24 blogs - Reams of “tripe, tragic” content and tons of usage?
This is a response to *cheeky* tweets made by Slojo and Rafiq stirring the pot asking why I am not using 24.com blogs to write my personal blog - which is a very good question. And to Mandy de Waal who said in a comment on my blog about 24.com blogs- “But the blogging content is by and large tragic. You have to wade through reams and reams of tripe, cut & paste etc to get to good writers. If there was a better content filtering system that would separate the wheat from the chaff (like M&G have done with Thought Leader / Amagama) that would be great.”
So here is my response: >> Warning - it is long but worth a read.
I believe that there is a major success story going on with 24.com Blogs and I will try and give some of the highlights and reasoning here: ( you will need to suspend all your Wordpress and tech elitism and have an open mind as you read on)
As a starting point on a cursory level blogging is about self-publishing - and blogs offer the tools to do just that.
But blogging is about more than that. Community is an important aspect and “community of interest” even more so. At 24.com we have built a great community.
You need to understand that the blogging community of SA AKA -the Bloggerati - which is tiny in size is a very specific segment of people - tech-savvy, interested in a certain type of content which is generally web focussed and are in itself a community of interest.
Some people are interested in slice-of- life, “my cat does not like her pellets” type of conversation. People find common ground and interest and so the 24.com bloggers are an intirely a different community. In fact it is a number of communities because we have created niches such as http://womenblogs.24.com, http://foodblogs.24.com, http://sportblogs.24.com and many more. So everyday Joe-soaps get to share their views on these topics.
They are the so-called “Mass-market”, while most WP users are not. 24.com focusses on mass market because that is hopefully where the numbers and money eventually will be. Our community is very active indeed with 1350 active bloggers generating 101 000 comments in May 2008- so 75 comments on average per blogger. There are a nucleus of people who participate more than that as our core users. 92 000 unique readers consumed this “trite” content and generated over 1 million page impressions of advertising inventory which we have monetised very nicely with Perdeberg Wines - our current partner in blogs.
If you cite Thoughtleader then I am sorry to say that even though they do not freely release their stats I doubt very much that Thoughtleader has anything close to 92 000 readers?
Mandy, I have to be direct and say that your opinion is quite elitist- and typical of print journalists who think the “unwashed masses” are not worthy of an opinion. I don’t mean to attack you but you did make some superficial comments about one of my “babies”. People in the mass market have proved time and time again that they love the frivolous. Same reason more people read tabloids over publications like the MG.
PLUS as a web-adopter I am surprised at your opinions. Web2.0’s ethos is about sharing and the democracy of the web - every man has a voice and all those good things. The more voices the merrier in the conversation.
Basic principles of Business and entrepreneurship is not about elitism - but about finding and building a market.
In fact some of the content is very good, here are a few bios on some of our top bloggers: (These exerts are courtesy of Alistair Fairweather, our “blog-father”, killer product manager and my right hand).
An always topical and lively blogger with a real sense of humour and style. She’s coming up for two years on the platform, and is still as spunky as ever. She reads and comments a lot, and this attracts both readers and fans.
She’s a bit of an obsessive who’s been around since the year dot, but is also a quite a good writer. Her real strength is that she reads EVERYONE’s blogs – quite literally. She also holds fun impromptu competitions, like “caption this image” and such.
Very much a personal journal, MP3’s blog catalogue’s everything in the world that irritates or amuses him on a daily basis. Not afraid to voice his opinion, MP3 is foul mouthed at times, and normally also quite funny. He frequently helps out other bloggers with tech issues and is actually a very nice guy under the thorny exterior.
Another real live wire – DT shares everything online (and I mean everything) – including her recently discovered pregnancy. She’s candid, witty and more than a little naughty but with a real social agenda. She runs a drug testing business and is vehemently anti-narcotics. She is another social butterfly – commenting on dozens of blogs a day.
