Archive for the “Blogosphere” Category
The demise of the independent conservative blogosphere is simply overestimated by John Hawkins. In other words, John boy has it wrong.
Most bloggers are not very good at marketing, not very good at monetizing, there are no sugar daddies giving us cash, and this isn’t the biggest market in the world to begin with. In other words, this is a time-consuming enterprise, but few people are going to make enough money to go full time. How many people can put in 20-30-40-50 hours a week on something that’s not going to ever be their full time job? Can they do it for 5 years? 10 years? 15? 20? This is the plight that 99.9% of serious, independent conservative bloggers face. This has already created a lot of attrition and over the next few years, as people realize that their traffic is more likely to slowly, but surely significantly deteriorate rather than explode, you’re going to see a lot more people give up.
Bloggers have asked me: So what’s the strategy to deal with this?
Really, it’s simple: Get big or go home.
Find a way to dramatically increase the size of your blog, expand into multiple websites that together are big, hook up with someone who’s already big, or accept that there isn’t much of a future in a small, niche market for you. Maybe that sounds a little grim, but unless something changes, independent conservative bloggers who haven’t already made it big don’t have a bright future.
No, I cannot agree. There is more to life than traffic to blogs for the conservative world. There is Twitter which has jump-started the Tea Party and to a lesser extent there is Facebook where conservatives can more socially interact. Google Plus has just started and there will be a place for conservative bloggers there as well.
The blogosphere and social media are interconnected and it is far better for the smaller, independent blogger.
When I first started this enterprise over five years ago, nobody knew who the hell I was or cared. The large blogs (the ones with the most traffic) linked within themselves. Nobody gave a rat’s ass about the upstarts in the sphere. But, with Twitter and Facebook, content and opinion hit the internet without the filter of Instapundit or Powerline. Traffic to the independents grew and so did modest ad revenue.
Power in the blogosphere shifted to the small, independent blogger who might cover more, especially in their own locale. Commentary was not limited to large blogs comments sections but to Twitter and Facebook.
So, with these changes, why would anyone quit?
In the era of the grass-roots Tea Party, it is time to get started.
Tags: Bloggers, Conservatives
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Day by Day by Chris Muir
Speaking about HERD mentality, look at poor AOL purchasing the Huffington Post.
The Huffington Post, which began in 2005 with a meager $1 million investment and has grown into one of the most heavily visited news Web sites in the country, is being acquired by AOL in a deal that creates an unlikely pairing of two online media giants.
The two companies completed the sale Sunday evening and announced the deal just after midnight on Monday. AOL will pay $315 million, $300 million of it in cash and the rest in stock. It will be the company’s largest acquisition since it was separated from Time Warner in 2009.
The deal will allow AOL to greatly expand its news gathering and original content creation, areas that its chief executive, Tim Armstrong, views as vital to reversing a decade-long decline.
Arianna Huffington, the cable talk show pundit, author and doyenne of the political left, will take control of all of AOL’s editorial content as president and editor in chief of a newly created Huffington Post Media Group. The arrangement will give her oversight not only of AOL’s national, local and financial news operations, but also of the company’s other media enterprises like MapQuest and Moviefone.
By handing so much control over to Ms. Huffington and making her a public face of the company, AOL, which has been seen as apolitical, risks losing its nonpartisan image. Ms. Huffington said her politics would have no bearing on how she ran the new business.
The deal has the potential to create an enterprise that could reach more than 100 million visitors in the United States each month. For The Huffington Post, which began as a liberal blog with a small staff but now draws some 25 million visitors every month, the sale represents an opportunity to reach new audiences. For AOL, which has been looking for ways to bring in new revenue as its dial-up Internet access business declines, the millions of Huffington Post readers represent millions in potential advertising dollars.
I think another disastrous purchase for AOL. But, I for one, could care less about the LEFT and its journalistic spin off operations.
And, Arianna?
Please.
If I had all of that divorce oil money from Michael, I would park it on a beach some place.
