Comments on: Let’s All Grow Up and Play Nice, Shall We?

By: Jeneane Sessum

Jeneane Sessum — Mon, 28 Aug 2006 04:18:00 +0000

you put your finger on precisely what bothers me most–or at least cloes to most–about this kind of Winerlogic: you know he’s out to get someone; sometimes you can glean who; sometimes someone else names who; sometimes dave can’t contain himself and comes out with it two posts later, then edits how he reallly feels, then deletes the post, or leaves the post but puts up a little thumbnail graphic and tries to make it all ok.it’s not okay, but your dog has a very cute snout.

By: Nick Miners

Nick Miners — Fri, 25 Aug 2006 22:40:00 +0000

From Wikipedia:”Dave is one of my favorite sources of information and opinion on the Web. His opinions are passionately held, well-informed, intelligent, argumentative, and quite often wrong,” quipped Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy author Douglas Adams.May explain the hitch-hiker reference…

By: Danny

Danny — Fri, 25 Aug 2006 22:32:00 +0000

Heh, to think I nearly missed this!Only one comment, in response to Phil, who said: “Dave has basically had a particular idea of what the internet is and how it should be used. And the short summary is : the internet is NOT mainstream media.”Since when did the NYT and BBC (the material Winer’s republishing) stop being mainstream media?

By: Seth Finkelstein

Seth Finkelstein — Fri, 25 Aug 2006 18:52:00 +0000

“Whereas *everyone* and his mother-in-law are gonna get rich from AdWords, right? ”No – only a tiny percentage are going to get rich by any means. Everyone else will labor in obscurity. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, *if it’s what they want*. But there’s also a huge amount of hype and hucksterism. Because in order for that tiny percentage to get rich, a large number of people have to be convinced to be part of the system, and that often involves a marketing pitch of economic benefit which won’t be realized.”Blogs act as information routers …”No, blogs as a trade newsletters, marketing brochures, portfolios. This is also media.A further view is that blogs are something sold to people so that the seller can profit from the service.As in (sarcasm) “Why don’t you little Z-listers be happy chatting away and “conversing” (and using the software from this start-up … and search engine from that start-up … and providing the basis for that A-lister to bloviate about how the revolution is at hand so big business should pay a hefty consulting fee …)”. Which is the “egalitarianism” of a flock of sheep.So, exactly, it’s economic profitable for the providers of blog services and consultants to try to sell people on it, even if those people never have more than a few readers. Because the *seller* will profit, even if *nobody* else does. That scales – for the blog-evangelist!

By: phil jones

phil jones — Fri, 25 Aug 2006 15:14:00 +0000

[quote]If I can paraphrase: “Use your blog as platform to *market* your *consulting* business, and sell *services*”. This sounds very very appealing. The problem is that it doesn’t stand up to close examination. In order to market your consulting business, well, you need to have a consulting business in the first place, and that’s only a small percentage of the population. Similarly, a service platform is difficult to have succeed (though granted, he did). But by definition, this will only work for a very few people.[/quote]Whereas *everyone* and his mother-in-law are gonna get rich from AdWords, right? There seems to be two rival views of the role of personal publishing in the information economy : One is that people are basically consultants and professionals, who use their blog to suppliment their service. Blogs act as information routers, conversation starters and ways of sharing useful knowledge. It doesn’t have to be large scale. At the local level, blogs are probably doing the same sort of thing as membership of the local Rotary Society or Chamber of Commerce. The other view is that blogs are mini-media. That even at the local level, MyTownBlog is able to sell AdWords for MyTownBusiness to MyTown residents. So the blog is the equivalent of the local newspaper.Which of these is actually the more egalitarian in the sense of a) having fewer barriers to entry, and b) a fairer distribution of the wealth created?As a programming geek I can easily imagine the scenario where a blogger in a medium-sized enterprise writes : “I’m thinking of using this tool or technique to solve that problem” and one of his 5 readers comments “don’t do that because of X”. At which point, the blogger changes his mind and avoids a world of pain (not to mention 6 months and a million dollars of wasted effort).Apart from Hugh Macleod (who might sell a 30 million dollar yacht or something) it’s hard to imagine any blogger making a similar return on one reader via the advertising model.The advertising model seems to require a far more vicious competition for scarce attention. To make anything your probably need thousands of readers, all of whom, by definition are paying their scarce attention to you rather than each other.How can that scale-out to be more egalitarian? Imagine a network, closer to a lattice than a small-world, where every blogger had at most 5 readers. Blogs would still be economically productive on Dave’s model, but not on the ad-driven one.

