Bloggers Feeling the Love

Great piece in Businessweek’s May 7th issue entitled The Big Shots of Blogdom.

In it Businessweek explains how seriously companies are taking the opinions of influential bloggers such as Mike Arrington of TechCrunch, Om Malik of Gigaom and Rafat Ali of paidContent.

As the article states,

Companies are directing more efforts toward buttering up these New Media players, often feeding them exclusives that play well with their targeted audiences. And for marketers who are increasingly comfortable with spending money on blogs, advertising with these opinion leaders provides instant cache.

So What? I find it fascinating that what started out as a place for individuals to share industry information or personal thoughts on a subject, has turned into its own little industry. When blogs start hiring CEO’s and accept venture funding as paidContent has from Greycroft Partners, it starts to get interesting.

However, there has been some speculation that blogging is starting to peak. Question have arisen about their ability to survive in an economic downturn where ad revenues could be reduced. How these and other questions will be answered and how changes in the space will impact the biggest of the little guys like Arrington, Malik or Ali remains to be seen. Nevertheless, they’ve created great businesses that cost little to run and are enormously profitable.

Tags: Blogging, advertising, TechCrunch, GigaOm, paidContent, Greycroft Partners

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