Blogs Bring Back Dot-Com Poster Boy

An anonymous reader writes "Wired has a profile of Jason Calacanis, the former Dot-Com bubble rider, and now the mind behind the sale of Weblogs, Inc. to AOL." From the article: "Calacanis and Alvey wanted to get in on the action, but the scale and limitations of blogs bugged them. 'We decided that one blog, like Rafat's, could make tens of thousands of dollars a year,' says Alvey. 'Definitely enough for one person who works 24 hours a day to sustain a business. But how could you get so that you could add more people?' The answer, they decided, was to build a network of blogs."

Comments

Comparing bubbles to oranges

[gbulmash]

I think three major differences between bubble purchases and current purchases are pricing, financing, and profitability. Back in the bubble, money-losing companies were selling for 9 figures and paid for almost entirely in stock. Calcanis, whatever you want to say about him, was turning a profit with Weblogs, Inc., sold for 1/10th of what bubble prices used to run, and though the details are not clear, I'm betting he got a good chunk of the sale price in cash instead of restricted stock units.

- Greg

Re:Comparing bubbles to oranges

[BlackShirt]

The bubble was not only about stock price. It was also exaggerated assumptions, euphoria and techno-babble. You could think that sensible and reasonable people would not talk BS but guess what....

One rule. #1. Get your feet on the ground.
OK. Two rules. #2. Think yourself.

Social networks

[eneville]

Social network blogs are killing internet content. Who wants to read through a tone of IRC logs to find one line of matching relevance?

Blogs can be ok, for instance of the blogger is really blogging something that he/she does on a daily basis because it's in a single field of expertise.

Blogs should not be used for trivial diaries, and that I fear is what the AOL users will use them for.

On the other hand, there are some blog entries which are worthy of becomming wiki sites.

Re:Social networks

[LiquidCoooled]

Blogs should not be used for trivial diaries, and that I fear is what the AOL users will use them for.

No, blogs can be used for whatever people want to use them for.
Its how they are indexed and linked that matters.

If 10 bazillion people all want to talk about their fuzzy heads and broken dreams, then so be it.

In an ideal world, we would not be forced to look at them.
Google still needs tweaking to remove them.

Re:Social networks

[lagerbottom]

Yeah I agree. I get sick of everyone bashing what other people are doing online. Get over it. If people want to use blog software to keep diary, who the fuck cares. As for the google part. I am not sure. I mean I almost never run across a blog that is totally irrelevant. Of course I don't search for "Great curtains and toast" so I suppose that most of the diary blogs out there just don't show up in the results.

you mean an online newspaper?

[Anonymous Coward]

multiple writers, one location and one general direction?

amazing.

Slashbot replies

[patternjuggler]

Cue a bunch of people saying how blogs are stupid and no one wants to read about boring details of other people's lives, jobs, hobbies, whatever.

Cue response which points out you shouldn't judge blogs by just browsing them at random like it was 1994 and you're surfing the internet by clicking on links on crappy geocities sites, you should look at ones that are popular and fit your tastes, and use google and blogsearch etc. to find them. Everything is crap if you don't have an easy way of discriminating from the good and the bad, etc.

Re:Slashbot replies

[Geoffreyerffoeg]

Cue response which points out you shouldn't judge blogs by just browsing them at random

Before anyone criticizes the general concept of blogs, please remember that Slashdot is a blog.

You might as well just criticize Apache.

Re:Slashbot replies

[Jeff DeMaagd]

Everything is crap if you don't have an easy way of discriminating from the good and the bad, etc.

Dumpster diving is not for everyone. Finding a good web long is not too unlike sifting through rubbish to find a diamond ring.

Jase and Del

[FishandChips]

The article makes the guy sound like a total nightmare. At least, though, he doesn't walk around with a pug under his arm.

I guess the story illustrates what happens: because the internet is so open, it is also open to unlimited quantities of marketers, hype and money. These burn up new ideas at a rate like nothing else. Whatever a new idea might have been, it comes to be seen as just another vehicle for your actual entrepreneur, init, and you can no longer believe a word anyone says. There is always an agenda, and in this case it's your money in their pocket. It's only a matter of time before the whole scene has been gutted to the point of collapse and then the crowd moves on to the next big-bucks bandwagon. So I guess that blogs are, if not dead, then walking wounded because they have no credibility left. I wonder what will come next.