|
|
Wednesday, May 18, 2005
Reynolds is writing about dirty tricks against bloggers and wondering how long it takes before the media starts playing rough. Here's the problem: bloggers aren't a traditional adversary to be defeated. They're your customers. Some are dissatisfied, others are enthusiastic. In either case, how can your business thrive if your goal is to take your customers down a peg, one at a time?
GM and Apple have been especially stupid, going after participants in forums that celebrate and salivate over details about their products. But even big media, hostile to the bloggers' critiques, collects ad revenues from the eyeballs they bring. If the New York Times online wants to make money, what better way to do it than to have Reynolds, Sully and Kaus all trash different op-ed columns on the same day?
The media doesn't realize it, but the blogosphere doesn't just exist and their outer fringes; they exist at the fringe of the blogosphere. As much as any blogger, they are part of this thing, a place to link and send traffic if they've got something useful and interesting to say. And a place to ignore if they go loopy and cease to have useful and interesting things to say. If a media outlet wants to make its mark going after the blogs, it's welcome to do so. All it stands to lose is the trust of one of the few demographics that still takes the news seriously and the eyeballs that demographic delivers directly (through blog readers) and indirectly (through higher search engine traffic).
posted by gbarto at 6:33 PM
|
Archives
|
