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There Are No Bloggers Anymore, Only Men Who Follow Ad Impressions

By Kleinheider Posted on November 9, 2008 at 4:42 pm

An observation on the state of that social media phenomenon they called blogs:

That vast, free-wheeling, and surprisingly intimate forum where individual writers shared their observations, thoughts, and arguments outside the bounds of the traditional media is gone. Almost all of the popular blogs today are commercial ventures with teams of writers, aggressive ad-sales operations, bloated sites, and strategies of self-linking. Some are good, some are boring, but to argue that they’re part of a “blogosphere” that is distinguishable from the “mainstream media” seems more and more like an act of nostalgia, if not self-delusion.”

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Comments

6 Responses to “There Are No Bloggers Anymore, Only Men Who Follow Ad Impressions”

  1. Matthew Hurtt writes
    November 9th, 2008 4:50 pm

    Ouch.

    - Matthew

  2. Stephen writes
    November 9th, 2008 5:02 pm

    This post reminds me of Mark Twain’s famous remark concerning reports of his death: it’s a bit premature and grossly exaggerated.

    While many of the better-known blogs do indeed have some advertising, small teams of writers and an understandable habit of linking to like-minded sites, there is one HUGE difference between these blog sites and the mainstream media. None of the most influential blogs are owned by, nor are they cow-towing to, giant multi-national corporations. The are no big wigs from NewsCorp, Time-Warner or General Electric calling the shots in the blogosphere.

    Meanwhile, the vast majority of blogs remain small, non-commercial operations, generating little or no revenue for their owners. They vary enormously in readership and point of view, but all of them have little in common with the mainstream media.

  3. LeftWingCracker writes
    November 9th, 2008 7:12 pm

    As someone who has eschewed ads (to this point), I find this rather humorous…

  4. Blake’s Think Tank » Blog Archive » Mainstream sites have killed the blogosphere - - UPDATE writes
    November 9th, 2008 7:23 pm

    [...] UPDATE:  Thanks to the Nashville Post Politics Blog for the link. [...]

  5. Wintermute writes
    November 9th, 2008 7:27 pm

    I’ve always been ad-free too, despite my growing traffic, even.

    ACK, why do you echo writers who don’t have a clue?

  6. Sharon Cobb writes
    November 10th, 2008 8:10 am

    I didn’t start doing this for money. In fact, I would have laughed if someone told me I could make money from it.
    But I also work hard to cover events, and see nothing wrong with accepting advertising.
    I am nowhere near a Huffington, but I am near a City Paper, and throw in threww or four blogs with my traffic, and we’re near the Tennesseean.
    I think that’s rather amazing, and nothing wrong at all if we accept advertising. I noticed those of us who have enough traffic to be with “Advertise Liberally,” only charge 50 a week, and that pennies compared to the Tennessean, and yet we haven’t really caught on or our blogs will be filled with ads.
    After what happened with the elections in Tennessee, I know I won’t be running free ads again for the Democratic Party and Democrats except Steve Cohen, who actually reads most of the liberal blogs, and appreciates us, as opposed to Sasser and others who spend thousands on advertising, and have us running free ads. They don’t know our worth.
    The question is, do you know your own worth? Add the liberal blogs together, and our readership is larger than the Tenneesean It’s something to think about.

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