DISQUS

Very true and the recent bid for Twitter, if successful, will only hurt them further and may actually kill Twitter in the process. When I mentioned on Twitter recently that I'll be writing a story for Techcrunch about Microsoft's new 'Adsense' type product, it opened up a river of stories from web publishers about nightmare experiences in dealing with Google. The anticipation and interest in Microsoft's product is impressive. People are desperate for an alternative.

The problem has been a virtual monopoly on contextual advertising outside the US where Yahoo! Publisher Network is simply not available to people (been in beta for 3 years) and other networks just don’t have the scale to be viable.

Simply put there is a gigantic number of publishers who will jump at the chance of a viable Microsoft option. The simple act of competition (non-existent previously) will spur huge rewards for web publishers worldwide. I only hope Microsoft moves quickly to offer this to those outside the US.

This is good news.

Nice list but you missed WorldTV.com!

Cheers

Nice list but you missed WorldTV.com!

Cheers

Funnily enough I've been doing some research into this myself the past week, specifically related to 'entertainment and celebrity' type blogs - Perez Hilton, DListed, TMZ etc. Trying to figure out how much money they make, what the CPM rates are.

The results were fairly shocking. Using publicly available data, I was able to ascertain that even DListed, the number 3 celebrity blog site, which is doing 35 million page impressions a month, is only making around $13,000 a month - or a page eCPM of $0.37. Actual ads cost as little as $0.13 CPM.

Yet, as you indicate, there are exceptions. In that vertical, which has dozens and dozens of big sites, the number 1 is PerezHIlton.com and that does 235 million page impressions a month with ad rates suggesting it's making $250,000+ a month.

The problem for that vertical is the subject matter and the intense competition which leads to very low CPM's. You need monster traffic to make a buck. Very few of these sites run Google Adsense (likely) because the subject matter is prone to violating Adsense T&C's - swearing, booze, drugs, etc. And unfortunately the other advertising network options are dire. To this day Yahoo!'s Publisher Network is still not readily available to anyone outside the US and is still 'in beta'. It's been that way for three years! The other options are orders of magnitude smaller and don't have the scale needed to offer compelling CPM's.

I'm glad to say we do much better than these rates on our own network of sites, with the bonus that many are semi or fully automated. The thought of getting lower CPM's and having higher labour costs to run a professional blog site definitely give pause for thought.

Nic, it's like you and I discussed not long ago. You have to "do what you have to do".

We were executing a strategy of actively looking for VC funding until the current crisis rendered that a vastly less certain proposition. We scaled back expenses (including markteting), focused the 40-50% of our (my) time we were spending on 'fund raising' into monetization.

With the results from that (better monetization and lower costs), we're in a sustainable position now and can look again at raising funds to fuel growth as and when the 'sun comes up'.

In the meantime we're comfortable to take slower or even static user number growth, and (following your valued suggestion) would look to kick that into higher gear again before we started the fund raising process again.

Communities can happen in two ways - spontaneously or through the (typically) very hard work of an individual or small team. The single most enabling factor for an online community, beyond the obvious need to provide basic community tools... is the written word. Often this can come from a charismatic 'leader' or moderator and be achieved through community e-mails, blog posts or descriptive site text. It can be as simple as a well written guide for the posters in a discussion forum, or as involved as a full on integrated campaign of newsletters, individual personalized e-mails, blog posts, site text and general community stewardship. These are tricky and difficult to get right, and all the glossy design in the world won't come close to matching a single, effective, written communicator.

I agree with the first commenter. Watching TV is a very different experience to online video. You don't want interactivity when you're watching 'TV', the complete failure of interactive TV projects in the past demonstrates this.

Sometimes we want to be the passenger, not the driver. TV is a way to relax, no need to think, just let it wash over you. Change the camera angle? NO THANKS! That's what technical director's are paid to do, and they do a great job.

Mouse in hand is totally different - you're driving, you're in control, you want interactivity.

The 2 minute clips experience will not make the transition to TV, channel-centric services like WorldTV.com and Joost can.

Insightful post... the point about 'breaking the link' is good and is already happening. Graphic design marketplaces are springing up online, where designers compete for projects in an open fashion, and we make use of them to develop the 'creative' behind our online ad campaigns. We then manage the buying of this inventory ourselves and use services that auto-optimize our Google advertising (for example), ultimately leading to a far more efficient, effective and economical campaign for our startup. When we need a TV ad, we'll go to the ad agencies... then again, maybe not. Ad agencies need to adapt and acquire, like all the other legacy businesses being affected by the Internet.

It's always such a shame these companies aren't publicly listed. It would have been nice to short Facebook stock from 2-3 months ago - this was very predictable.

Most people I know are growing bored of Facebook and have grown irritated by the constant event announcements and dodgy friend requests. It really does lose its luster after the initial excitement of building your social graph fades.

Unfortunately for social networks, they are by definition social. This means subject to the same social fashions and trends like bars or nightclubs. Highly exclusive social networks (online private members clubs) are probably next.

You left out a good one - WorldTV.com. Let's you take videos from different video sites and organize them into a channel. Great for organizing a collection of your favourite videos, no matter where they're hosted.