I’ve had quite a few people ask me what I think of the Pajamas Media launch that is approaching.
I don’t really have any comments to make at this stage except to say that it looks like an interesting concept and am looking forward to seeing how it goes. Wired has a feature on it today at Will Pajamas Media Wake Up Blogs?
They obviously have some big political bloggers behind it – however I’m not sure it will have much impact upon the average blogger. If you’re an A-lister blogging on politics you’d probably want to get a gig in it – but I suspect the rest of the wider blogging community will just blog on as usual.
I’m interested to hear what others think of it – especially those of you who participate in the political blogging arena.
Traffic is the name of the game and their A-list members are very impressive (quality of writing as well as quantity of traffic).
As opposed to building from the ground up, they went out and networked highly trafficed sites — good move.
But I’ve found very little information of substance about what they’re actually trying to do. Are they just going to be a ‘Blogads’ for the political blogosphere? Or do they plan on building something like Gawker or WIN, but for politics? Or a hybrid ad/blog network?
Whatever it is, they’ve got some heavy hitters behind the project.
From what I can gather, they are just pulling a bunch of blogs together and will display them in a type of “meta-blog”. I’m guessing similar to http://www.huffingtonpost.com.
But who knows?
Sorry… We’re not allowed to say…
And as Hans has pointed out, that’s one of the biggest gripes I’ve had with these people from the start, in an industry which is suppose to be open, transparent etc… they presented gigantic non-disclosure contracts to anyone even wanting to take a look.
My understanding of the model is similar to Jim, a big, aggregated page + I understand that they also get resale rights to content to non-blogging channels and they offer advertising on member blogs as well. For memory this is in addition to any other ads people might be running, that sort of thing,
I’ve only read what has been recently published. The political blog sector is big and will only grow as the 2006 and 2008 election cycles move closer. The few names that have been mentioned in this effort already bring strong followings and additional names of similar caliber will lend further credibility to the effort.
So I would say the prospects are very good. One thing I’ve mentioned on my Blogging as Business blog is the need for better blog searching technology. Technorati and Google have started the process, but think they are not quite there yet. There needs to be a better filter to find “good” content- this may be one means to that end. And I realize that “good” can be subjective.
Just sounds like one big-assed blog aggregator. Not sure how it’s a “network” or even a “new network” in any way…
But, with the names behind it they’ll undoubtedly “succeed” – just not in a way that’ll help average bloggers whatsoever.
I suppose since I’m more along the lines of an “average blogger” rather than a Captain Ed or a Charles Johnson or a Glenn Reynolds, I could be hoodwinked, but from what I have seen, they are going out of their way (and above and beyond the call of duty) to make sure that the little blogger can get a chunk of the advertising pie.
Why don’t we, the for profit bloggers, put one of these together, I’m not sure there would be any objections from the bloggers to joining something like this, since you don’t have to write any new material, it’ll just be pulled from your existing blogs.
Pajamas Media is like one of those celebrity marriages, they get married just so they can get some attention.
It’s not just political. They’ve also got Manolo the Shoeblogger.
http://pajamasmedia.com/index.php?p=2005/10/manolos_shoe_blog_the_manolo.php
So this is basically a high profile link exchange?
No.
I am a political blogger, and I will be paying very close attention to this project.
I’m a tad disappointed I wasn’t invited. :(
In the political blogging world, you are measured not only by your content, but who links to you. My work was taken much more seriously once I got a permanent link on the DemocraticUnderground website. It’s not that your traffic increases by that much, but B-list blogs are far more likely to link to you if you are on one of those lists.
Perhaps Pajama will be a more equitable bench-mark for political bloggers to aim for? Maybe in the near future, bloggers will compete to post on Pajama the way print reporters try to get their work syndicated.
A political version of Slashdot or Fark, if you will.
We have a political blog that was approached. We did not want to participate as we were concerned it was too top heavy. For the record we never saw the proposal, so we could be wrong on that.
We did not want to have our hands tied by a group that could control our destiny. I trule believe that blogging, and profitable blogging, one needs to be as fluid as possible to successfully get in and out of opportunities as quickly as possible.
And I may be completely wrong. :) I figured that even though the people creating Pajama Media were well respected bloggers, they had not been business people. I tend to stick with the business people.
We have a political blog that was approached. We did not want to participate as we were concerned it was too top heavy. For the record we never saw the proposal, so we could be wrong on that.
We did not want to have our hands tied by a group that could control our destiny. I trule believe that blogging, and profitable blogging, one needs to be as fluid as possible to successfully get in and out of opportunities as quickly as possible.
And I may be completely wrong. :) I figured that even though the people creating Pajama Media were well respected bloggers, they had not been business people. I tend to stick with the business people.
I just pulled up an old email (May 2005) from Roger and Charles at Pajamas Media that they sent to me with their proposal and business plan (I’m not under NDA).
Basically, they want to “1) remarket your creative and journalistic works in the form of text, audio, and video to newspapers, radio stations, and television stations and networks as well as through a central Internet portal, and 2) provide advertising to be used on your website.” (their words)
I believe the bulk of the money of the operation is a private syndication system for mainstream media. The NYTimes would go through Pajamas Media to be able to syndicate a blogger’s column in their newspaper. Or a magazine would buy reprint rights for a Glenn Reynolds post.
Pajamas Media as the middle man between mainstream media buy blogger’s content for reproduction. They’ve also got some interesting technology brewing to measure blog readership demographics to better target advertising.
Excuse the grammar in that last paragraph: “Pajamas Media as the middle man between mainstream media, which may want to purchase blogger’s content for reproduction.”
I was one of the early bloggers that signed up with prelim agreements with PJM. So far, the organization’s efforts are amateurishly unimpressive and I elected to forego signing a contract with them.
I think PJM will fail due to lack of a well-defined business model (and one that keeps changing), including poor management of the blogger channel. To date, their website continues to provide no information for media buyers.
I outlined several reasons in my blog (search on “Pajamas Media” as I have several articles and look for articles dated in August and later — after I got over the initial buzz they generated).
For an insider’s look into PJM’s weaknesses, from a former insider, check out http://dennisthepeasant.typepad.com and scroll through this week. Dennis has a number of recent articles dated from 10/20 – 10/24. He’s got a case of sour grapes, but once you get beyond that, I agree with his analysis of weaknesses.
The prime question asked by Dennis, and one relevant to bloggers, is just what is PJM’s business model? Is it advertising or journalism?