Thursday, February 10, 2005 12:44 PM
Checking in with the weblog and syndication business for a moment...
Even with all of the buzz created this week when it was announced that search company Ask Jeeves acquired Bloglines, a feed reader and aggregation service, I didn't see much in the way of a strategic analysis of the deal.
That is, until I ran across Jason Calacanis of Weblogs Inc. commentary on the subject.
While clearly offering a negative view of the value Ask Jeeves will receive in this deal, his post offers some interesting insight into business models that may or may not work within the blogosphere as well as where he believes the marketplace is heading. For example, with regard to feed readers, he contends that "Microsoft will take 50% marketshare of this market six to 12 months after they get into it." If Microsoft does deliver integrated feed readers into Outlook (whether by acquiring Newsgator or developing something in-house), it does seem likely that it won't take long for Outlook to be the dominate feed reader on the market. Especially, from an enterprise perspective, where the ease and cost of using Outlook may outweigh third party reader benefits, even if the third party reader is a better product.
Whether of not it overpaid for Bloglines, it does seem like Ask Jeeves had to do something to stay competitive. And, I am sure the deal-making is only just beginning. The leading small companies that dominate the software side of weblogs and syndication feeds, will surely be acquired by large, established web companies. Two years from now, Microsoft, Google and Yahoo! could very well control 80% or more of the weblog editing software, hosting and reader marketplace.
So, where will the business opportunities lie? That is an open question, but here are two I can think of right now:
Content. No matter who controls the mechanisms for dissemination, content will remain king. A good blawg writer will develop a following over time. This following likely has a value, whether in marketing an underlying business or law practice or via some other mechanism like advertising or being paid to write by a third party.
Enhancing the channel. There will always be a marketplace for niche productst that enhance blawgs and blawg feeds. We are seeing this now with the burgeoning movement of single developers and small entities to incorporate multimedia into the channel.
In the end, as with the Ask Jeeves - Bloglines deal, we will all have to wait and see how everthing shakes out; but shake out it will.