Will Baude   Amy Lamboley   Amanda Butler   Jonathan Baude  Peter Northup   Beth Plocharczyk   Greg Goelzhauser   Heidi Bond   Sudeep Agarwala   Jeremy Reff   Leora Baude

April 17, 2004

Blogger Con

I spent much of the day today attending a few of the sessions at BloggerCon, a conference of bloggers (I know, that sounds soooo dorky) hosted by the Berkman Center here at Harvard. It was free -- otherwise it would have really been a Blogger Con -- and I didn't pre-register, so I didn't get a cool nametag that labeled me as being a person who decided to spend a bit this beautiful Saturday in Boston sitting in classrooms listening to people talk about how weblogs are transforming the universe.

My thoughts at this point are way too unpolished for me to feel particularly safe sharing, so, apologizing if I'm completely missing the point, the short version is "lots of people there seemed to think they're going to make big money off their weblogs. I don't think I buy it." The long version:

What struck me overall about the conference was how weighted the audience was toward people who don't just do what I do on my solo blog -- who don't just write some stuff about their lives and hope it's interesting and try to build up a readership. It was people on the technology end of things -- using blogs in their workplaces, programming new blog tools, making new blog applications, selling blog ads, aggregating blogs into communities of blogosphomy (I'm making up that word, but I like it), and people (trying to be) on the business end of things -- wanting to either "use" blogs in their businesses to help achieve some other goal, like more sales, or more customer feedback. Or people who want to make money as a full-time blogger, who want to sell ads on their blog, and sell subscriptions, and migrate their blogs to paying hosts. Basically, people who saw blogs certainly not as just a cool thing to do, and not even just as a means to an end (like the magic wish that a writer for the Daily Show will stumble on my site and hire me to write for them), but as an industry that they wanted to make their business.

I don't think I buy this.

And here's why. It's very clear to me why having a weblog is rewarding. It's very clear to me why someone might want to make money with one. But to jump from there directly to trying to form a trade organization (which was one idea that got a bunch of talk), or trying to standardize ad sizes, or counters, or get group health insurance -- it seems to ignore the crucial question. What are blogs providing that people would legitimately want to pay for? In business, I imagine they're a hindrance more than a help. Reading and writing takes time. As a replacement for an internal message board, fine. As a new consumer helpline, fine. But these aren't new paradigms, they're just a new form for old stuff and not providing any huge new killer value. Not in business, it's a substitute, in most cases, for specialized magazines and newspapers. There was talk in one session about "competing" with old media, like the New York Times and ABC News. Come on. Those organizations have infrastructure, have capital, and -- I think most important -- have credibility. Blogs -- not even the biggest ones -- aren't competing with the New York Times. They're competing with fringe magazines and journals for people's "extra" attention -- maybe. Like I might read some weblogs instead of reading the Utne Reader (I have never read the Utne Reader, but my 11th grade English teacher did, and so I assume it's some high-brow literary publication -- if it's not, and if it's offensive in some way to anyone, I apologize, and please sub in "The Weekly Standard" instead, which may actually be offensive to more people), if I find weblogs that are good enough. Maybe. Maybe that's the attention base. Maybe I'd pay $30 a year total to have access to every weblog I read. Not if I was paying for Internet access in the first place though. www.democratsrule.com is not replacing the New York Times. www.ihatepepsi.com is not replacing Consumer Reports. At least not now. And not unless people start their thinking at the level of making killer content instead of coming up with killer ways to make money with Amazon's referrer program and ad clickthroughs.

At least I don't think so. Then again, when I was 12 I predicted computers would never last. So what do I know.

I love the New York Times. The New York Times has survived radio, TV, and the Internet. I have a hard time believing that Instapundit is replacing the New York Times anytime soon.


TrackBack URL for this entry: http://WWW.crescatsententia.org/cgi-bin/mt-tb.cgi/811

Thoughts on visiting Yale

More narcissism from New Haven--

1) When a professor is really intense and excited (but in a good way), but you kind of wonder if she's on drugs, should you be reassured or further worried when she says, "you probably all think (of me) . . . 'she's on drugs!'"

2) Despite what Professor Koh may say, Padilla is not a contracts case.

3) New Haven is a nicer place than I gave it credit for.

4) One can only listen to so many people turn up their noses at "inferior" law schools before being nearly overwhelmed by the desire to shake them and yell, "X is worth ten of you!"

5) There are a lot of really cool people here.

6) There is a reason barn-cats have six toes.


TrackBack URL for this entry: http://WWW.crescatsententia.org/cgi-bin/mt-tb.cgi/810