A Blog Bubble?

Nobody’s uttering the phrase "irrational exuberance" yet, but even in the relatively nascent area of blogging, there’s already talk of a bubble.

In a story in the July 3 edition of The New York Times, media reporter David Carr wrote that Nick Denton, whose Gawker Media has assembled more than a dozen sites on a variety of topics, is closing two of his blogs, laying off an undisclosed number of writers and reorganizing other properties.

In the story, Denton said he was making the moves now to avoid a more painful situation later. He also attributed the move to the fact that blog publishers are becoming more "old media" in terms of their view of economics and the need to deploy resources where the growth is. He went on to say that the fact that some well-known names, including America Online, are getting into blogs has led to a lot of hype and an explosion of money from venture-capital firms and other sources.

I’ve written extensively on what I see as the future of blogs and how I also believe that those who believe them to be the next incarnation of media are, in my opinion, off the mark. Anyone who needs an example that would back this up would be well to remember Yahoo!’s $4.3 billion purchase of Broadcast.com. It sure made Mark Cuban a lot of money, but I don’t think even people inside Yahoo! would call that the best business decision they’ve ever made. In fact, most of the content that was available on Broadcast.com — conventional terrestrial radio stations streaming over the Internet — has since been taken in-house by the major radio chains, including Clear Channel.

To bring this back to public relations, in my opinion, blogs aren’t worth much time and attention until they attract a mass audience. Some certainly have, especially in certain verticals, but they’re still not a household name. I also have a lot of people who’ve told me that blogs represent a great opportunity for corporations to get their message out to the public, in particular, young Web users. In theory, that’s true, and maybe they’re right. I just don’t see a lot of people beating down any company’s door to read what they know is a well-rehearsed message.

The power in blogs lies more along the lines of “citizen journalism,” and it’s there that I think there will be a bright future. And it’s certainly possible that PR pros might one day dialoging with influential bloggers the way we do certain columnists in the industries we work with. But just as columnists aren’t where most of our messages are going to find a home, blogs aren’t likely to be either… at least in my sometimes humble opinion.