Business Press Pays Attention To Blog Industry

prostoalex writes "Right after Business Week named WebLogs, Inc. one of the five Net companies to watch in 2005, the Associated Press has a feature on SixApart, the company behind Movable Type, Typepad and (after acquisition) LiveJournal. The article talks about the company starting to 'think big' after being approached by venture capitalists, and has some stats on the blog industry in general."

Comments

Dot.Com Bubble again

[onion2k]

These blogging sites are great for getting stats with big numbers that will impress the money men, like page impressions, and users, and gigs of bandwidth.. but what about the revenue? People aren't actually very willing to pay for somewhere to write their blog, you can't run a multi-million dollar business on the back of T-Shirt merchandising sales, and online advertising is a business model shown to be flawed in the late 90s..

So if I were to invest in on of these companies, where would my stock dividends be coming from?

Or is it another case of a dot.com investor not really understanding what they're buying into?

Re:Dot.Com Bubble again

[grazzy]

Online advertising with big flash banners leading to a empty webshop - yes

Much has happen since... like, amazon, ebay, paypal. Wanna tell them that "online advertising is flawed"?.

Re:Dot.Com Bubble again

[CastrTroy]

Much has happen since... like, amazon, ebay, paypal. Wanna tell them that "online advertising is flawed"?.

All those companies have real services and don't just survive off of advertisements. That said, if your blog pages are generating enough hits you can survive on just adds. What do you think keeps Google alive?

Re:Dot.Com Bubble again

[shark72]

"People aren't actually very willing to pay for somewhere to write their blog"

That's an extremely general statement; can you clarify? What people? Your friends? You're correct, in the tautalogical sense, that people who don't want to pay don't want to pay, but the important thing is that there are people who do.

The fact that your post was modded "insightful" shows that there are many who agree with you, but this may be similar to the "lots of people pirate music, thus people aren't willing to pay for it, thus the value of music is zero" fallacy. As the volume of piracy grows, so has Apple's business in paid downloads. And despite more and more free blogging services popping up, more people are paying. I'm able to measure this not in the abstract, let's-post-hunches-on-Slashdot sense, but by the amount of money that's put into my bank account each day.

To your credit, the "there's no business in blogging" sentiment is a popular one, but I'm just not seeing the evidence to support that.

Am I the only non-blogger out there

[mattspammail]

I never have caught on to the blogging thing. The only times I ever look at a blog is when it's sent to me as a link (usually because a pic of a hot chick accompanies it).

Blogging, IMHO, is overrated.

Hoo boy...

[aendeuryu]

The article talks about the company starting to 'think big' after being approached by venture capitalists, and has some stats on the blog industry in general.

Pardon the skepticism, but...

You know, it's crazy, but you'd think that after the dot.com bubble burst the venture capitalists would be a little more careful with their money when it came to tech, yet here they are, wanting to get in on an industry where the main product is something that is already available for free. Where will the revenue, and further, the return on the investment, come from? (Firing Berman out of a cannon?) What's worse is that if there's another burst like the last one, investors are going to go back to shying away from small tech companies that actually produce something.

I think this whole thing is a result of all the press that the mainstream media is giving blogs, and the only reason why I think they're getting all that press is because the media LOVES an opportunity to navel gaze.

Don't get me wrong, I think blogging is cool and all, and offers a chance for political/media/other watchdogs out there, and there are some blogs I find entertaining, but really, I can't help but think that all that money is just going to go right down the drain, and the only thing they'll have to show for it is a bunch of webpages of people and their cats.

Oh. My. God.

[samael]

The whole fuss over people on both sides of the debate "Blogging will change the universe!" and "Blogging is just pointless!" misses the point.

Blogging is _exactly_ what happened at the start of the internet craze - it's _home pages_. Blogs are just home pages that are easier to update than they used to be back in the olden days, so people don't have to worry about HTML in order to create them.

Blogs: Just easy-to-use web pages, nothing more, nothing less.

History repeats

[HMarieY]

First, in reference to those who don't get blogging: It is finally a way for all of us would-be writers and journalists to express our humble opinions in a place where they might actually be read. It is a diverse community without the usualy limits and editing done when something is written within major media.

Historically speaking this has happened numerous times. Each time a new media appears it changes the way all previous media performs, killing that which is no longer viable, gradually reshaping "old media" and creating a new means of information. Think about how the printing press, television, and computers have all changed the way major media reacts with the masses. As the price of producing in that media lowers more people will begin to produce in that media, creating a more diverse body of knowledge than "popular opinion" that big media tends to stick with. For instance as the prices of printing came down during the industrial revolution many would-be activists printed pamphlets of their beliefs. I actually own a pamphlet printed from that time insisting that we should move to a 12 digit numeric system, not exactly something that would be put forth by main stream media at the time, especially with the push for metric. And so it is to be expected that blogging will recreate media, providing a check and balance system for main stream media, just as has happened in the past.

That said, part of the point is that the price must be low in order to be used. Bloggers that are read daily by large masses: Instapundit and Lileks for example can easily manage to pay for their bandwith costs and to use purchased blogger software, but the average blogger doesn't have a ton of readers and unless he gets discovered, more than likely eats hiis bandwith costs each month and will prefer the free model for blogging apps. So, as far as investments go, I am not sure that that particular model will prove productive.