Reflections & analysis about innovation, technology, startups, investing, healthcare, and more .... with a focus on Minnesota, Land of 10,000 Lakes. Blogging continuously since 2005.

Tag: blogs (Page 2 of 2)

VCs Who Blog vs. Those Who Don’t

Great piece in the Boston Globe yesterday by Scott Kirsner: In Venture Capital, a Growing Rift Over Blogs. It’s the best look I’ve seen so far into why some VCs blog and why others pass. Makes some excellent points about the main advantage for VCs — better deal flow — and the main advantages for entrepreneurs — leveling the playing field, including from a geographic standpoint.  That latter point is one I’ve written about a lot, and a very real issue for founders not lucky enough to be located in one of the VC hotbeds.

I like the way Kirsner characterizes VC blogging as the "new parity in the world of venture capital."

The article quotes one of the best-known VC bloggers out there, Fred Wilson of Union Square Ventures in NYC, a guy who’s invested in many Internet and Web 2.0 deals. Here’s an excerpt from the article that quotes Fred:

Venture capitalists who blog say it isn’t just about helping pump up
their firm’s reputation and show how market-savvy they are. Blogging,
writes Wilson via e-mail, is "the best tool for VC investing that I’ve
ever seen, and I’ve been in this business for more than 20 years."

Wilson
says his blog not only helps him meet more start-ups, but it brings him
companies that are "more targeted and more relevant" to the areas he’s
interested in. Wilson also likes it when his readers argue with him or
tell him about companies he might not already know; it’s not unusual
for one of his posts to attract 25 or 30 comments. "You can’t buy that
kind of education," he writes, "and I get it every day for free."

Later in the piece, an opposing viewpoint is put forth:

"My gut says that there’s no correlation between VC blogging and
financial returns," Spark Capital’s (
Bijan) Sabet says, noting that blogger
Fred Wilson has done well with his investments – but so has John Doerr
of the Silicon Valley firm Kleiner Perkins, who doesn’t blog but has
put money into Amazon, Google, and Intuit.

The trouble with that characterization, however, is that those latter deals were done long before blogging was popular. Granted, it’s hard to argue that big-kahuna KP needs to blog. But there’s a whole universe of newer, younger VCs out there who are finding it benefits them.

IDG Ventures’ Jeff Bussgang adds this great thought:

…as entrepreneurs increasingly maintain blogs of their own, Bussgang
says, "they want to see that the VCs are their peers and are wrestling
with similar issues and thinking through things."

I wonder how many VC bloggers will be at DEMOfall, starting later today?  I’m looking forward to talking with them.

What do you think about blogging representing "the new parity in venture capital"?  What are your experiences?

 

The Coming Explosion of Advertising on Blogs

I read an interesting article yesterday on Mediapost’s Marketing Daily: 8 Of 10 Americans Know About Blogs; Half Visit Them Regularly. This is a publication read by marketers, both traditional and online, across all industries. And it reminded me, again, that this is a topic I’ve been meaning to blog about.

Okay, my headline above may be a bit sensational, and maybe not a prediction the article makes per se. But read between the lines, people. Sure, ads are already blaring at you everywhere on major blogs like Tech Crunch, Read/Write Web, and GigaOm, but they’re really big media properties now. I’m talking long-tail blogs. Here’s an excerpt from the article (by the way, Mediapost, I love you, but how about starting to put *links* within your stories? like to more details about the study itself?):

Ad spending on blogs is still in its infancy … the eNation study, conducted in late July, shows there is real potential for ads on blogs. Among people who have visited a blog (485), 43.2% said they have noticed ads on blogs, and three out of 10 people in this group said they have clicked on ads while visiting a blog. Among the youngest consumers, a whopping 61.2% of 18- to 24-year-olds said they have noticed ads on blogs.

Some advertisers are trying to slip brand names in through the blogosphere’s back door by recruiting bloggers to write favorably about their brands…

That latter point is something I wanted to focus on today. It speaks to a major trend to watch in how advertising will be spreading onto blogs: that is, “sponsored content” versus traditional ad banners or text-link ads. The former seems to be coming on strong, on multiple fronts. Sponsored content can be whole stories written in news or editorial style and placed on blogs (or social networks, for that matter) — much the same as many “mat services” have done for decades as a service for small, weekly newspapers (which you know if you’re in the PR business) — to a blogger’s own writing that is directly influenced by and paid for by a sponsor (and hopefully disclosed by the blogger!), to even paragraphs written by a sponsor and paid for and just dropped in by the blogger, with blogger editing even allowed (yes, it’s being pitched out there — I know). There are many creative ways that “advertising” will be infiltrating and propating on blogs. So, hold on for the ride….

What do you think? Which kind of advertising would you rather see on blogs? (Relevant ads, of course — that’s a given.) Or how about on this blog right here?

For that matter, should I even be accepting advertising at all, in whatever form?

UPDATE: And for more on the growing readership of blogs: Blogs Make Tech Impact: 78% of Tech Journalists Read Them.

2nd UPDATE, 9/4/07: And yet more: One-third of blog visitors have clicked a blog ad, study says.

Screw AdSense – Bloggers Deserve a Buck a Word!

That’s the new mantra for bloggers seeking decent ad revenue according to online marketing guru Mike May, writing for MediaPost’s “Online Publishing Insider”. In his rabble-rousing piece, which went online today — “Compensate Citizen Publishers Like People, Not Web Sites” — he makes an interesting case. How did he arrive at a buck a word? That’s the going rate for freeelancer writers. And Mike’s proposal is based on this key notion: “The value of citizen publisher content to advertisers or sponsors should be no less than the value of freelance writing contributions to publishers.” Hey, I like it, Mikey likes it…what’s not to like?

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