Betting on Tools that Power Blogs

Posted By Darren Rowse 12th of November 2004 Blogging Tools and Services

BusinessWeek has an interesting article that talks about another option for making money from blogs – through the infrastructure that makes blogs possible. They write –

While Web log entreprenuers search for a viable business model, venture capitalists are backing companies that make it all possible

Ask David Sifry when his little San Francisco startup called Technorati will turn a profit, and he laughs contagiously. No, Technorati, which tracks Web logs, or blogs, and will soon offer blog searches, is a long way from turning a profit. But it has big-league venture-capital backers like Draper Fisher Jurvetson and Mobius Venture Capital, and they’re willing to wait as blog entrepreneurs cast around for a good business model.

It may take a while. Truth is, the fledgling blogging industry’s business model is closer to a question mark than a dollar sign. Sifry would be the first to admit that he’s part of an industry in flux. “This reminds me of the Web in 1994,” Sifry says. “It’s an ecosystem that’s evolving and just being built.”

PICKS AND SHOVELS. Plenty of people are part of the building process. Sifry estimates that about 12,000 new blogs pop online worldwide each day. On about 10 million blogs today, writers are posting about 400,000 new items per day. That’s more than 16,000 per hour. The interest is out there. The question is: How can money be made?’

Exit mobile version