Media, Community, and Blog (4) Production-Marketing Relations
Blogger, are you a producer or consumer?
[+] New economy brought forth by Blogs
There is a lot to talk about on the cultural dimension of Blogs, and in fact we’ve seen quite many smart discussions. Here, however, I would like to focus on the business model, as I always think that the economic activities play a primary role in our world. We need to find a way for Blogs to become sustainable.
At the time when the Internet was just to take off, there were free online forums and bulletin boards here and there. You made an application and you got an account for free. Nice and easy. After the burst of the Internet bubble, we started to see paying services. This time, it doesn’t take long before we see paying Blog services. Obviously, service providers have become more experienced this time.
Together we see RSS readers rise along with Blog, free and paying alike. Also there are Blog search engines, Blog portals, Blog news websites, and people start to talk about how to market goods or sell advertisements via Blog. Doesn’t it look familiar to the Internet revolution kindled by the browser wars in the old days?
The difference is that there are now a bunch of big-name companies on the Net, but even they don’t want to take the risk of underestimating the influence of Blog. They rush on to launch free Blog services for users. Most of them see Blog services as an extension to their existing offerings with no plan to charge for these services, at least for now.
Interestingly, online diary service has been available in Taiwan for years even before the birth of the term" Blog". An online community website (love.youthwant.com.tw) hosted by YouthWant, a portal very popular among young students in Taiwan, have been offering an online diary service for members paying monthly fees; non-paying users can visit or subscribe to view the content. Is it possible for Blogs to copy this business model?
[+] It is passion that is to sustain Blogs
The core to the Blog phenomenon is passion. If it is nothing to do with making money and it takes a lot of efforts, then there is little chance that one can hang on to it for long, not to mention when it’s even taking money out of your own pockets. If you are not someone who has lots of free time and deep pockets, you must have unfailing passion for it.
I write about trends and developments in technology every week since 1999. A lot of people in this field have tried the same but many quit within a year, the reason being: too busy at work; need to spend time with wife and children; too exhausted that all one wants to do at weekends is take a good rest. Even if you offer to pay these guys for their writings, they would just turn it down with a fatigued smile.
A persistent Blogger will normally undergo the following phases: (1) the Blogger gets started in a fit of passion; (2) Passion dying down yet the Blogger keeps on writing as a promise to himself; (3) the Blogger hangs on because of the commitment to the growing readership; (4) Writing has been internalized and becomes a belief or a habit. Any guess what? Most of the people fail to make it through Phase 2.
There are debris of deserted forums and personal websites everywhere on the Net, or the evidence of the intense but short-lived passion. The question is, Blogs too are websites where users gather together out of spontaneous ardor. Is it possible then that a Blog website can be developed into a Business?
First of all, it is absolutely unwise to overlook such kind of passion. Secondly, passionate people can be leveraged to become a business after some proper organization. This is why the world is packed with a variety of charities and non-profit organizations, and there are always people willing to devote their time and money to them.
However, these are after all organizations formed in the name of charity. If one day the Bloggers, who write diaries on the Internet without getting paid, find that their efforts are used by service providers for profit, what would they think?
[+] A confused production-marketing relation
The most famous Blog website in China, www.blogchina.com, attracts a group of IT elites, who regularly publish articles and criticizing current issues on it. Since last year, it has introduced commercial advertisements onto its website. Some of the users roared: "we are now their tools of the trade!"
To the Bloggers, the content, the result of their unpaid efforts, is not provided for the website operators to seek profits. Furthermore, there is a fundamental concern: Can there still be "neutrality" in Blog contents after the introduction of commercialization? Will Blog become another medium under the manipulation by advertisers at the end?
Let’s put aside the dilemma of profit or principle, of survival or independence, and think. If the Blog service providers are really serious about making money, shouldn’t they pay the Bloggers, the genuine producers in the science of economics, for their efforts?
No one can afford to keep a large number of in-house reporters to produce content in order to satisfy the consumption demands on the Internet. Yet Blog service providers see hundreds of thousands of Bloggers as free content producers. Is it fair not paying the producers?
Yet we see a paradox in the case of love.youthwant.com.tw, where members must pay monthly subscription to publish their diaries, which makes them "consumers" in every sense. The members are willing to pay for the service because they enjoy a sense of satisfaction and achievement to know that people are reading their writings. This is what they think about the paying service.
The website love.youthwant.com.tw packages the online community service with a game-like situation, which make the paying members feel interesting. Unlike advertising revenue, such kind of income comes directly from users. So, there is no issue of the neutrality of media - it is not a media service; it is a game.
There is no free lunch in the world. For a Blog website to become a business, the service providers must first resolve the paradoxical relations with its producers. To put it in a different way: is it possible that producers can have some kind of rewards to fuel their passion for writing, to encourage them to produce continuously? This is an issue that Blog service providers must address.
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