Blogs
Blogs and the business of community
It’s been kind of fun to watch the reaction to Mike Arrington’s recent “rambling manifesto” (as Henry Blodget called it at Silicon Alley Insider) about the future of blogs and the wisdom — or lack thereof — in getting venture financing. Among other things, Kara Swisher decoded it using movie metaphors, Tom Foremski said it won’t work because you can’t “roll up egos,” and Howard Lindzon dumped on the idea with his usual panache. And it probably won’t come as a surprise that TechCrunch itself is rumoured to be looking for financing, according to Henry.
Although Howard has plenty of scorn for Scoble as well, I think Robert puts his finger on something (or at least close to something) in his post when he says that killing CNET isn’t the right goal — even if most of the examples he uses, such as the moon landing, don’t really help his argument (which his readers are more than happy to point out). But I think Chartreuse comes the closest to making a real point with his post on the topic, in which he notes that it isn’t about size, it’s about community.
Of course, as with most media it’s about size and community — at least when it comes to trying to make it into a business (Wine Library TV guy Gary Vaynerchuk has a great video about that here). In any case, in the course of writing about that, Chartreuse mentioned a blog network/citizen journalism enterprise in India that I hadn’t heard of before: Instablogs.com, which apparently had a rough start but has since grown into something worth paying attention to. Not only is its primary audience in India (see the co-founder’s comment on this below), but the community that has grown up around the site is remarkable, and the site is very well designed and customizable.
I wouldn’t want to say that “big media” in the context of the blogosphere won’t work, because it’s clear to me that Gawker is working, and so are PaidContent and GigaOm and others. But I think there is definitely some room for the Craigslist approach too: follow the community and the business will (in some cases at least) take care of itself. Oh yeah — as it turns out, Instablogs is raising money too :-) Congratulations to founders Ankit and Nandini Maheshwari.
license
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.5 Canada License.
subscribe
grazr
TwitterCount
busted tees
Discussion
for “Blogs and the business of community”
I can live with panache. a little light in the socks, but I am confident in my manhood :)
Yeah, nothing intended by that -- I just like the word :-)
On Thu, Mar 20, 2008 at 4:11 PM, Disqus
Your style is quite soufleeeish as well
Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry
Thanks. I hate Judy Garland movies though.
On Thu, Mar 20, 2008 at 4:25 PM, Disqus
Here's my take of what's going on in the blog business:
http://sramanamitra.com/2008/03/12/deal-radar-2...
http://sramanamitra.com/2008/03/20/deal-radar-2...
http://sramanamitra.com/2008/03/20/deal-radar-2...
http://sramanamitra.com/2008/03/11/deal-radar-2...
http://sramanamitra.com/2008/03/10/deal-radar-2...
http://sramanamitra.com/2008/03/06/deal-radar-2...
Sramana
One thing I doubt has been studied yet - the more I read a blog, the less I notice what goes on "around" it. I skip right over any ads - i know exactly where they are and my eyes are trained now to jump automatically. Every once in a while an image might catch my eye but it's rare. And obviously on feeds I don't look at any ads at all.
So I wonder if having a loyal & repetitive core audience that reads blogs regularly is more fruitful than new eyeballs. I actually notice print ads a lot more than I do online ads, probably b/c of their strategic placement (newspapers, magazines) - fit in and around the cotent. But that's not really working on the web, and even worse (IMHO) on blogs.
That's true I think, Antje -- and of course anyone who reads solely by
RSS gets no ads at all, or very few.
On Thu, Mar 20, 2008 at 5:08 PM, Disqus
I wonder what the value really is of a social network user or a blog reader, vs. a reader of a portal or someone using a search engine. Working with design I'm all about standardisation, consistency, and following norms so users don't get lost or confused But I'd bet this conformity is an anathema to Advertisers.
Speaking of, this has got to be one of the most clever ads I've seen in a long time (send it to yourself first so you see how it works): http://www.icetruck.tv/index.php
Antje, there's no way to close the ad and look at the content without filling out the form. That annoys the crap out of me.
no no no sorry - you want the ad, not the crap underneath so unfortunately you *have* to fill out the form, send it to one of your list or reserve emails (we all have them!). It's clever.
The message you sent to Tim requires that you verify that you
are a real live human being and not a spam source.
To complete this verification, simply reply to this message and leave
the subject line intact.
The headers of the message sent from your address are shown below:
From Fri Mar 21 11:37:04 2008
Received: from disqus.com ([74.86.107.154] helo=disqus.net)
by host185.canaca.com with esmtp (Exim 4.68)
(envelope-from <>)
id 1JcjIm-0007bq-Kt
for tim@burden.ca; Fri, 21 Mar 2008 11:37:04 -0400
Received: from fray.disqus.com (localhost [127.0.0.1])
by disqus.net (Postfix) with ESMTP id 92D0E203400F
for <tim@burden.ca>; Fri, 21 Mar 2008 10:37:02 -0500 (CDT)
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable
Subject: [Disqus] Re: Blogs and the business of community
no idea, I didn't get that. This wasn't meant to be dragged out. If you don't want to fill in your info then don't. I used my "other" email - the one for all my lists" and used it.
It's still pretty cool marketing thing and it's just for fun.... can't help that you canucks are spammers and not real people ;)
Jesus...Disqus and Boxtrapper don't play well together. Sorry Mathew...will fix this.
speaking of "community," what i find intriguing is that we're still chattering about a non-event more than two days after the arrington post. hats off to arrington, though. when it comes to stoking an artificial flame to draw clicks, he does it perhaps better than all the rest. but that has always troubled me. i don't pay much attention to techmeme as a accurate barometer of web influence - but it does generate a self-reinforcing effect within that circle of posters/readers. but the pack journalism nature of the exercise is dreadful to watch. it's almost like clockwork. first arrington posts, then scoble adds a paragraph, then dave winer, maybe you, too, matthew, and all the others, etc. etc. it's conversation but - well, i'll leave it to the community to decide whether it's important conversation, or just artifically ginned up for the sake of drawing clicks to a particular web site
Dirk, I'm sure Mike is happy to have it on Techmeme and get traffic
and links, but I honestly don't think that's why he wrote it -- or why
I and most others responded. I actually think there are important (or
at least interesting) issues involved.
On Thu, Mar 20, 2008 at 8:34 PM, Disqus
wow, you hit upon something that's been building inside of me for weeks. i have to agree with your description. it's like a cyber version of high school with all the "cool kids" auditioning for their friends. groupthink taken to a ridiculous degree. i saw mathew's response below and maybe he didn't respond out a desire for more clicks but there was nothing of great value in arrington's post. it was a click troll's wet dream - pardon my french. there are SO many, many other interesting topics in technology right now. but when you look at the herd or pack mentality which predominates on techmeme, you just have to shake your head.
Hi Mathew,
I am the CEO of Instablogs Network. Thanks for the mention, but I want to point our one thing here. Instablogs has its offices in India, but out of total traffic India's share is around 15%.
One thing which we pride ourselves is that we have a very good activity from almost all of the countries. Though we still have a long way to go, but Instablogs is turning out to be a big platform where people from different regions, interests and taste come and share their opinions.
Do check out few countries for e.g. United States Community
Thanks for the comment, Ankit -- and thanks for pointing that out. I
didn't mean to suggest that you were exclusively India-focused at all,
I just noticed that a lot of the stories with comments were related to
India -- and of course, those comments could be coming from anywhere.
In fact, one of the things I liked about Instablogs was that you can
choose which country or region you want to see content from. So
thanks for mentioning that.
On Fri, Mar 21, 2008 at 2:12 AM, Disqus