One of our many animal lovers, she’s another comment queen, with an eye on hundreds of blogs. She and a couple of other bloggers spontaneously started the KlubKittyKat to home abandoned cats. She’s quite a fun writer, and spends most of her time “responding” via posts rather than making points. Hers is a very “interactive” blog.
“Our blogs are much more about communication and response than pure “publishing”. The comments are often more important than the post – since it’s the way that the
So our blogs aren’t as much about good content as they are about good conversations. They are more about
One of the things I am most proud of that is that we manage our bloggers and communicates with them on a daily basis about new developments and their problems. We are very close to the pulse of the personalities in our community and it’s agreat case study in community management. The difference is that we do not write public blog posts proclaiming it. So these gems are little known.
Proof in the numbers:
Arthur Goldstuck released his independent study into the Blogosphere in Jan 2008 (Blogging as a fad is over; serious blogging arrives).
In that he talked about 3 789 active SA blogs in December 2007. We had over 14oo in April 2008 - which means that roughly I would estimate at least 1/3 of the total active SA blogosphere. Not to shabby for a ‘crappy’ platform with “tragic” content?
Why do I use WP and not 24.com blogs?
For the reasons I have mentioned 24.com blogs is a community who would not be interested in the content I while post on my professional blog which is industry specific. The community I would like to access and participate with are in the WP ecosystem whereas 24.com blogs are essentially a walled off community. I do in fact have a personal blog on 24 where I can post pictures of my slice of life stuff. >> http://blogs.24.com/entropy
YES - we are aware that 24 blogs are “crappy” tech stacked up against a Wordpress ecosystem with all the amazing plugins and features that the open source community offers but consider this:
- We peaked too soon, - when we launched 24.com WP was not on the map in these parts
- Our Tech management insisted that the business only use .Net - which we have managed to put pressure on them and change this, this year.
- We have a serious integration strategy (something Yahoo have failed to do so far) that is still underway - which means that all our platforms need to talk to one another around authentication and profiling. Using WP would be a quick solution but to integrate into our other products according to the strategy we are building out - in effect a technical nightmare.
- We own the platform - which seemed important at the time.
- We have a deeper community product planned. Mybloglog is a hack to provide community which you do not own and Buddypress was not an option even though we are waiting to see where that goes.
So there is a method to the madness. Comments made about our platform seem to imply that we are ignorant and we do not know what we are doing. Working in a corporate with a multitude of constraints does often force the business in certain directions. But there is always a good reason.
Also WP is perfect for self-branding and personalisation as well as hot plugins. There is no denying that. If we did it again I would have looked at WP and an Open source system. But - that’s life.
While you mentioned Thoughtleader:
Full Credit and fair play to Matt and Vin at the MG - but I am sorry to say that Thoughtleader is a columnist/opinion product. Yes - it cleverly uses blogging technology as a CMS to provide better functionality, dynamism and community interaction. It is sexy I admit, but do not regard it as a web2.0 landmark. So it is a great use of technology and positioning - but essentially comparing Thoughtleader to 24.com blogs is like comparing the 8′0clock News with a soap opera.
Blogs are not a homogenous concept. Just like Rugby and cricket are different sports. Many people out there also mistakenly regard Social Networking as a homogeneous concept (which I will write about another time).
They are different sports. The only commonality is the one buzzword - blog.
Check out this cool thing our bloggers are doing. They organised on their own accord a 24.com initiative called 24.com Cares which will involve a family day planned by them. That’s what the web is about. Self-organising.
It’s so cool I do not even mind that they have butchered our brand : )
That’s it for now but I have much more to say on this and related topics.
Rafiq, Mandy - hope that addresses your questions?
Peace.
Elan Lohmann was Publisher of News24, moved on to social media @24 and ran Sunday Times online in another life. He has been a leading online professional for almost a decade. 
June 12th, 2008 at 9:22 pm
Good post Elan.
I think there’s also some potential to leverage the relatively closed community of 24.com blogs to draw attention to other sites…if done in the right way of course(ie non-spammy)
Closed communities generally have members who are more invested and that’s a trade-off against the individuals who will forego participating in the conversation because they can’t be arsed to sign-up.
