Blog Relations
Blogs and Big Media
The sale of Weblogs Inc to AOL for around $25 million raises some questions about the nature of blogging. If a blog is owned by a big media company, can it still be a blog? Can the executives cope with the edgy, unedited content?
Nick Denton, the publisher of rival blog publisher, Gawker Media, thinks not: "The whole point about blogs is that they’re not part of big media. Consolidation defeats the purpose. It’s way too early. Like a decade too early."
The AOL deal may have been a hasty sale. Fishbowl NY reports that Weblog’s co-founder, Jason Calacanis, at conference only last week, spoke about his preferences among possible suitors like this:
"News Corp. Microsoft. Google. Then AOL. That order. Wanna talk after this? [guffaws] … I wouldn’t want to sell to someone who’d want to filter bloggers though. It would take a very big, a very big visionary company, with lots of cash [audience laughs] to buy us. "
Why did he prefer Miscrosoft? Presumably because it has given freedom of expression to its own chief blogger, Robert Scoble. Perhaps against all expectations, it has shown that it can let go of corporate control freakery. And Bill Gates obviously understands the influence of blogs. After all, he has given exclusive interviews to Weblogs Inc’s own Engadget blog.
$25 million is not such a big sum of money for a company like AOL. Part of its motivation in buying Weblogs Inc must be to learn about blogs. It probably doesn’t know itself yet whether it can handle the open comments sections, and the robust conversations that take place on blogs. But if AOL does squeeze the liveliness out its new blogs, then other blogs will emerge to take their places.
[...] Angel Blog ponders whether the sale of Weblogs Inc. to AOL means the credibility of the blogs under the AOL umbrella can remain intact. Specifically “If a blog is owned by a big media company, can it still be a blog?”. Certainly it can! Just look at news journalism, just because GE bought NBC does that mean the credibility of journalism on GE companies and products will become eroded. Of course it’s possible that it could depending on the actions and controls GE execs place on NBC news, but it doesn’t have to be that way. The purchase of a blog network by a large media company does not in itself destroy the nature of those blogs, only future actions of the acquiring company can affect that, and in this case only time will tell. [...]