Rumors of the “Market Correction” of Blogs are Greatly Exaggerated

There have been rumblings lately about a decline in blogging.

Duncan Riley of 901 am recently wrote that the death of blogs is exaggerated — blogging is going through a “market correction,” not a death, he contends.

I’ll go a couple steps further. Blogging is not even going through a market correction, but in fact continues to see steady, and very healthy, growth.

The mistake Riley and others make is focusing on the rising number of abandoned blogs.

Those who have been watching the blogosphere closely for the last couple years — most notably (for me) the WordPress team — know that there always has been and always will be a healthy chunk of folks who try blogging only to find it isn’t for them.  Blog abandonment is a constant element of the blogosphere.  It just so happens that, we are now seeing the natural wave of abandoned blogs which is following the wave of blog creation over the last 6 months or so.  But that far from an indicator that blogging itself is on the wane.

What is the right measure of “blogging?”

Simply looking at the number of blogs created always has and always will overreport the level of “blogging.”  It makes alot more sense, instead, to look at more specific measures of blogging activity, things like number of posts, number of comments and audience.  These are the measures of activity we at the Automattic board take more seriously than the number of blogs created.

If the WordPress numbers are any indication of the blogosphere more broadly (I am pretty sure they are), each one of these measures has continued to enjoy very consistent, strong growth over the last 12-18 months.

Quote(s) of the Day

I am going to shamelessly borrow from Fred Wilson’s blog post yesterday, both for a good quote and for a quote from another post he linked to.

The quote is actually borrowed from none other than Warren Buffet:

Be fearful when others are greedy and greedy when others are fearful.

These are great words to live by. For me, one of the proudest periods in my VC career was when our partnership made a calculated decision to be active investors in the post 9/11 meltdown. While I was new to the business and candidly somewhat shellshocked, my more seasoned partners who had ridden other down cycles in the business firmly took the view that the trough is the best place to be sowing seeds. Which we did. And, while it took 4 or 5 years, our portfolio from that vintage is chock full of winners that we are really proud of. A great lesson.

Does that mean that now is the time to be worried?

To some extent, I would say it probably is. Lots of money is chasing many fewer high quality deals, and nowhere is that more the case than in the Internet sector.

But, I would also invoke quote of the day #2 which is from Peter Rip in his now infamous post entitled “Web 2.0 Over and Out”:

VCs have always made money at finding the ideal point of friction between the Present and the Future. Profits accumulate in the gap between What Is and What Is Possible. Web 2.0 is now firmly in the category of What Is.

Peter is right.

Internet venture investors faced two challenges in the last wave: many of the credible ideas were unoriginal and not hard, which even in decent markets led to lots of small companies nipping at each other with no big winners. As for the good ideas that were hard, many were simply too early, ahead of market or technology preconditions for success.

Today Internet investors face the first problem in spades, resulting in a seeming overinvestment against a number of credible but unoriginal and not so difficult opportunities. The timing problem, though, has been inverted. With more and more media being consumed online, and the coincidence of bandwidth, computing power and a new generation of Internet software and tools, many of the original promises of broadband are being realized, and pretty rapidly. As an investor, the challenge has shifted from being too early to finding companies that really are doing something difficult and so will enjoy real competitive barriers.

Or, to use Peter’s terms, the Future is coming at us hard, the trick is finding the points of friction between here and there.

JibJab’s “What We Call the News”

What We Call the News | Send To Friends | Funny Animations at JibJab

JibJab Meets President Bush

After years of poking fun at Dubbya, Gregg and Evan Spiridellis, the JibJab brothers, are actually going to meet him in person.

Every year the inside the beltway muckety-mucks, and the political correspondents, have a big black tie shmoozefest where they basically spend the night roasting each other. I’ve never been but I am told it is quite an evening. I could be mistaken, but i believe this is the event where Redskins fullback John Riggins uttered the infamous “loosen up Sandy-baby” line to then Associate Justice Sandra Day O’Connor.

This year, JibJab was invited to give a roast of their own.

It will be airing tonight at the dinner, which will be on CSPAN. Their video, “What We Call the News,” will also be on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno tonight…

And, of course, we’ll have a copy, along with some **EXCLUSIVE** behind the scenes footage, up here on VCMike!

Rupert’s Master Plan

Robert Young has a good post today on NewTeeVee on the Newscorp/NBC YouTube competitor.

His basic point is that Murdoch is the ultimate winner in getting the major media companies (or at least one of them to date) to make their content available for online distribution.  Google will have no choice but to come to terms with the networks. And the only company that will both own content and online distribution will be…Newscorp.

Worth a read.

5 Intelligent Uses of Twitter

A couple weeks ago I tried Twitter to see what all the rage was. I have to confess–I don’t get it and quickly got Twittered-out.

However, there is a good post out there on “intelligent” Twittering (which I still think is an oxymoron).

NBC-News Corp YouTube Rival

The much anticipated NBC/Fox online TV consortium was announced today.

My pal George Kliavkoff will be leading the effort, at least on an interim basis.

I found it curious that the initiative entails distribution partenerships with AOL and MSN.  What exactly is the consortium going to do other than cut licensing deals with the portals?

My first reaction, though, is that this is a great thing, in that it reinforces that the TV industry is embracing the web rather than fighting it, as the music industry did.  Internet TV has always been a matter of timing, but I have to say I am surprised at how quickly the TV business is coming around.

The prospects should be bright: consumers are becoming more and more accustomed to watching video online; the technology exists; and advertisers are falling over themselves to find more online video inventory. You’d think these guys would have to try to screw it up. Then again, media company consortia don’t have the best track record of executing, so who knows what will happen here.

All in all, though, I think it is a good step forward for online video.

Even Fatter-blogging

This fatblogging thing has not worked for me. Instead of giving me more discipline not to reach for that extra serving, it has led me to avoid blogging! I am even fatter than when I started fatblogging.

So, I am giving up fatblogging. I’ll have to try something else.

March Madness Widget

Hooman from Clearspring announces a new March Madness Widget. Cool.

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