All-star blog network comment thread: Scrivens! Calacanis! Sundry publishers!

We have the first long conversation between the Young Blog Networks: A comment thread with publishers from Webby Media, b5media, Weblogs Inc., Instablogs, 9rules, and Clear Digital Media, with input and criticism from a professor, a journalist, Ginger, and Mary Anne.

The conversation starts when b5media asks, “What makes a blog network successful?” (Other than a big vault of money, in which you swim like Scrooge McDuck?) They point to another question: Are blog networks right for you? Home Office Voice’s Martin Neumann says b5media isn’t right for those beginning online businesses. He goes further, though, arguing that b5’s content ownership and profit-sharing plan could mean writers are working for nothing.

In Neumann’s comment thread, Jeremy Wright of b5 begs to differ:

Not that I feel like arguing, but I think there are some things you might be missing in the equation. First, it’s b5’s job to drive traffic to your site. As an author, you do of course have an incentive to promote it in reasonable ways, but if you were able to drive 1000 visitors to your site every day in the first week, you probably don’t need us.

Jason Calacanis steps in:

We tried the revenue split model two years ago… it didn’t work because there were not enough folks out there who wanted to make little/no money for the 6-18 months it takes to build a blog to profitability.

Jeremy responds:

If we had the cash, we’d be paying from day 1 as well, don’t worry.

So we see the hardships of starting a blog network with no capital. And:

Being honest, all our current bloggers (and the 100+ that applied for the next round of blogs) are fine with us owning content. So, it’s not an immediate business concern.

Not too surprising, since Weblogs, Inc. and Gawker Media retain copyright. This is, basically, the route to go when a network runs a blog’s backend, and when the network plans to stay with the blog longer than the writer. 9rules is the pure antithesis, being a network for pre-existing blogs more identified with their writers. What we’re seeing, if I may be so bold (and it’s midnight, I’ve had 6 cups of coffee, and the lights are blazing, so damn it, I shall be bold) — what we’re seeing is a tiny reproduction of the federalist / anti-federalist debate.

Yes, that’s a little too bold.

But this sort of conversation comes between the launches of b5media and Instablogs. 9rules just had a banner season of additions, Gawker Media added a sports blog and moved Sploid into GM’s first non-blog territory, and WIN just hires like crazy and won’t. ever. stop. For blogs, 2005 is the year of the network. This is the exchange of pamphlets.

Tags: blog+network

This entry was posted by Nick Douglas on Saturday, October 1st, 2005 at 12:38 am and is filed under 9rules, Gawker Media, Jason Calacanis, Jeremy Wright, Jessica Coen, Nick Denton, Paul Scrivens, Weblogs, Inc., b5media. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.