Comments on: Lessons from the Bayosphere

By: Kent

Kent — Tue, 24 Jan 2006 23:54:00 +0000

I thought that comment was well stated too, although a lot of those elements (passion, capability, credibility, etc.) are pretty subjective. If you do good, it’s easy and often accurate to attribute your success to those elements. On the other hand, it is harder to attribute failure. Compensation is another key, and my point has been that if you want to be paid, you almost always need to have some product to sell other than the content on your blog. Leadership is also a difficult concept, because very few organizations, close or loose, are true meritocracies. The leaders are often a self-appointed group (or, perhaps, appointed by virtue of getting there first) that evolves into a self-perpetuating oligarchy. I guess what I’m saying is that you need all that stuff plus either (a) a ready-made audience or (b) an embrace by the oligarchy. It’s too similar to the old media gatekeeper thing, but as I said the other day, there’s no easy alternative. That might just be the nature of the thing.I think the music analogy is interesting. Lots of guys I know view their records as merely dues to the man and consider touring income (gate and merchandise) as their real money. They look at records as supporting the tours, whereas the record label cartel looks at it the other way around. There’s definitely more inherent value in a concert than a record, but each one needs the other to thrive.But the idea of a blog as a record-equivilent supporting other goods and services (say Scoble’s Microsoft and Rubel’s PR business) is very consistent with the way I see things.But that’s on the business blog side. On the “I write because I want to join the conversation” side, which is sadly in the same bucket as the “my blog IS my business side,” it’s a little like putting out records but never touring. To begin with, those bloggers don’t have anything else to sell. Furthermore, the cacophony of those who are trying to sell their goods (whatever they may be) makes it very heard to get heard.

By: Ethan

Ethan — Tue, 24 Jan 2006 22:52:00 +0000

Kent,I thought that the first comment to Dan’s post was more insightful, honestly. From what I surmised, Bayosphere was essentially a targeted blog, or blog network. Meh. I think “pay for blog” is a non-starter, as blogs are essentially free. Artificial attempts at “monetizing” them (see Pajamas Media) can’t seem to get off the ground, which is not an indictment of the blog medium itself.Let’s shift gears and think in musical terms. Lots of illegal downloading gows on out there, effectively commoditizing popular music. But what about the public performance? There is more inherent value in that act than an MP3 file. Todd Rundgren (sp?) once admonished the music world to quit thinking of their music as a product, and more of a service. The money is in the live performance, not the CD, per Todd.I can’t speak to this from experience, but the advice strikes me as plausible. Thoughts?

By: Amy

Amy — Tue, 24 Jan 2006 21:03:00 +0000

Hey Kent, there you go, an A-list link! From Businessweek’s Blogspotting.Congrats - Amy Gahran RightConversation.com Contentious.com