This article is about the emergence of weblogs as money making tools. But, it outlines the differing perspectives of the old-school bloggers, like Dave Winer and the new-school capitalists like Tony Perkins from AlwaysOn">Always On.
A simpler idea is therefore to run member-only blog pages and charge advertisers to sponsor them. This is the model that Tony Perkins, a founder of Red Herring, a now-deceased “new economy�? magazine, is pursuing for his new firm, AlwaysOn.
And of course, Dave Winer differs:
“Tony doesn't understand what a blog is; he's the opposite of a blogger,�? says David Winer
I tend to agree. Always On is just normal journalism, stright from your favorite magazine, in a blog format- it's too tidy and impersonal.
I think an enlightening perspective came from Steve Hall at Up2Speed in reference to this article:
There isn't a great deal of room for debate. Weblog software is, after all, just another technology to put up a website, and in a few years all this feuding over what is technically a "blog" will likely seem foolish.
I struggle to get my arms around all the various ways to look at this situation. I believe that the true value of weblogs to business is rooted in the competitive advantage that comes with connecting to customers in a genuine and personal manner.
My belief is not based on technology. I think that any business that can help their customers feel a personal connection to the business and build trust through that connection, will generally be more successful than businesses who ignore the opportunity.
Online communities can do it, email newsletters can do it, even some print and television ads can do it. Weblogs just represent a new and still-unproven way to start building these connections. Weblogs just make it easy for a real person (inside a company or not) to connect to the other real people out there.
This all makes me think about this interview with Barry Libert in the Online Community Report.
Online communities do not exist in a void. In fact, executives need to think of 'online' as simply a channel that is required by all communities to be successful. Consequently, it is only one channel - other channels are telephony (wire line and wireless) and brick and mortar. All three channels are essential to the success of building any community.
All in all, I think Weblogs just offer a new and cheap way to start building these communities.
Have a good weekend folks...
Via: Up2Speed