June 12th, 2008 at 10:31 pm
Hi Elan. Tks for your piece, just to correct some inaccuracies around your comments about the Mail & Guardian Online blog sites:
We do publish thought Leader reader stats. In fact they appear on the OPA reports you receive. In May we recorded 70 000 readers, quite close to 24.com blog 92 000 figure, and not bad for a 8 month old site. This is only for Thought Leader and does not take into account Tech Leader and Sports Leader.
You can’t really compare Thought Leader to 24 blogs or blogger.com as the model is vastly different. Thought Leader is by invitation-only and tightly edited and moderated. The content is generated from only 150 or so contributors as there is an emphasis on quality.
You could compare 24.com blogs to amagama. Out of interest, we are not particularly enamoured with amagama.com’s performance… and will revisit it one day.
Cheers
Matt
June 13th, 2008 at 3:31 am
@ Matt - Yes I agree with you 100% - my whole point is that you cannot compare Thought Leader and 24 blogs - It was Mandy who did this and I was trying to illustrate why not - so we are on the same page. I think you guys are doing great things with the “Leader brand”. Apologies about the stats issue. I was thinking about Amatomu stats not being published - or are those published these days? Have not spent too much time in Nielsen lately. Enjoy the weekend bud.
June 13th, 2008 at 3:38 am
Nice post Elan. I think you’re 100% on the mark, and it’s good to see you standing by your products.
June 13th, 2008 at 4:08 am
yo elan… amatomu stats also published, but much smaller than Thought Leader… amatomu is around 8,000 or so uniques… its an aggregator so cant compare to either TL or amagama…
cheers Matt
June 13th, 2008 at 4:10 am
I think the fact that you use Word Press is very telling. Similar to Steve Jobs trying to justify why he uses Nokia as opposed to iPhone. I think as an evangelist and brand champion there’s a huge problem when you are unable to consumer or use your own product or technology. No matter how hard you try to justify it you always land up with egg on your face. And let’s face it the justification tends to start looking defensive.
Then you pulled out a couple of bloggers to illustrate your content. I had a look at the blogs. Madmom is doing some interesting stuff, I wouldn’t rate the rest. This is not elitist, just that as a journalist and writer I prefer to consume good writing, or writing that is intelligent or contributes some way to my consciousness. I prefer a quality read.
Then you failed to say what percentage of blogs those you elected represent. You selected four ‘reasonable’ blogs out of a thousand or a couple of thousand or a couple of hundred thousand? How many blogs are there on your system? Your selection would make 0.01% or is that 0.001%? Your argument makes the case for quantity and not quality. My view is that quantity is never a good game to play in the blogging sphere. It chews up bandwidth and resources. How do you monetize quantity rather than quality? What is your profitability on your blogs? Have you been able to monetize it or is it just sucking resource and is it subsidized by other parts of the business?
24.com has excellent writers. (Chris Roper is one and he does use the 24.com blogging system) 24.com also has amazing technology but misses the boat by focusing on quantity over quality. There probably are a number of well written and worthwhile blogs at 24.com but because of the massive number of blogs how do you find them? Your landing page is easily manipulated (numbers of comments and page views) and therefore again the drive for quantity misses quality reads.
You do have a filtering system (http://womenblogs.24.com, http://foodblogs.24.com, http://sportblogs.24.com), but it filters according to genre and not according to quality. And the editorial function is largely community subjective and doesn’t do the job that needs to be done to seek out quality. Editors are there to find and nurture quality, but in my view this isn’t happening at blogs.24.com. If you look at the original point I made it was to say that better editorial selection or content filtering would be a strategic plus for 24.com.
Your strategy currently drives quantity, and there in lies the rub. I am by no means an elitist but my preference in content will always be for quality over quantity.
