Oct 05
10
Even I can see the future arriving.
Blog networks became big business this week. It was a seismic shift in media. Weblogs Inc was sold with AOL paying 25 mill or 294 K for each blog. VeriSign bought Weblogs and its ping service. Gawker announced they're distributing a blog from their network in Europe with a partner. Instablogs launched with 46 blogs. Blog Herald, part of the growing Blog Empire group, estimated 100 million blogs exist now(in total), BlogNetworkWatch launched, and a post about blog network at HomeOfficeVoice brought a storm of comment from all the players. And there was much, much more.
Why all the action?
Readership of major newspapers is down, TV viewership is down, as is network news ratings. Mainstream journalists are being fired. Bloggers are being hired. Mainstream ad revenue is slumping. Major media is finally waking up that digital media, in this case blogs, is the future; fast information delivery, an ability to shunt readers around to deep silos of information, targeted demographics, and a ballooning readership. What was once an esoteric, or hippie, fringe is now a mainstream. AOL needs Weblogs Inc to be relevant. And grow revenue.
All this with only 5% of the the internet reading, or writing, blogs. What happens when the crowd really arrives?
We can see there's a scramble to stake out territory by forming new blog networks, to snatch up existing networks and blogs, to jump away from standing solely under the crumbling edifice of old line media to something that offers vast new opportunities.
Yet it's still the start of this evolution. We're only now exploring new ways of obtaining information digitally (combinations of fixed lines, podcast, satellite, fiber optics, wireless internet, PC, PDA, game console, cable TV, DVR's, cellphone, internet); just now amidst new ways of consuming content (ie blogs); whilst new content and new ways of making content are being dreamed up every day (mashing).
What you see here with the information and entertainment industries (media, film, music, TV) is the start of “the big one”, the earthquake that sweeps through every industry and every company changing everything as it goes. Bet on it. AOL have.