of people who tweeted about a company and their combined following, the number of retweets or clicks on links, as well as traffic from Facebook and other social networks.

Many people don’t realize that the PR profession is about much more than straight-up media relations, but it is — and it’s continuing to change before our eyes.

—Alyssa

Where do “sponsored conversations,” such as Kmart’s recent blogger campaign, fall on the advertising-PR spectrum? That’s the question Forrester aims to answer with its newest brief, “Add Sponsored Conversations to Your Toolbox.” Steve Rubel also weighs in on the topic. I’m still not really sure how I feel about it.

On one hand, I think it would be impossible to write about a company in a completely unbiased manner when they gave you hundreds of dollars worth of free swag, no matter how transparent you are about it. On the other hand, no one is ever completely objective about anything, and bloggers’ content is influenced by other forces (advertisers, hopes for more traffic, wanting to get into other bloggers’ good graces, etc.) all the time. I do think it’s important to keep the  incentives fairly moderate — there’s a big difference between sending a blogger a product worth $20 versus a $500 gift card, which may seem a bit excessive.

—Alyssa (via Josh)

Our client American Express OPEN today announced the launch of OPENForum’s Economy section, a new platform for small business owners to connect virtually to discuss the current state of the economy and how it affects their businesses. The Economy section is a component of the newly refreshed OPENForum.com, an education and networking resource designed to provide small business owners with practical, actionable information from business experts, celebrity business owners and best-in-class bloggers and news outlets.

At present, the Economy section of OPEN Forum features blog and news commentary, expert tips and advice for surviving the downturn, personal experiences from business owners across the country about how they are managing in times of the downturn and polls about what the state of the economy means for small business.

The enhanced OPEN Forum site also announces exclusive original content from noted small business bloggers, including:

• Guy Kawasaki, distinguished author, entrepreneur and creator of the blog How to Change the World
• Mike Masnick, business development and marketing expert and creator of TechDirt
• John Jantsch, marketing and digital technology coach, award winning social media publisher and creator of Duct Tape Marketing
• Knowledge@Wharton, the online business journal of The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania

These bloggers join OPEN Forum’s existing roster of small business bloggers, including John Battelle of Searchblog, Scott Belsky of Behance and Anita Campbell of Small Business Trends, to provide users with a stream of fresh, relevant content. For a complete list of blogs available on OPEN Forum, visit http://blogs.openforum.com.

- Danny