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This page contains all of the posts and discussion on MemeStreams referencing the following web page: Blogs Get Google's Embrace (Washington Post). You can find discussions on MemeStreams as you surf the web, even if you aren't a MemeStreams member, using the Threads Bookmarklet.

Blogs Get Google's Embrace (Washington Post)
by digitalreporter at 10:07 am EST, Feb 18, 2003

] More evidence that blogging is entering the tech world's
] mainstream: Search engine giant Google has scooped up
] Pyra Labs, a small, privately held San Francisco company
] that makes Blogger, the wildly popular, free blog
] publishing software.

I think the answer to Gillmor's question is obviously "Yes!" In a time of lagging advertising in the media industry and a race to get more subscribers, blogs represent a silver lining in the world of mass communications -- cheap, user-driven content. But what do you think of Google's entrance into the blogging space? Will blogs loose their luster as they go corporate, or will they continue to grow and in some cases, make money? Drop me a note and I will publish selected reader comments in an upcoming Filter.

RE: Blogs Get Google's Embrace (Washington Post)
by Decius at 11:24 am EST, Feb 18, 2003

] But what do you think of Google's entrance into the
] blogging space? Will blogs loose their luster as they go
] corporate, or will they continue to grow and in some cases,
] make money? Drop me a note and I will publish selected reader
] comments in an upcoming Filter.

This is interesting as an entrepreneur, because it means that there is a demand for technology in this space, and that there may be incentives for people to build tools in this space. Its not a hopeless pit of debt.

I think that everyone will blog, and that this will not kill the luster of blogging. However, it will change the nature of the community. Right now its seen as a kind of fringe activity that hip people who are "in the know" engage in. Eventually it will be common place, and the hip people who are looking to be out on the edges will be playing with something else.

In order for everyone to be blogging, three things have to happen:
1. The interface needs to be a simple as possible, even if that means loosing functionality.
2. There needs to be ways of building community in the blog space.
3. There needs to be ways of aggregating all of this blog content so that you can get something useful out of all of this stuff people are publishing.

Obviously, thats what I'm trying to do with MemeStreams. There are other people who are approaching the same problem in other ways. Many people have predicted that Google will attack this problem too. It seems to be the place where their skills collide with Blogger.

There is also some fear in the community I think. Most of the people running blog software/tools are doing so with no funding in garages. A few are making money, which is good, but they aren't making truck loads of it. Barely enough to pay one salary. In many ways Blogger has always been an 800 pound gorilla... despite their financial troubles they did actually receive VC funding. No one else has that. Now they are google, which is an 800 million pound gorilla when held next to anything else in the space. The inequity is now phenominal, and I think thats why you see some trepidation about this development. What will happen remains to be seen.