I don't think it is the end of blogging.

The division between the pros and the rest of us has existed for a while now.

They will eventually be identified as professional internet journalists. The rest of us will be known as (what I have always thought of myself as), diarists. But we will still call it the Blogosphere.

AMEN,We,the bloggers who blog for a hobby, are having the most fun. Quite frankly, some of the so called 'professional blogs', I find bloody boring.I would just as soon read the newspaper,and even then, half of what you read is trash.
Beth I enjoy the personal touch of your blog.I continue to be one of your many readers.

Oh, I think the bigwigs like Matt, who is a top-of-line blogger will keep the common touch - a lot of the people involved in OSM were already pundits of some sort who turned to blogging, like Reynolds and Malkin, etc.

The people we hang with will still be the people we hang with.

I think this is a natural growth of the medium, frankly - with these guys setting themselves up as the "alternative media" and in a sense, pulling themselves into their own niche, which will overlap what the rest of us do.

The real impact is going to be on the low-resource bloggers who hoped to turn themselves into something else, larger. That club just got harder to get into if OSM has a good model and flexes it's muscles IRT sucking up advertising dollars.

I think mostly it means I'm glad I quit trying that hard - I wasn't that good, I wasn't going to make it that way, and this just seals the deal for me!

I doubt it, Beth. I think that OSM is likely to flop and that the MSM will continue to hire more bloggers (a la Andrew Sullivan's recent move to Time).

But there will be lots more where they came from and the Blogosphere will continue to be its own culture, growing a little over time.

i agree with dave, at least in part. I don't do ads, or marketing, or anything, I blog because it's my outlet, and I suspect many others will continue to do so. however, i think that a lot of the OSM brouhaha has to do with perceived relationships and friendships that are now skewed. A lot of us who have been blogging for a while know each other's blogs and have a "history", if you will. Some folks are really peeved, IMO, because their "friends" are turning their backs on them in the interest of money to join this "professional" group rather than continuing to be themselves. opportunisitic and shallow? depends on how you look at it.

Interesting viewpoints, indeed. When I signed up (with 'Bunker Mulligan', a long time ago), it was Pajamas Media - now split into two parts. I envisioned it as a WebRing kind of model, not a means of boot-strapping myself into a professional level of blogging.

Link here.

Well, it's nice you passed their requirements, Barb.

But I'm bummed that the world will think the best blogs are there, and we all know that is not true.

I'm not sure I passed anything - I may have joined so early there was no 'bar' ;-)

But I have yet to see anyone represent it as being any more of a be-all-to-end-all than anyother aggregate site.

Hi,

Not quite sure what OSM means. I assume it refers to the growing phenomenon of commercial blogs that seem to be invading the blogosphere.

Here's how I see it. I have a blog that I write for fun not profit. I allow some ads but I doubt that the total revenue from those ads in a given year will exceed $12.00.

Then why run them?

Well, there is always the chance that someone will actually buy a big ticket item through my Amazon link and I will be able to upgrade my computer. Kind of like a lottery. But that is all it is, just a chance.

But on my site the ads are few and unobtrusive and do not appear as posts. These blogs are unlikely to do well as blogs per say as anyone looking for original work is going to say "Oh, that's dumb" and click next.

So do they mark the end of the internet? If I am understanding this correctly - Hardly.

I tried to comment on an earlier post but it was closed. The one about lost data when the blogging engine broke. Here's what I said:

I have my own blog and finally got tired of that and so now try to have the patience to do all my posts in Word and then copy paste them into my blog editor colors, effects and all.

This way if the blog goes blip, and it does, I lose the least bit possible, it also gives me a backup in case my blog server goes out of business or fails in some other way.

Hope this helps.

Peter, Blogmaster and King Of Puns
The Peter Files Blog of SFW Lunacy, Madness and Stomach Churning Puns

there's not requirement to blogroll the other PJ blogs, so no, at IMAO, we won't be doing such a thing. we're in it for the money only. we give them one primo ad spot and get money quarterly is the way i understand it. fine by us. but then, we're class clowns.

and if we don't "lower ourselves" (really, Beth, are you serious?) to meet other bloggers, who will we meet? we live on the internet.

Actually, Beth, meeting you is a more of a stepping up than a lowering :-)