It’s not often I introduce a new word into the world of communications. Well, I’m going to now.

Have you noticed that many local newspapers are called the “Echo” in some form? There’s Exeter’s Express and Echo, and The South Wales Echo, and many more across Britain. I can’t ever recall a national called by a variation of it, though.

So “Echo” is probably the best single-word describer of a local newspaper. It’s a pity that most locals seem to be a dying breed, or soon will be. The costs of printing and distribution are overwhelming even the “river of gold” of small ads and classified advertising.

Where Craigslist led the way in America, so many British locals are being gradually replaced by online alternatives.

Now imagine a hybrid between a quality blog and an Echo — online, of course. What would you call it? An Eclog, naturally.

That’s not to be confused with an eclogue, which is a poetic pastoral dialogue. The Greek origin of the word means “selection” or “pick out”, which is rather apt, I think.

Here at Syntagma Towers we have spent the last three months creating a new business. It will shortly produce the world’s first Eclog: Devon & Cornwall Online. You will find it on a screen near you in June.

May I suggest you rummage through your loft and find all those forgotten objets d’art you might want to flog to the good people of the West Country of England.

Alternatively, if you are a solicitor, accountant or estate agent, you may like to advertise your services locally. If a tourist, letting agency or general holiday company, it will not harm your interests to book a presence on the English Riviera, bearing in mind that the site will be visible across the country and may well become the first port of call for people wanting to vacation in the area.

Other Eclogs in the pipeline include, Somerset (with Bristol) and Dorset (with Bournemouth). In fact, there’s no limit to the possibilities.

So here’s to the Eclog, a brand new feature in the news and views industry of British publishing.

John Evans

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UK High Street giant Marks and Spencer has just dropped the price of men’s underwear by more than 40 percent to 60p ($1.18) a pair.

Some might call that “pants”, but I think it’s jolly good news — I need to replenish my under-wardrobe. Don’t say we don’t bring good tidings here at Syntagma.

To tell you the truth, I’ve been scouring the columns and bulletins for weeks for just a glimmer of brash, hopeful news for the new year, but that’s the best I can find. I’m having to fall back on small domestic matters.

Today I’m going to tell you about my new desk diary. I do enjoy opening a fresh, pristine volume for the first time in the new year. Such possibilities. A whole year spread out before us like a blank canvas. And a Year Planner we can write in anything we wish.

I usually buy my diaries on January 5 — the ones I use run out on January 6. In the retail trade, this is called Just-in-Time purchasing. It’s why when you want to buy a large item you’re told there’s a six-week delivery period.

My brand of diary comes in two colours, silver and black. I buy them alternately each year. 2008 is a black year. Naturally, 2007 was silver. Does that affect the quality of the year? You would be surprised.

Extensive in-house research indicates that it does, but with a qualification. Take last year. The first six months were a breeze; couldn’t put a foot wrong. However, from midsummer it all went awry. Various factors, including Google’s hamfisted twiddling with its PageRank algorithm, knocked the stuffing out of the market.

This year, we start on a low baritone note. Merrill Lynch believes the U.S. is already in recession, and the British Government is preparing to nationalize failed bank, Northern Rock — a little late in the day — in a desperate effort to save the vast billions of taxpayers’ money they’ve sunk into the rescue plan.

However, the good news is that an acquaintance of mine, who happens to be a professional astrologer (I know, I know!), says that 2008 is going to be brilliant, with upturns everywhere by June. Eerily, many economists are saying the same thing. Now we know where they get their inspiration from.

So it’s a game of two halves. The diary colour only predicts the first six months. If we can survive till summer we’re in clover — so to speak.

Anyone for hibernation.

Continuing the uncharacteristically gloomy series of posts in Syntagma over recent days, I’m impelled to mention Greg Linden’s plausible post on the “coming 2008 dotcom crash”.

He writes : “The crash will be driven by a recession and prolonged slow growth in the US. Global investment capital will flee to quality, ending the speculative dumping of cash on Web 2.0 startups.”

The VC’s will go into damage limitation mode : “Venture capital firms will seek to limit their losses by forcing many of their portfolio companies to liquidate or seek a buyout. … Startups that managed to get cash before the bubble collapses will have a cash horde [sic], but will find little opportunity to rest on it. Most startups will find their revenue models were unrealistic and will rapidly have to seek change.”

A contrarian view was taken by Irwin Stelzer on last night’s BBC Newsnight. He felt the Sovereign Wealth Funds (see this post) would ride in to the rescue like the US Cavalry — as they have done so far. His tone was a shade too optimistic for my taste, much as I admire his opinions. The image of King Canute rose unbidden to the mind’s eye.

Back to Linden, who compares the current situation with the 2000 dotcom crash : “[It] was a much smaller crash without the fuel from broader problems in the US economy, but we still had investment capital shut off for a few years, most startups shut down, and the remaining startups shift business models.”

