# Article in The Economist about commercialization of weblogs

- Author: Joichi Ito
- Date: 2003-08-15T07:18:58Z


The EconomistBlogging, to the horror of some, is trying to go commercial

Ur-bloggers, of course, are outraged by all this. “Tony doesn't understand what a blog is; he's the opposite of a blogger,” says David Winer, a fellow at Harvard Law School's Berkman Centre, founder of UserLand and one of the first and longest running bloggers around (his site is www.scripting.com ). The key attribute that makes a blog a blog and not some ordinary piece of web publishing is amateurism, says Mr Winer: if it is in any way edited, it is not a blog. From this, incidentally, Mr Winer extrapolates that blogging has “the potential for revolution,” democratising and liberating the world. Mr Perkins in turn feels, wearily, that he has heard such “religiously libertarian anarchists with ponytails screaming and yelling” before, in the early days of the internet. Like many in Silicon Valley nowadays, he is more interested in profits than revolutions—though that change, in its own way, is revolutionary.The article is a bit simplistic, but does start the discussion about commercialization of weblogs. I personally think that Amazon.com and the referral thing is where the action is. Amazon will potentially benefit more than anyone from all of this since they are the closest to the point of sale and reviews are a great way to get people to buy. Reviews are much more integrated into blog content than adwords.





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