There goes the A-list
Half of my secondary blogroll, the rather mass compatible ones that I don't feel like emphasizing because everyone else does - Pharyngula, WorldMunger, Cognitive Daily and Uncertain Principles for instance - moved to scienceblogs.com, run by Seed magazine. Welcome to the sell out of the blogs.
I do understand why the individual bloggers went, given ease of hosting, professional help with web design and a broader platform of readers. On the other hand, the bloggers are now dragging Seed's shopping cart and there are not even statements about dependence on the farewell pages of the old blogs, e.g. Pharyngula or Uncertain Principles.
After all, Seed needs to make money and while they would not interfere with the content of the hosted blogs directly, let's wait until Seed publishes a somewhat fishy article that bloggers react to - And let's count how many links from scienceblogs go to the Seed news ticker in a few weeks. I found Seed rather shallow so far but I should give them some more time, they just started after all. Oddly enough, there are links from scienceblogs.com to Seedmagazine.com but no links pointing back.
This is a concentration of opinion and certainly a clever move for the magazine but bad for the overall independence of blogs. I would have preferred if the blogs would have introduced Adsense or the like on their pages to stay independent and spend the revenues on wine, hosting and song. You too can submit an application to Seed to have your blog hosted there - but whack some advertising to your pages, write a witty post about and keep your independence if you ask me.
Content armageddon - when the commercial forces finally battle the defenders of intellectual independence and creativity - is not due before web4.0 later this year. Scienceblogs is not a bad case of it either, just one that shows that bloggers are as likely to go the path of least resistance as everyone else. How dependent bloggers make themselves when joining these networks?
I do understand why the individual bloggers went, given ease of hosting, professional help with web design and a broader platform of readers. On the other hand, the bloggers are now dragging Seed's shopping cart and there are not even statements about dependence on the farewell pages of the old blogs, e.g. Pharyngula or Uncertain Principles.
After all, Seed needs to make money and while they would not interfere with the content of the hosted blogs directly, let's wait until Seed publishes a somewhat fishy article that bloggers react to - And let's count how many links from scienceblogs go to the Seed news ticker in a few weeks. I found Seed rather shallow so far but I should give them some more time, they just started after all. Oddly enough, there are links from scienceblogs.com to Seedmagazine.com but no links pointing back.
This is a concentration of opinion and certainly a clever move for the magazine but bad for the overall independence of blogs. I would have preferred if the blogs would have introduced Adsense or the like on their pages to stay independent and spend the revenues on wine, hosting and song. You too can submit an application to Seed to have your blog hosted there - but whack some advertising to your pages, write a witty post about and keep your independence if you ask me.
Content armageddon - when the commercial forces finally battle the defenders of intellectual independence and creativity - is not due before web4.0 later this year. Scienceblogs is not a bad case of it either, just one that shows that bloggers are as likely to go the path of least resistance as everyone else. How dependent bloggers make themselves when joining these networks?
spitshine - 2006-01-16 18:02
Any actual science in there?
Sorry, make that...
Science and culture