Wednesday, May 18, 2005
Blog "Agents"
NYT ONLINE CHIEF DEFENDS CHARGING FOR COLUMNISTS
There's a decent idea in this piece from AdAge.com on Martin Nisenholtz's keynote at the "Syndicate: Content Syndication Trends" conference: aggregrating blogger 'columnists' and offering those bloggers some form of revenue share.
Grab:
"Why can't Amazon.com-type revenue shares apply to information sites?" he asked the audience, saying that he is kicking around the blog idea and wants feedback from potential partners. He explained that it would work by a revenue-sharing arrangement with bloggers who would offer the columns to their users in the blogosphere. "They would be agents of the Times," he said.
Though I'd note that a blog and a column are usually two different things, the idea of bloggers as 'agents' is interesting.
This is something b2b media web sites should consider. Pull together all the bloggers serving your audience. Offer the bloggers editorial independence, increased traffic, and some money. Track their visits, and give priority to the most popular bloggers.
Basically, create a way to intermediate all of the conversations going on in your market space, and become the Huffington Post for your business, sort of.
I think the benefits to a b2b media web site are pretty obvious.
Of course, there are risks. The idea of bloggers as 'agents' needs to be worked through. In this case, agency would need to be a simple relationship based on distribution/syndication and content creation. It can't be an employment relationship, and it certainly can't imply control, editorial or otherwise. As a result, you may end up with some advertisers or readers who get their feelings hurt by your bloggers or their audience. But you can also gather a lot of traffic, a lot of buzz, and make your website the central clearinghouse for your business.
(Perhaps this is something Tony Silber and the folks at Folio: could look to for the blogs serving the print media space? Hint, hint.)
UPDATE: Rafat Ali has in-depth notes on the keynote, and a link to the full audio feed.
Comments
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There's a decent idea in this piece from AdAge.com on Martin Nisenholtz's keynote at the "Syndicate: Content Syndication Trends" conference: aggregrating blogger 'columnists' and offering those bloggers some form of revenue share.
Grab:
"Why can't Amazon.com-type revenue shares apply to information sites?" he asked the audience, saying that he is kicking around the blog idea and wants feedback from potential partners. He explained that it would work by a revenue-sharing arrangement with bloggers who would offer the columns to their users in the blogosphere. "They would be agents of the Times," he said.
Though I'd note that a blog and a column are usually two different things, the idea of bloggers as 'agents' is interesting.
This is something b2b media web sites should consider. Pull together all the bloggers serving your audience. Offer the bloggers editorial independence, increased traffic, and some money. Track their visits, and give priority to the most popular bloggers.
Basically, create a way to intermediate all of the conversations going on in your market space, and become the Huffington Post for your business, sort of.
I think the benefits to a b2b media web site are pretty obvious.
Of course, there are risks. The idea of bloggers as 'agents' needs to be worked through. In this case, agency would need to be a simple relationship based on distribution/syndication and content creation. It can't be an employment relationship, and it certainly can't imply control, editorial or otherwise. As a result, you may end up with some advertisers or readers who get their feelings hurt by your bloggers or their audience. But you can also gather a lot of traffic, a lot of buzz, and make your website the central clearinghouse for your business.
(Perhaps this is something Tony Silber and the folks at Folio: could look to for the blogs serving the print media space? Hint, hint.)
UPDATE: Rafat Ali has in-depth notes on the keynote, and a link to the full audio feed.
