Is it just a coincidence that the popularity of web logs has exploded just before Google’s IPO? If you owned a company and wanted to increase its (perceived) value, what kind of things would you do just before you sold it? Here’s a list of Ten Not so radical things about the Weblog Form of stock promotion:

1. absorb any upstream tech suppliers that will increase the real or perceived size of the user base.



2. set up a mechanism that self-selects and then ranks users into economically discriminating special interest groups.



3. encourage early adopters by rewarding them with a 'higher' ranking status (see gold card effect, circa 1980s).



4. give away this 'access-to-status' and call it an economic gift to a neo-egalitarian society.



5. find third party experts, like university professors, to promote and teach this usury-free 'revolution'.



6. find a self-promoting champion with a really big ego and keep his or her feed bagwidth full.



7. adjust your ranking system to promote egalitarian usage; more is synonymous with better.



8. enlist historians to muse over a long, storied - and thus inevitable history; archive, archive, archive.



9. call your stock promoters: new age journalist.



10. avoid the word 'pyramid' at all cost; pretend having an audience of semantic consumers is actually a bad thing.

(Bonus points awarded for leaving Trojans for future 'audits')