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Tags: AOL, Arianna_Huffington
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South Carolina Republican Senator Jim DeMint on the Hugh Hewitt Show
Guess the LEFT is NOT the only ones who do not like the Bush Era Tax Cut Deal between President Obama and the GOP Senate leadership. I don’t know of any other GOP Senator who will not vote for cloture tomorrow but there will be others from the Democrat side for sure.
DeMint argues:
Senator JimDeMint just announced on my program that he will oppose the deal as well as a vote for cloture on the deal. He is reluctant to criticize GOP Senate leadership, but believes the deal at a minimum has to be paid for, and that we need “a permanent economy” not a temporary one as well as permanent tax cuts, not temporary tax cuts.
Senator DeMint also expressed disappointment with the House GOP’s elevation of Hal Rodgers and Spencer Bachus to key committee chairmanships, noting that the revolution of 1994 failed in part when the old guard took control of committees despite the huge freshman class.
The machinations of this deal continue, including Harry Reid appending an online poker bill to it.
But, remember either it passes or taxes will increase for everyone on January 1.
Stay tuned…….
Tags: Hugh_Hewitt, Jim_DeMint
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Via Allah Pundit but the whole video is too good to not reproduce here.
Rudy really makes Huffington look like an idiot and he didn’t even have to mention her former and gay husband’s disastrous race for California U.S. Senate or her inherited wealth from the divorce.
Geeez and this moron is throwing stones in whose glass house?
Tags: Arianna_Huffington, Rudy_Giuliani
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Follow Flap on Twitter
Hugh Hewitt has turned off his blog comments in favor of Twitter. Flap is not so sure about doing this since not everyone has joined Twitter and may never do so.
Also, there is the issue of trackbacks.
For now, Flap is NOT going down this road. For my readers, you can comment here, on Twitter or Facebook.
Technorati Tags: Twitter
Tags: Twitter
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Thank goodness.
Flap logged into the new system and it crashed my Firefox after looking around at their new stats system briefly. From what I saw it was complicated and unintelligible. Flap was going to rely on Google Analytics and look for a new blog stats system tomorrow.
Then, Flap just as he noticed other bloggers having problems, my Yahoo Sitemeter widget began to work and that a notice was up that they were rolling back Sitemeter to their former system.
Sitemeter as it is presently configured is fine. Thanks for listening to your users – at least for now.
Technorati Tags: Sitemeter
Tags: Sitemeter
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Day By Day by Chris Muir
Google and the Blogger platofrm definitely have egg on its face for their treatment of the anti-Obama blogs. But, do they have a valid “EXCUSE” for their incompetence?
A “kerfuffle” over the blocking of some blogs by Google — all of them “anti-Obama” — seems to be mostly over. The blogs have been unblocked and Simon Owens at Bloggasm, who had followed the developments, says that those who suspected a conspiracy led by supporters of Democratic presidential contender Barack Obama to shut down blogs critical of their man “might be feeling a little silly right now.” Google’s explanation for the blockings is that it’s spam filters mistakenly got tripped.
Google owned Blogger’s explanation is here:
Hi there,
On behalf of the Blogger Team, I want to apologize for the recent trouble you’ve had with your locked blog. Automated spam detection is not yet a perfect science, and although we are constantly working to improve our tools, it appears that our filters have caused some Blogger accounts to mistakenly be blocked from creating new posts.
While we are still investigating, we believe this may have been caused by mass spam e-mails mentioning the “Just Say No Deal†network of blogs, which in turn caused our system to classify the blog addresses mentioned in the e-mails as spam.
Regardless, we have restored posting rights to your blog, and it is very important to us that Blogger remain a tool for political debate and free expression.
So once again, we apologize for the inconvenience, and thank you for your patience as we looked into the problem.
Sincerely,
The Blogger Team
Flap loathes censorship and disruptions. And, I moved to my own blog hosting over three years ago so that I could be the master of my own blog destiny.
If bloggers want a “FREE” platform then they need to remember that there is no free lunch.
The will need to move their blog.
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Technorati Tags: Day By Day, Google, Blogger
Tags: Blogger, Day By Day, Google
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