DISQUS

Vezquex · 12 months ago

This is a subtle distinction. I don't think anyone really cares what the domain is as long as they like what they're reading. It would be insane for an owner of multiple blogs not to have a prominent page and feed that combines everything, but this is actually the case? I don't see why you can't have both the amalgamation and separate sites. It would just be a smallish programming and web design exercise.

Andrew Girdwood · 12 months ago

Google. Google encourages publishers to avoid duplicate content.

The search engines does its best to find the authoritative version of any content and rank that higher than all the copycats.

If you had a popular 'amalgamation' page which represented news that broke elsewhere then you'd be leaching off your own original stories. People would link to the amalgamation page rather than your scoop and one of the results would be that Google would see your scoop as less authoritative.

Scobleizer · 12 months ago

I'm going to an uberblog model too, but on friendfeed. That way I can be uberblogger with everyone, including other uberblogs. Oh, wait, I just gave away my strategy to Arrington. Damn. We need him to think I'm just addicted.

Andrew Girdwood · 12 months ago

I agree with this on many levels however this is all underpinned on how display advertising is bought and sold. That model is under a great deal of threat.

Currently there is enough demand for those big bulk buys that there's room for third parties to sit in the middle (between the publishers and advertisers) and make it all work. Whenever there's a third party involved in the net then there's a chance to take market share by doing without them.

This is what many people suspect Google is up to - especially now that they're integrating their systems into DoubleClick (and for display it is going that way around). Once advertisers can easily get the volume they need through a handy system then there is no need to reach for the purchase efficiencies an 'uber blog' buy would bring.

So would there still be a need for an uber blog? I'd certainly argue the uber blogs would have many advantages over smaller blogs but perhaps those advantages are lessened. The blog owner needs to concentrate on keeping page views and uniques up and sometimes the sub-domain route is not the best - not always advisable from an SEO point of view.

I think it's going to be a really interesting year. I suspect we'll see convergence of blogs/publishers and some advertising platforms - look at the Guardian as an example in the UK.

gregorylent · 12 months ago

homogenization will be one result

Mark Krynsky · 12 months ago

I fully agree with the overall assessment of the Uber blog but I also feel that for many of these larger scale sites to succeed they will also need to implement some method of either an internal or 3rd party services aggregation plan. I think primarily this would be for mobile media. With the proliferation of mobile photo and video services along with the need to the first and fastest to get scoops, this will be a must. I think those that incorporate this into their site plans will reap large benefits. Also, some form of micro-blogging needs to be incorporated for similar reasons as well.

Scott Lockhart · 12 months ago

I agree with pretty much everything in this post. What I also think we'll start to see is more big media buys in the blog and uber blog space in the next year. They know they are on the outs and it comes down to not so much if they will buy, but how much of the market they will buy. This may not happen completely in 2009 but I think we'll start to see the beginning of it for sure. There has been consolidation and buying up of prominent blog brands and creation of uberblogs over the last couple of years, but that's mostly been done by other blogs. I think an interesting thing to ponder is how blogging as we know it will survive once big media really wants to play in this market. They have the money (still), professional writers and if they think that buying these brands will help them compete and add ad revenue and future-proof them as much as possible, they will do it and I would expect in droves once they figure it out. It will be very lucrative for many of the existing large players who can persevere but I don't see much of a commercially viable place for smaller one person blogs and anything but the most committed and organized co-op blogs. Maybe it won't happen this way, but what I can say that this time next year I don't think blogging as it stands will look the same whatever the case.

neuraxon77 · 12 months ago

Replace uber "blog" with "service" and then I'll like this article more.

I have four pillars of industry stereotypes I like to use when referring to the maturity of markets: Anxiety-driven, fashion-driven, utility-driven and the fringe-dweller aka innovator.

Starting at the end, some years ago blogs went from fringe-dwellers into the utility and more recently into fashion segments. I can now see uber blogs moving towards the anxiety-driven(mainstream brand-driven) sector that news sites have traditionally had a strangle hold on. ALL my favourite science blogs are being snapped up as evidence of this.

All I can say is: hasta-la-vista baby blogs. your now all(most) grown up.

ps. faux pas. Your link of the graph compares The Inquisitr with CrunchBase and not CrunchGear...

AdamSinger · 11 months ago

That's nice and all. And all us independent publishers will happily publish as is. Who needs VC money, just write.

Thao Ly · 11 months ago

Interesting post. What will happen to the little blogs?