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In the end, aggregation is a dead horse. I think the noise is growing too loud, and I think even Google will see this over time. Even you, Fred, I feel like your blog has suffered with the A VC and Tumblr split. (I'd switch to just your tumblr, but the lack of the full article feed is a turnoff.)
And learned a hard lesson. Personal blogs should never be bought/sold. Fred's blog definitely has value, and real value at that, but only if he keeps writing it... and the only way he'll keep writing with the same passion is if he owns it (otherwise it becomes A Job).
Ultimately the value here is Fred, his content and the community that comes to read him and interact with him. Take Fred out and that all disappears.
Even if Fred built out a team around this blog, like Arrington did with TechCrunch, there'll always be a "what will happen when ..." question for potential acquirers.
without that person, not much future remains for it.
that being said --if you transferred all copyrights in the sale-- it 's not unthinkable someone could assemble a rehash of your writings and publish them as a book, or start a vlog using the "A VC" brand.
in its current form though, a personal blog sale is an impossible proposition for someone who's not for sale.
, It’d be fair to say business soley used blogging as an angle to look cool whilst playing catch up ... an while the two suited each other perfectly, the last 12/24 months, i cant help to feel really uneasy about it all today.
And whilst the two totally fit in the bed, it just feels to me anyways, that one of them is being cheated .. an you guessed it, its not business ... Maybe if they just called it something else from the get go, id feel easier about it all , but we didn't know better back then ... i guess
today's blog game , it just doesnt seem so welcoming with all these media commentaters getting in on the game , plus readers rightly expect things. Like, not only daily content, but appropriate relevant content, building readership is not easy , an the big usiness feed the masses not exactly the most inspring content at times ..
it is personally a nice feeling though to beat your state online papers blogs in stats , comments etc .. all on the smell of an oily rag ...
will you be sticking with the current liquid 3 column thing or changing up ?
Left column is a goner
I don't want to say more as I'd like to surpirse and please everyone
Fred
Rafat was anywhere nearly as closely tied as a person to PaidContent as Mike is to TC.
As a product focused start up CEO, I know I've succeeded in building a good team and company if I can leave and the business still thrives.
So, basically, they work if the person doesn't leave. But how often does it really happen where the company gets bought and the founding team / SME's / CEO / visionaries stick around forever?
Turner at time warner?
To show that I get it -- when I was editing the Harvard Law School blog, maybe someone would have paid $5 million for it, but it would be a bad deal for Harvard Law School, which has a brand name that's worth much more than that.
And maybe I wouldn't do it now either, with Scripting News. It's changing now, and I want to see the change through. I think the dust is settling from the crazy year we've just had with Twitter. I'm spending more time with FriendFeed, but that's opening up a set of problems that I think a lot of people are haivng, we want one place we write and have it go many places from there. Not so much as a broadcast thing, but with lots of views. I have a feeling that to solve this problem it's goign to be important to have an independent Scripting News.
Wouldn't you be better off offering IBM or someone else the right to sponsor SN for 500k per year?
And it would be a good deal for the right sponsor
Fred
agree with howard's ning comment, i actually think it could be worth more than 5 mil if ning was built for something specifically like this (remember, we live in hyperinflationary times). the big players on ning are going to be worth more than ning itself (which may be ning's fatal flaw, and why the future of all platforms is to be disrupted from within -- you know, AN INSIDE JOB).
In this world of constant FAST change, including and in fact especially in the Internet, blogging, and social media spaces (and others), those who adapt early and well survive and thrive.
You can guess about the others.
Sentimentality is fine (and good). But it's a hobby (which is fine as well). It's not generally a business.
To kidmercury's point, there is something about the evolution of our personal identities that is tied to this discussion. Can we separate work from play? Can we separate corporate from individual? Are those distinctions becoming increasingly obsolete? I've wrestled with them in my own life. Corporate blogging and/or the creation of a drone voice seems like a 1.0 idea (to be a bit glib) rather than a 2.0 idea. But these valuations you're citing would contradict that intuition. My sense is that truth and the individual voice will slowly emerge as the dominant paradigm but it's hard to say.
Winning at blogging? So there must be "losing" at blogging too... I never thought of that... hmmm.
