Weblogs And The Mass Amateurization Of Publishing

from the good-points dept

Clay Shirky comes through (as he often does) with a very insightful and interesting article about why most people will never make money from weblogs. He bases his article on basic economics, which is something that very few people trying to make money ever do (for instance, the music industry currently is ignoring basic economics). His point is that the ease of publishing via weblogs, in many ways, makes publishing a weblog a "financially worthless activity". It's basically commoditized the market, making it a fully competitive market. If someone is going to charge, there are so many other free options out there, that price gets driven right back to free. He points out that this is a good thing. It creates a world where global publishing is free - where anyone can write anything at any time, and anyone else is free to read it. Worth reading (for free, of course).

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