August 5, 2005
to do with the commercialisation of blogs
A very good point from Matt Welch, to do with the commercialisation of blogs:
So while money and talent pour into schemes to compound and monetize blogs, it has never been easier to scratch out at least a subsistence going it alone. Don’t be surprised if some of those simple, one-man operations end up outlasting their bigger, buzz-drunk kin.Commercializing a blog may please the bean counters and the glamorpussies, but it has one very ill side effect:Injecting layers of staffing, overhead, and investment capital will certainly create some interesting experiments and hilarious hype—at least until the next bubble bursts—but one revolutionary and empowering fact remains: Blogs, in the words BuzzMachine’s Jeff Jarvis, will continue to be “history’s cheapest publishing system with the world’s cheapest distribution system.” Not even Arianna Huffington can mess that up.
It makes your every move circumspect to the commercial agenda, making your "voice" sound less authentic. The end result is, you are no longer free. A person who is not free is not worth reading.
So the only thing to do is spend even more money hiring people who are very good at convincing your investors that I'm wrong. Lucky you.
Posted by hugh macleod at August 5, 2005 12:31 PM | TrackBackEveryone's got a commercial agenda, and most bloggers I know bring it to their blog(s). There's no avoiding it if you want to eat, travel, entertain, etc.
Posted by: David Burn at August 5, 2005 3:53 PMHow many blog industry professionals do you think there are?
Posted by: Andy at August 5, 2005 5:23 PMAgreed, David... but some blogs are more crippled by it than others.
I have no idea how many pro bloggers there are...
Posted by: hugh macleod at August 5, 2005 8:57 PMI'm no pro blogger, but I do write blogs for the industries our magazines serve (I'm a trade magazine writer/editor). When we moved them off Typepad and onto our servers, complete with the corporate header, I started getting questions about just how independent the blogs were. I immediately stated my blogging philosophy (i.e., the day someone tells me what I can and can't write about is the day the blogs go down).
I wonder what will happen if they ever sell an ad on them--will my credibility be totally shot?
Posted by: Sue Pelletier at August 5, 2005 10:29 PMThe GM one is a good example of corporate crap in new trimmings. It expresses everything that is wrong about modern branding. So we get to write some feedback on it. Big deal. Most blogs suck, and all corporate blogs suck.
Posted by: Jack Yan at August 6, 2005 4:55 AMSurely the problem is that commercialized blogs are heading for the advertising-driven mess that is modern television?