Colin Kingsbury on Business Blogs

A Cynical Realist Speaks.

As blogs become more common, they become less like what made them interesting in the first place.

Political blogs are now mostly places where everyone posts finely-crafted talking points or howls at the moon with their pack.

Likewise, while I'm sure Glenn Reynolds (Instapundit.com) is quite an interesting fellow, I'm pretty sure there are hundreds if not thousands of other interesting fellows out there whose opinions and tastes we will never know about because Instapundit has sucked up 98% of the oxygen in the room.

He will likely not be replaced until he quits blogging. Like every other medium, blogging gives more power to incumbents than challengers, though the balance is far better than TV or newspapers, where challenging the established voices is nearly impossible.

There are still interesting political blogs where good conversations happen with a minimum of acrimony. They are vastly in the minority and are of miniscule impact compared to sites like Daily Kos or Little Green Footballs.

Blogs have not improved the quality of the political discussion, they have simply given more people megaphones to shout at each other with, which is what people want (as measured by what they do, rather than what they say) these days.

Similarly, I see no reason to believe that companies as a whole want to build and sell their products any differently than they did ten or fifty years ago.

Everyone still wants to buy raw inputs for a nickel, put a dollar of labor into it, and sell the finished product for fifty dollars, until somebody comes along and offers it for a buck ten.

Companies will use blogs to manipulate consumers just as they used every other medium. They just haven't all figured out how to do it yet. When they do, they will all blog, and almost none of them will be worth reading.

Update: Jerry O comments on Colin here.

Source. Colin's blog.

Comments

[laurence haughton]

H.L. Mencken once said that newspapers were a device for making the ignorant more ignorant, and the crazy, crazier. He didn't live to see TV news or blogs but I'll bet he would say the same thing about our modern media.

But there are notable exceptions , what I think of as diamonds in the dreck.

One more note. To write that "Everyone still wants to buy raw inputs for a nickel, put a dollar of labor into it, and sell the finished product for fifty dollars, until somebody comes along and offers it for a buck ten" is just adding to the dreck. Plenty of businesspeople do not expect such an unrealistic return on their labor.

[Colin Kingsbury]

I have a 15-page RFI on my desk that needs to go out, and it's 6:30 on a beautiful spring Friday, but I can't help myself.

Laurence- Cut me a little slack for poetic license. I know very few businesspeople who walk away from margin unless it's part of their larger plan, like Wal-Mart or Ikea. There is nothing illegal or unethical in demanding the highest price the market will bear. An "unrealistic return" is in the eye of the beholder. What's the moral difference between a company that has a margin of 5% versus 50%?

[laurence haughton]

You made a sweeping characterizing of business peeple and I said it was not characteristic. Moral didn't come up.

And when a product costs 5 cents plus 1 dollar and sells for $50 dollars it has significantly more than a 5% or 50% margin.

What BTW is "poetic license?"

[laurence haughton]

sorry it was early. That should read sweeping "characterization."

And I am also sorry if I sounded like I wasn't cutting any slack. I understand the value of exaggeration to make a point.

Finally I think you are spot on with your thoughts on blogs. You said it well.

[Colin Kingsbury]

My American Heritage Dictionary defines poetic license as "The liberty taken by an artist or a writer in deviating from conventional form or fact to achieve a desired effect." It's like saying "this is the best steak I've ever had."

I don't think it's a sweeping generalization to say that a large proportion of businesspeople get excited about high-margin businesses. My example isn't that far off from reality with the iPod, which costs perhaps $5 more per unit to build but sells for $50-$100 more than its competitors, in large part because of the iTunes lock-in.

[Colin Kingsbury]

How's that for us posting at the same second :)