The Coming of the BlogShpere
By AZAM on March 31, 2008Recently, there have been numerous posting and chatter on the blogging sphere. We have gone past the argument that blogs are not high priestly society of dead trees or the recent self reflecting thoughts of lacking in blog posts. Blogs are getting serious in their efforts and building teams armed and ready to fight it out among themselves. No longer the fraternal brotherhood scene, and they want money and to be paid for their serious efforts. Blogs are 24/7 efforts and have been gaining viewership, and print is working to stem losses from traditional revenues streams that are disappearing fast.
The Dead Tree
The pulp content in the news print is falling fast due to the digital media that light ups pixels that cover the screen with fast moving and engaging digital content. Digital format has a number of advantages or different formats (digital print, images, audio, and video) and ways of interacting with users in real time that deliver an immediate media fix that tradition reporting and media fail to deliver with larger or editors and journalist teams and journalism standards impede on speed. The fact that takes time to print on dead trees and maintain digital presence works to their disadvantage. The newspapers and their endeared journalist will not likely disappear anytime soon and serve their part in providing valuable longer format and in depth reporting pieces that take time and money that will require same set of resources for other media formats to match.
Leaving the scene
A large number of the prominent members of the blogosphere are former journalist and media executives seeking refuge from traditional media houses. These modern tech migrant are pioneer of the new territory of the digital media landscape. Tech Crunch has acquired talent in the form of Heather Harde, former SVP of Mergers and Acquisitions at Fox Interactive Media and Erick Schodfeld as editor from Business 2.0. Veturebeat’s Matt Marshall previously covered the VC industry for SJ Mercury in the SiliconBeat blog and recently hired fellow SJ Mercury a veteran tech writer Dean Takahashi. Giga Om’s Om Malik is a former Business 2.0 writer as well and his teams at GigaOm are from various professional media outlets. Xconomy founder Robert Buderi is former chief editor of the MIT Technology Review which is required reading for most VCs. ContentNext, Paid Content has recently hired former Yahoo Finance’s Nathan Richardson and added Charlie Koones from Variety on the board. Gawker’s Nick Denton comes from the FT as well and built an attractive media culture firm with several interesting blogs covering different subjects.
Blogs are evolving
Blogs are gaining ground in their media prowess and adding staff to their small and expanding empires of content. The 24/7 posting culture keep news fresh and creates continuous conversations on wide variety of subjects and covering various angles. Recently, a number of blogs have been raising money for venture capital firms and transforming the industry from an armature solo gig to a more professional team with investment backers and sponsors having interests and influences in the direction of content is heading and style of prose being released.
TechCrunch Michael Arrington “rant” discusses the rapidly changing scene
VentureBeat reported a $320,000 raise. In 2007 we saw Sugar Inc. ($10 million), GigaOm ($1 million), Xconomy, Blogher ($3.5 million) and The Huffington Post ($10 million) raise venture capital. That’s at least $25 million in 2007 invested in blogs and blog networks.
Erik Schonfeld from TechCrunch describes his experience in the Blogsphere
There is something about blogging—the immediacy, the give and take, the point of view—that helps it competes with traditional media for attention. And we don’t want to lose that. We like to speculate, argue, and debate—sometimes in ways that traditional journalists may think is unseemly. That’s okay, as long as our readers keep coming back for more.
Definitely Blogs are changing the way the media industry functions. The larger media power houses are requiring their journalists to write in the blog format and have developed their own blog properties. It will be interesting to see how the two universes collide and form into a new and different kind of constellation.
A number of articles have been featuring the rise of blogs and the investment and projections of valuations on some of the top blogs.
A list of the top blogs Techmeme Leaderboard
24/7 Wall Street have produced a list of valuations of the 25 Most Valuable Blogs
Categories : Media & AdsTags : , Blogs, GigaOm, Media, TechCrunch, VentureBeat