How do they do it. Become top blogs I mean?. The answer
is of course very simple. They advertise. That's how they all
start. But they don't call it that and would deny that they
had ever advertised their blogs instead if they had to put a
name to it they would perhaps admit to networking and what
is that after all but advertising...they put the word out amongst
friends and colleagues , buisness associates and the like. The
sort of people who live the online internet life.. who do it for
a living. I guess all the top bloggers have a few hundred
readers before they publish a word. And these readers link
up and in turn have similar friends who are linked to them.
As most of these fellows are journalists they give each other
write ups in the trade journals....which in their case happens
to be papers like the Herald Tribune and Wall Street Journal
and the like and this also is a form of advertising.
And they get to publish the inside news , the hot stuff , and
in short have all the connections that anyone could ever want.
But the real trick is this. They pander to the vanity of their
readers. Let me explain what I mean.
Boingboing and blogs of that nature don't advertise ointment
for lets say , piles. They don't carry adds for incontinence. And
why?. The reason is of course that readers of that kind of
blog don't have piles or incontinence. They don't carry adds for
Ford cars because the kind of people who read their blogs
don't drive Ford cars. All the adds they carry must flatter the
reader as the reader is a 'winner' ie someone who can
afford to buy a foreign car , someone who is healty with fresh
features and good teeth and none of the common ailment's that
ordinary real people suffer from.
By the way, what I said about Ford cars, that wasn't a figure
of speech or anything like that , I meant that literally as most
of these top blogs wont accept an advert from Ford.
Image is everything. And as for substance?.
In one of the latest offerings from Boingboing there is a bit
about Singularity .....if you want to know what that is
you can check the blog in question....But they give this
Singularity a good write up. There's even a link to Stanford
University and if you didn't know any better would think
that you are talking part in some great debate.
But there is no great debate just some second hand thoughts
which were doing the rounds when I was a kid in the 50's and
that most people had grown out of by the 60's.
As a very dear friend of mine used to say , "Its all wallpaper".
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