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.

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’.

http://www.economist.com/business/displaystory.cfm?story_id=10880936&CFID=9313751&CFTOKEN=18068727

@mandy - have you heard of sites called “Facebook”, “MySpace”, etc.? Trust me: it’s much easier to monetize quantity than quality ;o)

@ Matt - thanks - I really must pay more attention in Nielsen : )

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.