Rodent Regatta

DISRUPTIVE PRICING ATTRIBUTED TO WEBLOGS

THE UNECONOMIC BLOGOSPHERE: This little piece struck me as extremely persuasive – in fact, so persuasive I wish I hadn’t read it. It’s about how the Internet, for all its joys, has yet to show how it can possibly make money:

This destruction of value is what makes weblogs so important. We want a world where global publishing is effortless. We want a world where you don’t have to ask for help or permission to write out loud. However, when we get that world we face the paradox of oxygen and gold. Oxygen is more vital to human life than gold, but because air is abundant, oxygen is free. Weblogs make writing as abundant as air, with the same effect on price. Prior to the web, people paid for most of the words they read. Now, for a large and growing number of us, most of the words we read cost us nothing.

Read the entire article – at no cost. [Andrew Sullivan]