June 13th, 2008 at 5:15 am
@ Mandy - You are entitled to your opinion but I remain steadfast that we are achieving our strategic objectives with our blog platform. There is a bigger picture on this end and I am confident that most people who read my post will get my/the point. Enjoy your weekend.
@ Matt - thanks - I really must pay more attention in Nielsen : )
June 13th, 2008 at 5:56 am
I would be interested to know what your strategic objectives are and how you are reaching them. Then my point related to the content filtering and editorial function at blogs.24.com, and needs to be seen in that context. I am in agreeance with you that 24.com has hugely championed the new media industry and the adoption of new media in South Africa.
June 13th, 2008 at 6:07 am
Cool Mandy - let’s chat over a coffee when I am next in JHB. We are launching a key component of this strategy on July 13 (which is also my Bday!) - and then I can illustrate more clearly where we are going.
June 13th, 2008 at 6:14 am
That would be great Elan. Looking forward.
June 13th, 2008 at 8:48 am
Mandy: “How do you monetize quantity rather than quality?”
@mandy - have you heard of sites called “Facebook”, “MySpace”, etc.? Trust me: it’s much easier to monetize quantity than quality ;o)
June 13th, 2008 at 11:38 am
@Ernst : Don’t mistake valuation for profitability or the ability to monetize a service. Facebook was recently valued at $15 billion (driven sky high by Microsoft’s interest) but it has yet to find a way to be profitable. Monetizing social networks is not at all easy as attested to by this economist article:
http://www.economist.com/business/displaystory.cfm?story_id=10880936&CFID=9313751&CFTOKEN=18068727
June 14th, 2008 at 8:51 pm
@Mandy: It’s a fact (unfortunately!) that people are NOT necessarily interested in quality… the gazillions of British tabloid sales is but one proof of that.
I’ve been involved in quite a few communities (both on- and off line) in my life, and those always either take on a life of their own, or die out eventually. The ones that become alive are those without moderation, where users decide what content gets published and rated. Content might become of bad quality in your- and my eyes, but the community is alive and kicking.
Moderated/controlled communities, in my humble experience, just don’t stay ‘alive’.
June 16th, 2008 at 8:30 am
Quantity does not mean automatic revenue, and quantity is not easy to monetize: MySpace has 118 million worldwide users but are still having problems trying to monetize. That is what there site redesign is all about.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/16/business/media/16myspace.html?_r=1&ref=technology&oref=slogin
Quality on the other hand, is much less of a problem. And by quality I mean quality of content in terms of writing, but more so intelligence or street smarts in terms of understanding target audience needs, readership and the like. 24.com have got this partly right by creating niches or segments of interest with their women’s, sport’s, literary and other communities. If they could marry this with influence or quality content I believe they would have a better advertising proposition. A good case in point is Tertia, a local blogger who understands her community, what they want and how to deliver to here community. http://www.tertia.org/ This has enabled her to easily build a credible audience and monetize her blog.
I believe in the social networking and blogging space advertisers will want to associate their brands with communities of influence and interest, rather than amorphous masses of mediocrity.
24.com despite being around for a couple of years have yet to produce that level of blogging. The likes of Tertia or Mushy Peas or other bloggers of influence. (However the new community segmentation may well achieve this. The creation of quality bloggers who become recognised authorities in their field - whatever that is.)
And your point about tabloid journalism illustrating that people don’t appreciate quality is not quite logical. Tabloid journalism speaks to segmenting and the case for celebrity, but this doesn’t mean that tabloids aren’t quality reads for the reader segment they cater to. Tabloids keenly understand their market and give them exactly what they want. That’s text book marketing - product - consumer quality is all about.
Lastly I think Thought Leader, Tech Leader and Sports Leader undermines your point regarding moderated communities, as would other communities built on a celebrity, authority or opinion leader type model.
But then it’s difficult to speak in absolutes regarding the internet because there’s often an exception that disproves the rule.
That said I still strongly believe in the case for quality as the huge success of the likes of Gizmodo, Huffington Post, TechCrunch, Dooce, Scobleizer, BoingBoing confirm.