I'm a blogger loser baby... so, why don't you kill me... :)
I don't subscribe to that world view
Being losely connected in time... with less pressure to being regularly and predictably "available"... living with ever greater asynchronicity... is something that may turn out to be the real value in our new personal media technologies - rather than the "instant"... "always on"... "each morning"... which seems like a legacy of the mass media culture... where time rules. The final goal is to make time irrelevant - isn't it... :)
Is this consistent with what folks are seeing? Is this a purely "google juice" effect? Any other forces at work here? Would love to hear some insights!
For an established blog like yours, readers come back daily for the consistently great content that they have come to expect. But how are these spikes explained for a new blog? In my blog's example, which is very new (and I am only now starting to blog with frequency), I doubt that I have that many loyal readers. Which leads me to believe that an increase in blogging frequency can lead to an increase in "google juice". Or is there something else at work here? Thanks!
I know that when I notice a blog I read suddenly start in increase their posting from one a day to two a day I will start visiting the blog twice a day now instead of the usual once a day.
Getting value from the community is why I keep on blogging (2400 posts on my personal blog since 2000 and 300 on my Social Media/WOM blog) on issues from small to large...that's why they are so great.
Not that you need the encouragement, but keep up the good fight, Fred! ;-)
I see the Calcanis thing as a joke. Certainly some blogs have moved into something that looks like something in media with multiple authors, and while interesting they are just not blogs, as I define them narrowly, being one persons view, take it or leave it.
So the new A list are the blogs that have their own niche, loyal readers, and commenters. I posted more on this earlier in the week.
http://tinyurl.com/6ck2dt
The competition of the blogs was just each other in those days, but now individual blogs like TechCrunch have grown so large that they compete with the large media corporations. It's all "media" after all and distribution size is certainly not the only, but a major factor in determining competitors - not the technology used to distribute (blogs, websites, print, etc), because that's a whole lot easier to change than getting readers. GigaOM's recent deal with BusinessWeek is a good example of this coming of age of blogs and the type of competitors and partners now available to big blogs. Partners for blogs used to conjure thoughts of "let's find other narrowly-defined blogs and band together to cross-post" as opposed to finding a big media company to syndicate to.
So the competition has changed and has caught the eye of PR agencies, lobbyists, etc. - people trying to get someone else's message out by directly or indirectly influencing the outlet. Effectively, the independence of blogs will diminish as they grow in size.
I do get the symbiotic relationship of all the stakeholders and I'm not a PR-agency hater at all. I think it's just important to realize what the motives of the different blogs is and how this may change over time due to the evolution an convergence of the different mediums. By nature, this blog could be labeled as having the motive for Fred to push his investments, but it's clear that this isn't the case. I respect that a lot and it may be one of the few blogs that will stand out over time as being the unfettered opinion of one person or a very small team.
I'm curious to see how other feel about this.
Fred's blog is a singular voice, representing the face of a whole complexity of possibilities and developments, on a global scale. So it is differenent structurally. If it serves or feeds his business, it doesn't really matter. It is the relation it brings for others to connect to that business and world of possiblities that make it flow. Maybe Fred is a "conduit"(?) and blogs like TechCrunch are more geographical, or locations(?)
I have enjoyed reading this blog, in part because you are someone who can make things happen in the world. Most people who can do this, do so without any transparency, and we have no idea how it all works. Your posts allow people a little further inside, to understand how VCs help transform ideas into companies. This is very valuable, insightful and fun; it feels real. It is better than a docu-drama! it also is nice to get to "go along for the ride" as you do this; and to see the small bits you share about your lifestyle. It is full of verve, energy, and spontaneity; and reminds of possibilities.
Having said that; if you were selling insurance, or doing something more mundain, it would not be so interesting. Part of the attraction, is the fact that you are building markets. And I don't mean that the attraction is because you potentially are a funder for anyone's idea, (though this is also there, I am sure many would acknowledge this...). We all know this part of your role. But it is only the smallest piece of candy. The bigger attractor is getting to ride a long the edge of a wave, as a market emerges, with a force that can create waves.
Much Appreciated....
I do think that there are two types of blogs: ones with soul and ones without.
Yours is full of soul!
Keep it going...