blogging for dollars - for real

So Google, who owns Blogger now has launched its AdSense program to allow bloggers to share in the ad revenue that Google pulls through Blogger's blogs.

What is interesting is that to take part in the program, you must provide accurate personal information to Google to allow them to pay you. Could this be the tipping point of privacy reversing into publicy? Once people's true identities are linked to the vast amount of blog content, what's left of privacy? For those who still believe the internet is a vast landscape of anonymous activity better catch up quick...

The AdSense program is important because it obsolesces the idea of free, anonymous content being the stock in trade of the blogosphere. Blogs have generally been seen as distinct from content provided by the traditional media - precisely because it was known that bloggers were not benefiting financially from their content. Exceptions existed of course, but the point where readers translate directly into dollars had not yet arrived. So there was a general sense that the blogosphere was inherently benevolent, even if members of the community might be misguided or otherwise less worthy of stating an opinion. But ideas distributed through the blogosphere are generally seen as motivated by the desire to pursuade, to shape opinion, and to generate knowledge. An entrenched advertising scheme will provide incentives that encourage increasing page-views, but not necessarily quality content.

This begs the question, of course, whether attempting to increase page-views will lead to lower quality content. The obvious risk we might anticipate comes from our experience with television. It can be argued that "race to the bottom" or "lowest common denominator"- type behaviour is driven by ratings. But at the same time, the birth of speciality programming illustrates that sizable niches exist to support low-cost, targeted programming that need not resort to cheap tactics to maximize appeal. The blogosphere is more like cable than broadcast television, if merely because of the number of choices available.

Obviously the blogosphere offers a number of choices far beyond what television can offer and this changes the way we look at it in terms of an advertising model.

But like television, blogs will depend on attracting readers by offering content that is not available everywhere else. This makes no statement as to the particular qualities of the content. To attract viewers on the internet, one needs only be unique. This attribute of the internet has led to an explosion of creative content, from jokes to political statements, to multimedia presentations and "mash-ups" where content is re-mixed to create something entirely new.

The importance of the "uniqueness" factor cannot be overstated. In the blogosphere, each blog is a mere speck on the radar. The power of the blogosphere is in the connections, the relationships. A blog that goes unnoticed by the rest of the blogsphere may as well not exist. But tapping into the power of the blogosphere is extremely easy if the uniqueness and quality is there. Blogs maintain their relevance (and in turn their traffic) by posting unique content relevant to their readers. Therefore, it serves the interest of established blogs to find lesser known blogs to link to. The barriers to entry that exist in other media simply do not exist in the blogosphere.