KILLING THE BLOGOSPHERE?

Playing catch up here after going to sleep early last night at 11pm (catching up on some zzzzs). I didn't get a chance to blog yesterday because of work, dropping by the first SF Tech Sessions that Niall Kennedy put together, and then meeting up with Christine for a gathering since one of her colleagues is taking a break from Google. Yep, those gourmet meals, massages, and kick-ass snack pantries are tough to deal with :)

Anyway, there were a couple interesting reads over at TCS Daily:

Blogger Buzz-Kill?
By Glenn Harlan Reynolds

For blogs, it is the best of times, and the worst of times -- depending on who you listen to. British business writer Tim Montgomerie is praising blogs for their "diverse wisdom:"

"All over the world bloggers have toppled leading politicians and journalists. Businesses are the latest targets of their campaigns. Disgruntled customers know that a rubbish reply from a plc's customer relations department is no longer the end of the road. They can start up a free weblog to highlight experience of a shoddy product or poor service. If that experience strikes a chord, hundreds of other disempowered customers are only a Google search away.

"The empowerment of the little guy is one of the most powerful and most democratic benefits of the internet age. The trade press is no longer the authority on the quality of a product. Conversation about politics is no longer monopolised by politicians and journalists who lunch together. The cosy and complacent relationships between big media on one hand, and big business and big politics and the other, are coming to an end."

Clay Shirky, meanwhile, wonders if blogs are becoming too commercially successful, rendering the old model of the lone blogger obsolete:

"Of the top 10 Technorati-measured blogs, (Disclosure: I am an advisor to Technorati), all but one of them are either run by more than one poster, or generate revenue from ads or subscriptions. (The exception is PostSecret, whose revenue comes from book sales, not directly from running the site.) Four of the top five and five of the ten are both group and commercial efforts -- BoingBoing, Engadget, Kos, Huffington Post, and Gizmodo.

"Groups have wider inputs and outputs than individuals -- the staff of BoingBoing or Engadget can review more potential material, from a wider range of possibilities, and post more frequently, than can any individual. Indeed, the only two of those ten blogs operating in the classic "Individual Outlet" mode are at #9 and 10 -- Michelle Malkin and Glenn Reynolds, respectively." (full article)

Will Video Kill The Blogosphere Star?
By Edward B. Driscoll Jr.

Is there a WebTV box plugged into your TV set? Chances are, probably not. Since the mid-'90s, attempts to bring the Web to television have had only middling success. Lately though, the reverse -- efforts to bring TV to the Web -- have been skyrocketing. And that will increasingly affect both how we interact with video, and how the new media mavens of the Blogosphere deliver news and opinion.

Now that broadband is becoming more and more ubiquitous in American homes, several new Websites and technologies have converged to allow video on the Web to interact much more fluidly. Back in October of 2005, Google prominently added a video-oriented search engine. That was also the month that YouTube.com was launched, a start-up created by two key former employees of PayPal, and funded by $3.5 million invested by the Sequoia Capital venture capital firm. (full article)