By: Rogers

Rogers — Fri, 25 Aug 2006 11:27:00 +0000

He’s boasting about his income from selling weblogs.com, not to be obnoxious about his wealth, but because he’s desperately trying to push people to think outside the box and see opportunities beyond traditional advertising. Of course, he’d have never seen the opportunity of a “weblogs.com” if he hadn’t been immersed in the blogging world.The same is true in the other direction. Because he has so many opportunities outside of advertising, he doesn’t recognize that hundreds, perhaps thousands, of bloggers are making good part- or full-time income through ads.

By: Seth Finkelstein

Seth Finkelstein — Fri, 25 Aug 2006 07:03:00 +0000

If I can paraphrase: “Use your blog as platform to *market* your *consulting* business, and sell *services*”. This sounds very very appealing. The problem is that it doesn’t stand up to close examination. In order to market your consulting business, well, you need to have a consulting business in the first place, and that’s only a small percentage of the population. Similarly, a service platform is difficult to have succeed (though granted, he did). But by definition, this will only work for a very few people. One harmful aspect of blog-evangelism is to take those relative handful of people who do succeed that way, and then trumpet them as The Way Things Should Be Done, because, hey, it worked for *them*. But, if e.g. you’re going to sell a notification service for millions, you need to have a huge number of people using that notification service, to make it commercially valuable. So mathematically, only very few such services can be profitable – unfortunately usually correlated with those “who keeps grabbing your collar and telling you over and over how smart or how successful they are”, and that they’re the #1 top guy inventor, so thus the moneybags should buy-into and then buy-out, their service, and not anyone else’s.Note the usually reaction to this analysis is boosterism and shoot-the-messenger, which doesn’t refute it.

By: Kent

Kent — Fri, 25 Aug 2006 03:51:00 +0000

Phil, I really appreciate the exegesis. It’s sorely needed sometimes to try to understand what Dave is trying to say.Based on your interpretation, I and a lot of other people I know would largely agree with Dave’s theory. I have been a constant and loud critic of the reliance on ads as the primary business model for Web 2.0.My problem with Dave, to the extent I have one, is that he doesn’t seem to distinguish between those who share his views and those who don’t. He just bashes everyone- other than a few selected pals.If he wants to truly be an influencer, he needs to learn how to embrace those who agree with him, because as big as he may be, he could make a bigger impact as part of a movement as opposed to trying to be the movement.

By: phil jones

phil jones — Fri, 25 Aug 2006 03:33:00 +0000

If you’ll allow a quick bit of speculative exegesis.For approximately the last 12 years, or so, Dave has basically had a particular idea of what the internet is and how it should be used. And the short summary is : the internet is NOT mainstream media.What happens is that mainstream media continuously try to take over the internet and remake it in their image. And Winer is continuously, passionately arguing that they’re misguided (and sometimes dangerous)In this particular case, Winer is simply continuing a theme he started many years ago in a series of “how to make money on the internet” essays, who’s basic message was “Look beyond the business models of traditional media. There’s more money to be made by really taking the idea of two-way communication seriously. Pay attention to your customers and they’ll tell you about new opportunities.” Winer uses his blog to have *conversations*, to learn stuff, and to be an influencer. He thinks *that’s* that way to make money with blogs, and that retreating to thinking of them as simply cheap-to-produce magazines, which perpetuate the business model of reselling their reader demographics to advertisers, is a debasement of this wonderful new medium.He’s boasting about his income from selling weblogs.com, not to be obnoxious about his wealth, but because he’s desperately trying to push people to think outside the box and see opportunities beyond traditional advertising. Of course, he’d have never seen the opportunity of a “weblogs.com” if he hadn’t been immersed in the blogging world.The “hitchhikers” he’s disparaging are *adverts*.

By: michael webster

michael webster — Thu, 24 Aug 2006 20:27:00 +0000

I read the article, and simply posted a question about how he did it.I suspect the answer will tell us a great deal -that is, there will be no substantive answer.