The Fourth Estate (Moved)

Better in Beta

Blogs are the new black. Whether you are a Fortune 500 CEO, an ambitious engineer working the late shift or a promiscuous Singaporean teen – you’ve got to have one. For the uninitiated, the prospect of adding yet more words to the ocean of information on the web may seem futile. But fame and power await those who manage to break out of the mass of hyperlinked opinion. No wonder that media companies are also starting to get religion. Readers secretly want to be moguls too.

An Excess of RSS

Here is an irony for you. There is a growing number of people who consume their news and information exclusively through aggregated headline readers, made possible by the magic of RSS feeds. If you are reading this in your mail client, you are clearly not one of them. Your reluctance is entirely reasonable. After all, push content is nothing new and for the most part, nothing spectacular. In the late nineties, Microsoft experimented with web channel subscriptions in Internet Explorer. And then there was push pioneer Pointcast, who we all remember for the $450 million deal that they didn't do. However this time round, the buzz around syndication has a different flavour and not one that may be as pleasant tasting to the media status quo.

The Price of Fame

It seems that people have discovered a new hobby - talking about themselves online. And if uploading millions of pages every day about their ordinary lives and loves wasn’t enough – this rising legion of gonzo laureates are demanding their place in the sun. By all acounts, they are getting it. According to studies by the Pew Internet & American Life Project, nearly a third of US internet users read blogs. Eight million of these have created one of their own. The next phase, however, is even more interesting – distributed publicity.

Brand Blogging

You can bet that if people are reading it, companies will find a way to advertise on it. So no surprises, that weblogs have become the latest weapon in the war for consumer attention.