Owning the blogosphere
Back in our early days of blogging, there was a healthy debate about what the heck we doing, this mainstream media company busting into the "alternative" media. There was a justifiable fear that we would attempt to corral the discussion and suck money out of the market. Our position at the time was that we'd like to figure out how to make money from it, but that that wasn't our first goal. Our first goal was to use the new media tools to improve and expand our journalism.
As time went on, the discussion died down, although I don't know if the fears or concerns have.
Terry Heaton nails our thinking with a post yesterday: Let this be a lesson to media companies wishing a plate at the table of Media 2.0. The personal media revolution lives and breathes on its own. Your BEST position is one of supporting the life form, not trying to harness or control it. If you can keep your distance, it will reward you in ways you cannot imagine.
We've actually been able to imagine most of the rewards we've gotten. We still want to make money -- gobs of it, as a matter of fact. But dominate or harness? Never did and knew we couldn't even if we had wanted to.
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During my three weeks of blogging, I've written extensively on how bloggers can make money. You can start here and work your way back. Hope that helps! Stay tuned for my post about how bloggers can hedge risk with credit default swaps.
Posted on November 18, 2006 6:28 PM