I believe the crash is already underway. I’m sensing a number of ad networks reassessing their operations and even closing down some programs. We can’t be immune from the wider economy.

Businesses that can live on short rations may ride this out through belt-tightening measures. Anyone with debt that needs to be renewed periodically will find their position precarious.

Steve Rubel has some pertinent views on the whole Web 2.0 bubble and the crazy valuations and hype being bandied around right now.

Last week’s Google strike on the company’s advertising competitors — which may have put a lot of small internet operators out of business — illustrates how quickly the weather can change.

Rubel doesn’t beat about the bush, “This is a sad time for the web. It’s as almost somber as the time just before the last bubble burst in 2000. I was working in PR with dot-com startups at the time and the way I feel now is how I did back then.”

Regular readers of Syntagma will recognize the sentiments he expresses, especially in this passage, “… over the last year my thinking has evolved dramatically. I have become less interested in every new shiny object and more engrossed in the social changes it, slowly, effects. This is in part a byproduct of the tech blogosphere getting drunk on its own Kool-Aid.”

No more first fine careless rapture then.

The picture of the internet I see right now is of steady progress, both in the underlying technologies and also the growing professionalism of many quietly working away under its wing.

Overarching all that is the froth and hyperactivity of a new bubble-in-the-making. From the outside, however, only the nonsense is visible. People are being sucked in with promises, only to be swept aside as technical parameters are changed without notice and the marshals overwhelmed by the cowboys and injuns. It really is a Wild West out there.

That the fundamentals are gradually being put in place is great news for those of us who retain our enthusiasm for the web and will continue to use it as the base for professional and commercial activities.

Are we then approaching another collapse in internet values? We are not immune from the wider economy :

* Oil is nearly $100 a barrel
* Gold is approaching $1000 an ounce
* Housing markets in the US, Britain and Europe are heading south
* Stockmarkets are wobbling tortuously
* The credit crunch has yet to peak
* Inter-bank lending is at a standstill
* Inflation is ominously poised for a comeback.

These are all strong indicators of trouble ahead for everyone.

I’ve long believed that it’s a mistake to follow the crowd. The herd will always produce a glut in the end and the subsequent fall in values will put most out of business.

It’s only those who dig their own distinctive furrows and apply basic cash-flow techniques in the time-honoured manner who will survive the deluge.

And “deluge” seems the only appropriate term for the time ahead.

So what we’ve been experiencing for some months now has reached its apogee. Google PageRank values right across the blogosphere are tumbling like nine-pins in a storm. Some sites have fallen from highs of 6 or 7 to new lows of 2.

At first I thought this might be a general rebalancing of the system, getting everyone used to lower rankings and allowing more scope for megasites at the top end. But it seems it goes beyond that.

Darren Rowse at Problogger has seen a drop in his seminal site from 6 to 4. The belief of many commenters is that Google is attempting to crush the trade in text link ads.

However, since Google’s own Adsense is mostly a form of text links, albeit (presumably) with a no-follow hard-coded in, this does seem to be a restraint of trade for commercial websites competing with Google’s overarching system.

PageRank is awarded on the basis of backlinks, rather than raw traffic data. Nevertheless, traffic and backlinks often go hand in hand. A popular site will have both to some extent.

The Google Dance has changed in recent months. We now get a monthly update instead of the variable quarterly adjustment that reigned previously. What, though, persuaded Googleplex chiefs allegedly to attack a legitimate commercial operation that just happens to have an impact on the Adsense/Adwords system?

Text links usually have anchor text advertising a commercial service of some kind. Why should that be any different from Adsense text blocks? Except in obvious cases, how can the algorithm distinguish between links posted for PR enhancement and those genuinely seeking extra business by an online form of classified advertising?

It can’t.

Brock Boser, Chief Operating Officer of New York-based Text-Link-Ads.com — an agency selling ads across the internet — tells me they won’t be reducing their prices in response to the current PR meltdown.

Maybe this will do the trick. Or perhaps the current furore across the blogosphere will persuade Google they are not behaving well and should aim to be less imperialist in their business methods.

Has Google become the new Microsoft?

Update : Duncan Riley over at TechCrunch is comparing blog networks that interlink with link farms and seems to approve the “crackdown”. Come on, Duncan, you’ve owned a blog network and were a founder member of another. Pots and kettles, surely?

Update : Danny Sullivan at Search Engine Land has cleared up a lot of fog on this subect — “I pinged Google, and they confirmed that PageRank scores are being lowered for some sites that sell links. … In addition, Google said that some sites that are selling links may indeed end up being dropped from its search engine or have penalties attached to prevent them from ranking well. … Google stressed, by the way, that the current set of PageRank decreases is not assigned completely automatically; the majority of these decreases happened after a human review.”