Late last year I wrote a blog post
suggesting that individual bloggers like me were being replaced by
traditional media as the leading voices in the blog world. It caused a
bit of a stir and I followed it up the next day by saying that “social media requires real people.”
My point in both posts is that I really like to read blogs owned by and
written by a person as opposed to a team of people being paid to blog.
I made my point and moved on.
Today, I read a post on The Standard that suggests the same thing. Ian Lamont writes the following about the Techmeme leaderboard:
The old-school A-listers aren’t being displaced by the many talented B-to-Z listers out there.
Rather, the Leaderboard is increasingly populated by mainstream
publishers, tech blog networks, and corporate blogs and PR sites.
And
in addition, Nick Carr is taking the summer off from blogging, Scoble’s
moved the hub of his energy from his blog to FriendFeed, and Calacanis
has quit blogging entirely.
As Jason said in his first email (he’s moved from blogging to broadcasting):
In the early days of blogging Peter Rojas, who was my blog professor, told me what was required to win at blogging: “show up every day.”
I
agree completely. In good times and bad, I blog every day. That’s how
it is for me. And I don’t plan to change that. I get so much value out
of blogging that I can’t imagine doing what I do without a little time
every day writing down my thoughts.
But change is afoot. Today, we get the news that Alley Insider “raised a pot of money at a mind boggling valuation“.
That’s a joke from Henry Blodget, founder of Alley Insider. But the
fact remains that Alley Insider raised about a million dollars to
build out the Alley Insider blog. I like Alley Insider and they re-run
some of my posts there from time to time.
And last week Rafat Ali sold Paid Content for $30mm to The Guardian.
When that was announced, a friend of mine suggested to me that I could
sell AVC for $5-10mm. First, I am not sure that’s true, but second I
could never do that.
This blog is me and I am this blog. It’s mine and will always be
mine. I understand why many of the individuals who made blogging what
it is are either moving on or turning their blogs into businesses.
That’s the way it is. But I am fortunate that this blog is totally
integrated into my business and provides great value to me and my
partners. So it’s sustainable from an emotional and economic
perspective and I plan to keep showing up every day.
To see more from Fred, go to his blog.
