This post continues from my previous two post Strengths & Weaknesses of Yahoo! Google & MSN and Google's Product Strategy Demystified. It is based on my notes from a podcast interview of John Battelle with Tom Raftery where John B explains Why Blog Media Companies are flourishing.
Blog Centered Online Publishing Models
Blogging and Podcasting need Publishing Models quite like print publishing companies. Media companies become the meeting points for content creators and advertisers. Media companies pay content creators for their content. They take responsibility of distributing content and get paid by advertisers. Yahoo! for example is an online content distributor -- with a special twist.
Yahoo! different from Blog Media Companies
Yahoo! tends to get its content from other large content owning media companies who don't have as much of an online media distribution channel like Yahoo.com. MSN is also into the content distribution business -- content provided by Media companies more than individual content creators.
Few companies are around that could become channels for distribution and advertising of blogs and podcasts. Individual creators (bloggers and podcasters) do not have the economic resources, know-how, or contacts to sign-up content distribution deals and find advertisers to support their content.
This is the work of a Blog focused Media Company. Thats where Blog Media companies like Boing Boing, John Battelle's Federated Media, Om Malik's Giga OM, and my blog's host Know More Media have come in.
Recently Giga Om and Huffington post got VC backing. I believe this trend will continue. Somewhere down the line there will be consolidation. Big Media Players -- offline or online -- will pay hefty amounts to purchase the newer entrepreneurial Blog Media companies.
John also very briefly talks about copyright issues of online content in the podcast interview.
Copyright Wars-- co-existence of UGC with copyrighted content and Digital Format Issues
I think that the problem is that the online world's co-existence and mashup of publisher owned copyrighted content along with User Generated creative-commons content UGC have made content related copyright issues hazy in the minds of average consumers.
This plus the fact that digital content is extremely easy to copy, paste, download and upload makes the problem worse.
I would guess that several teenaged users of YouTube who uploaded coprighted content don't even know that there are laws and businesses watching their "unlawful" behaviour. However ignorant this may be.
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