March 26, 2004

“making blogs a business”

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Jeff Jar­vis is giving a talk at Blog­ger­con (the big annual blog­ging con­fe­rence at Har­vard) on “making blogs a busi­ness”. If this is an area that piques your inte­rest at all, please, please, you must click on this link.
Steve Hall from Adrants makes an exce­llent point in the com­ments:

It’s not all about using a blog to make money though. A blog can also be a repre­sen­ta­tion of a company’s inte­llec­tual capi­tal through “expert opi­nion” posts. So many cor­po­rate sites are flat and without any redee­ming infor­ma­tion value. Blogs can fill a gap here. 

Henry Cope­land from Blogads.com does like­wise:

“Poten­tial busi­ness”… why the future tense? Blogs need PR? What bet­ter PR than having 200 going on 200,000 of America’s smar­test wri­ters men­tio­ning blog adver­ti­sing to their friends, neigh­bors and co-workers?

A rising tide of adver­ti­sers is pla­cing ads on a net­work of the best and brigh­test — blog­gers like Tim Blair, Mar­kos Mou­li­tsas, Atrios, Josh Marshall, Glenn Rey­nolds, Daniel Drez­ner, Kevin Drum, Daniel Drez­ner and hun­dreds of others — through blogads.com.

Who wouldn’t want to see these info­pre­neurs suc­ceed and call their own shots? And who wouldn’t want to shake the opi­nion epicenter?

Blogs have already run more ads this year for dif­fe­rent poli­ti­cal cam­paigns and cau­ses than the Washing­ton Post or CNN or Advance.net. Blo­gads are THE STANDARD for online poli­ti­cal advertising.

Folks on the street may not rea­lize it yet — par­ti­cu­larly if they don’t read the WSJ or Media­Post or NYSun or Min­nea­po­lis Star Tri­bune or Raleigh Obser­ver — but blog busi­ness is Here and Now. 

My two cents: the blo­gosphere is ablaze with gos­sip about Nick Den­ton and Jason Cala­ca­nis. Frankly, I think Henry’s Blo­gads is a much big­ger story.
UPDATE: Spea­king of, Nick Den­ton will be mode­ra­ting a Blog­ger­con panel to do with Clay Shirky’s Power Law. Thanks for the tip, Cynthia.

4 Responses to ““making blogs a business””

  1. cynthia says:

    there’s gonna be a panel on shirky’s power law too, led by nick den­ton http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/bloggerCon/

  2. hugh says:

    i heard about that. sounds good.

  3. chuck says:

    Thy words, I grant are big­ger, for I wear not, my dag­ger in my mouth. chuck The hand that hath made you fair hath made you good.

  4. vinnie says:

    If all the year were pla­ying holi­days; To sport would be as tedious as to work. vin­nie There are more things in hea­ven and earth, Horatio,Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.