What's in initials met Didi Bota (27) - Godfather van de blogwereld is een JC

De godfather van de blogwereld is - hoe kan het anders ? - een JC : Jason Calacanis. Vandaag werd bekend dat zijn bedrijfje Weblogs Inc is gekocht door AOL ( American Online ).

Hoe het zo ver is gekomen ? Een interview met JC.

http://calacanis.weblogsinc.com/

Hund i snor
How did you get in to blogging and how long have you been doing it?

Jason Calacanis
I started a free email newsletter back in 1997 that was in blog format (linking to and commenting on news), but no one used the term blog back then. In 2002, I started playing with the software.

Hund i snor
Why and when did you start Weblogsinc.com?

Jason Calacanis
After I sold Silicon Alley Reporter/Venture Reporter to Dow Jones, I started working on WeblogsInc.com full time. We started the company because we thought that if we could make bloggers a living they could blog more.

Hund i snor
How many people are currently working for Weblogsinc.com?

Jason Calacanis
We have about 30-40 bloggers working with us. We've got a couple of programmers, sales people and managers too but we don't like to give exact details on that because it might telegraph our strategy.

Hund i snor
How many blogs do you plan with the Weblogsinc.com network ?

Jason Calacanis
I think we are at like 49 or so. The goal is to hit 500 in two years time.

Hund i snor
Do your bloggers get paid? If yes, how? (cash, revenue shares, etc.) If not, what do they get out of this? We split the revenue with our bloggers in most cases. Some bloggers are making $100 a month, some are making $2,000 a month. It depends on the topic and the amount of advertising we generate. We have now both B2B and B2C blogs now.

Hund i snor
For your info : B2B is business to business en B2C is business to consumer. Eén van die B2C blogs van JC is Bloggingbaby.com, een blog dedicated to "pregnancy, baby care and parenting", waar overigens een andere JC - Jennifer Creer - het leeuwendeel van de artikels post. Hund i snor-medewerkers krijgen een uurloon, onkostenvergoeding, aandelen én aandelenopties én een dertiende maand. We horen niemand klagen.

Hund i snor
For people who may want to start their own small blogging empires, do you have any tips or words of wisdom to share?

Jason Calacanis
If you're doing a blog, do it because you love the topic and you love the community. I think there is a business in blogging, but if you go into this thinking that you're going to get rich quick, you're a fool. It will take years for blogs to make money and only .1% of blogs will become "real" businesses. Most blogs will be labors of love.

Een wijs besluit van JC. Hoewel, Hund i snor kan niet klagen over de blogsponsoropbrengsten ...

We vroegen ook eens aan de concurrentie van Jason Calacanis wat zij vinden van de bloggodfather; We kwamen terecht bij Gothamist, een collectieve blog uit New York met als hoofdredacteur alweer een JC - Jen Chung.

Hund i snor
Hi Jen, what do you think about the quality of Jason Calacanis' blogs ?

Jen Chung
Jason plans 500 blogs in the next two years. The credibility of any one site on the network seems to decrease as the network expands. If the quality of some of the blogs is subpar, how much will that impact on the reputation of the whole enterprise? Jason has said he wants to create blogs for middle Americans but are there enough middle American blog readers to support Weblogsinc?

Hund i snor
How do you judge the finances of Weblogsinc ?

Jen Chung
We have concerns about the rationality of the Weblogsinc business model. Let's say Jason gets to 250 blogs in the next year (Unrealistic? The man is a machine!).
Let's say each writer is paid $500 a month. That's $125,000 a month in expense, or $1.5 million per year - without counting any other expenses, an awful lot of expense to bear! Can the average blog be expected to generate more than $500 a dollars a month in ad sales? Our experience says no.

Hund i snor
How do you see the future blog landscape ? is Jason Calacanis the Bill Gates of the blogworld ?

Jen Chung
Well, reluctantly I must admit he is. Our doubts about Weblogsinc are grave, but Jason Calacanis is a winner, and most likely every blogger in America will be working for him or for Nick Denton in five years time.

Hund i snor
Or Hund i snor ...