Slightly Off KIlter

Blogs are becoming commercialized. Beginning with simple Google AdSense Ads, Amazon referral links, and Cafe Press merchandising–often simply to defray the costs of site hosting–many bloggers have sought to make a little money from their blogs. Some blogs, like Daring Fireball, began with very commercial premises. Big Media is spinning up its own blogs (Slate, MSNBC). Commercial blog networks like Weblogs, Inc., Gawker Media, Corante, and AlwaysOn Network are building whole new profit models for blogs. Somewhere between a journalist and the guy standing on the corner wearing a sandwich board, the commercialization of blogs is creating a new class of blogger: The Professional Blogger.

What’s your slant on the commercialization of blogs? Is it a good thing? Will commercialization increase public awareness of this all but hidden publishing medium? Will commercialization lead to over-saturation of the Internet? Is making money from blogging just plain wrong?

[ cf Saturday Slant ]

It’s not really accurate to say that “Blogs are becoming commercialized”. It’s only accurate to say that there are commercial blogs and professional bloggers as well as personal blogs and parttime “amateur” bloggers. I don’t have any problems with commercialization. It’s a choice, after all. My blog is still free, as is yours, but he’s been hired to do one for his company and she’s promoting one that asks for paid subscriptions. That’s OK.

Contrary to the belief of some bloggers, weblogs aren’t really anything “special”. They’re simply one of the next logical enhancements in web technology. Back in 1993, the Web was very new. It wasn’t very useful, but it was a cool publishing medium. Today, 10 years later, it’s still a cool publishing medium. It’s not new anymore and there are all sorts of things being done with it.

I read Meg Hourihan’s column, “Blogging for Dollars: Giving Rise to the Professional Blogger” in February, 2003; the column was written in August, 2002. I agreed with her assessment then. I agree as much, or more, today.

When I started my personal web site (aka “home page”), back in 1994/95, I wrote:

One of the best things about the Web is that anyone can play. You don’t have to be a computer programmer. You don’t have to be a graphic artist. You don’t even need to be able to use a computer! You just need to want to join the ever-growing community of “people on the web”.

Web pages range from serious to silly, from personal to commercial, from excellent resources to… well… not. Content ranges from something you’ll refer to over and over again, to something you click away from just as quickly as you can get your finger on the mouse. And then there’s everything in between.

It’s been said that the power of the press belongs to the person who owns one. These days, a lot of us own (or rent) the late 20th century equivalent of the printing press. Freedom of speech will never be quite the same again.

I can still remember my sense of surprise and amusement the first time I saw http://www.shell.com on the sign at the gas pump, the first time I saw http://www.ups.com on the side of the big brown truck. Today, I’m surprised if a company doesn’t have a web site! The web is part of the business game. The web is integral to the Internet (contrary to popular belief, the Intranet actually preceded the web by a good 20 years).

The weblog is a natural extension of the personal web pages. It’s got everything the “home page” had, and more. Weblogs are easy to use; they’re date-stamped and “time-driven”; they have archival features built in; they make it easy to post comments or to have multiple authors for a site. But, even with all of that, there’s nothing inherently special about a weblog. A weblog is simply a website with date-stamped entries. Before the invention of Blogger, GreyMatter, Live Journal, Movable Type, etc… people created weblogs by editing a static web page, the way they had always done.

If the WWW had stayed a personal toy, populated by personal home pages, never adopted by the business world, I don’t think it would be nearly as useful today. But because the web was recognized as a commercially viable entity, I can do my banking online, shop online, look things up (and find the answers!) on line! The web is a real player.

Weblog technology is perfect for many things that businesses need to provide. The weblog feature set is ideal for bug tracking, newsletters, software feature lists, news & information. The “professional blogger” is the logical next step, working closely with the professional webmaster and the professional systems/network administrator.

The other night at dinner, I was stunned to hear a friend of ours advocating weblogs as “the best and only real choice” for a particular company project Spouse had mentioned that was coming up at his job. I was stunned because, a year ago, this same friend considered weblogs to be a joke. Try as I might to convince him to separate the technology and the potential from the popular content, all he saw when he cruised the web was personal diaries, entries about last night’s date, weblogs written by High School students. He couldn’t see the potential because there weren’t any real examples readily available to back up what I was telling him — that weblogs didn’t have to be like this.

A year later, his opinion has come full circle. He finally “gets it”. He’s advocating the technology.

Now consider this. My friend is a techie. He sees the potential of a new technology a lot faster than most higher-up executives in large corporations. But every step builds on a previous step. If he’s finally seen the potential, that means that sooner or later the Very Large Corporations will see the potential. And then weblogs will be as ubiquitous tomorrow as websites are today. That’s a Good Thing!

I am thrilled that in this new Internetworked web-based era, “anyone can play”. But I also believe that unless the business community joins with the individuals, creating commercially viable web sites and weblogs, the technology will falter and stop growing. People are what will keep the web going, growing, and changing. For better or worse, people need to make money, people have day jobs, people are part of the world’s businesses. That means that businesses will also be a part of the web for years to come.

“Commercialization” of the web was a desirable result of the creation of the WWW. Commercialization (i.e. adoption by business) was necessary to the growth, expansion, and survival of the WWW. The same can be said of any aspect of web-based technology. That includes weblogs.