Fred Wilson offers an interesting and provocative post on blogs as the ultimate start page:
Blogs are the endgame for social networking. MySpace is the AOL of blogging. It’s where you go when you don’t know how to do it yourself. But with MySpace starting to rein in what people can do with their pages (for a host of good and bad reasons), they are seeding their own decline. A decline that will take a decade if AOL is a good proxy. In the next ten years, most people who want an online home will have a blog, it will be their online identity and their start page and much more.
I haven’t done it yet, but I should change my start page to my blog. That’s where I go to start my day and end my day. And I am hell bent to configure my blog with enough functionality that it can be my newspaper, my inbox, my tv, my radio, and my social network. It’s pretty damn close already.
That’s where all of this is going. We’ll program our online world and others will too. And we’ll start our day there instead of the Wall Street Journal or the New York Times. My best is many of you reading this are already there.
mike,
you’re a gp at polaris, right? isn’t there more value (interesting startups, trends in vc, investment themes, etc.) that you can provide beyond simply paraphrasing other vc blogs? would love to see more interesting posts…
cheers,
a reader
thanks for the candid feedback, reader.
don’t worry, i don’t take it personally…
you make a fair point. if i considered my main objective for this blog to add the most possible value for readers, i would have a different – and more analytical and substantive – approach. that would probably be pretty fun.
BUT, in that event i’d also be doing something other than VC — i’d be a writer or an analyst.
i am not a writer, i am a VC, and my obligation is to my partners and our LPs to do the best job investing i can, and to be as helpful to my portfolio companies as i can.
i happen to write this blog in the little “spare” time i can sneak.
i have admittedly and openly set the bar pretty low. i drop posts in when i can, when i’ve read something interesting, had an interesting experience, occasionally something a bit more substantive but by no means am i aspiring to be an analyst.
my real objective is, honestly, pretty selfish — to understand what blogging is all about to be a better automattic board member.
happily, i am finding that some folks out there actually enjoy reading of my travels, observations, airline delays, etc., “light” reading though this may be.
though, in conclusion, i genuinely do appreciate your comment and will see if i can’t find more valuable stuff to blog. just don’t hold your breath :>
olvassa el az egesz blog, nagyon jo