Blogcasting - Layering the Long Tail?
I came across an interesting article on News.com today titled "Blogs: The next big thing for advertisers?". The article deals with the ways that blogs are being monetized, assuming that the technique is to mimic the broadcasting model:
Any group of bloggers can set up a network, as a group of liberal bloggers have done. Altogether, the Liberal Blog Advertising Network can provide an advertiser with a million or so page views a week in one fell swoop. The ads will appear on all the blogs maintained by members of the network, so they become a form of broadcasting, or blogcasting. Blog readership is demonstrably growing, and pretty soon such networks will be able to compete at least with cable television for ability to reach viewers.
I think that this is an obvious answer to a difficult question. It leaves me still wondering, however, if the barrier to bigger and better blogging business models is really the distribution. Unfortunately, the fearful part is that they don't control the message, the presentation and most problematic, the creator. The operative word here being control.
Ross Mayfield recently did a length analysis of the role of fear in corporate blogging (and social software). If you've not seen it, I'd recommend reading "Fear, Greed and Social Software". It's been shown time and time again that the people trying to co-opt the medium usually don't get it. Isn't it ironic that we're more surprised that someone "gets it" than anything else?
But the worst part of getting the "big media" buy in, seems to be the disconnect in terms of what they are buying in to. I came across a great piece on The Long Tail Blog, "The dangers of 'Headism'", that hits on many of the issues with trying to force this square peg through the round hole. Though you should read the entire post, the section on Incentives is extremely relevant:
Likewise, the incentives for the producers and creators of these products change as you go from hits to niches; Madonna may be in it mostly for the money, but I sure wasn't when I slapped a bass badly in my misspent twenties. Most authors, meanwhile, write books to find readers, not riches (although those readers can lead to lucrative consulting fees, speeches or tenure; books are powerful marketing vehicles for personal brands). And plenty of up-and-coming independent filmmakers would be only to happy to have their movies freely spread far and wide on bittorrent to build their reputation.