There goes the neighborhood:

February 13, 2003 2:02 PM

AOL to offer blogging services. Ninety-nine per cent of bloggers won't make money," says Copeland."But when we've got 10 million bloggers a couple years from now, I'm confident that 100,000 of them will be uniquely valuable to advertisers."
posted by sixdifferentways (30 comments total)

It has to be said: ROTFLMAO.
posted by davidmsc at 2:08 PM on February 13, 2003

what a horrible thing.
posted by cachilders at 2:11 PM on February 13, 2003

Keyword: metafilter.
posted by Tacodog at 2:12 PM on February 13, 2003

the beginning of the end....
posted by Steve_at_Linnwood at 2:14 PM on February 13, 2003

(This article was also published in the Guardian (on Jan. 30) and discussed (briefly) on Blogroots.)
posted by mattpfeff at 2:32 PM on February 13, 2003

Me too

Posted by [e-mail] | Wednesday, March 17, 2004 | Link | Comments
posted by RylandDotNet at 2:57 PM on February 13, 2003

I find the instant negativity unfortunate. I welcome new AOL bloggers, however many, and if their pages have ads so be it.

Frankly, I was polling friends and family to see if they had any contacts that hep me get a job in this effort. Any Mefites who can/will help?
posted by billsaysthis at 2:59 PM on February 13, 2003

Uh - yeah, billsaythis -- I wasn't trying to be negative about the soon-to-be-bloggers...my semi-derision was directed at the AOL staffers who seem to think that blogging = money. More power to AOL if it generates revenue, but I don't think it will be quite the success, dollar-wise, that they anticipate/hope.
posted by davidmsc at 3:08 PM on February 13, 2003

AOL = pure evil. There is no debate to be had.
posted by Orange Goblin at 3:14 PM on February 13, 2003

I'd suggest reading the linked article. Only a few paragraphs have anything to do with the AOL angle. The meat of the article is about weblogs that are making money, and services geared towards that. Old stuff for many here, but they bring it together nicely.

I don't think I'd heard of Blogads before. That looks interesting.
posted by y6y6y6 at 3:15 PM on February 13, 2003

There goes the neighbourhood.
posted by IshmaelGraves at 3:23 PM on February 13, 2003

Hey Billsaysthis. I'll be negative without fear. 10 million AOL users with blogs? Are you kidding me? If they had anything to say they would be saying it elsewhere already. These blogs will be just like home pages used to be. They will have fun setting it up, add lots of stupid pictures and garish colors, post a few links to popular entertainers, and lose interest in a month or less. Does anyone seriously think otherwise?
posted by monkeyman at 3:29 PM on February 13, 2003

Yes, somewhere there's a little fat girl in Ohio who is going to be the new Instapundit and make a beautiful blog with her father's AOL account.

Fer sure.
posted by jeremias at 4:02 PM on February 13, 2003

Too little, too late for those poor bastards at AOLTW, I'm afraid: they should have jumped on this a long time ago, the way that Globo did down here in Brazil, and Salon back home in gringolandia.

I agree, though: the more bloggers the merrier, despite their being chained up in AOL's gated community and bombarded with pop-up advertising. If AOL does it right, they'll offer really a really kick-ass blogging tool, with useful social networking features. But somehow, I doubt they will.
posted by hairyeyeball at 4:13 PM on February 13, 2003

These new blogs should make excellent ALOD submissions.

Thanks AOL!
posted by shepd at 4:14 PM on February 13, 2003

I heard AOL is going to give web access and email accounts to their users, too. Now email is going to be ruined!
posted by anildash at 4:36 PM on February 13, 2003

The internet is gonna really suck when all those AOLers come online. Oh wait, it got better.
posted by owillis at 4:39 PM on February 13, 2003

Blogs for masses! Well, I guess it might make all of us a little less stuck up; that's a good thing.
posted by Bag Man at 4:41 PM on February 13, 2003

owillis, there are those of us who disagree with your suggestion that the internet is better now than before AOL offered TCP/IP... Like me. :-)
posted by shepd at 4:57 PM on February 13, 2003

Jack and Rose, together at last...
posted by Opus Dark at 5:09 PM on February 13, 2003

I think I'd rather read the fat girl's blog, Jeremias. In any case, I think it just indicates that blogs are no longer the exception in personal publishing online - they are now the rule. While this may decrease the signal to noise ratio, it does reveal that the weblog format has proved itself to be a useful, practical means of publishing - a much better format than Geocities pages put together in Netscape Composer (with lots of rainbow-coloured divider bars), as was the previous standard personal publishing paradigm.
posted by Jimbob at 5:54 PM on February 13, 2003

this space for rent.
posted by Peter H at 5:56 PM on February 13, 2003

So, if blogging is no longer an exclusive realm, what is the Next Big Web Thing?
posted by tommasz at 6:24 PM on February 13, 2003

I think we're going to cycle back to web pages about our pets and static cameras of Coffee Pots and fish tanks.
posted by Stan Chin at 6:32 PM on February 13, 2003

what i love is how aol invents these things. anyone with aol can have a blog via a variety of places like blogger/blogspot type places.

aol's real problem is to grow its business and userbase [or stop the people from leaving]. not sure if the blog service will do the trick.

i predicted in 1995 that AOL would go out of business. it's taking a lot longer than i thought, but dammit it will happen.
posted by birdherder at 6:52 PM on February 13, 2003

Now there'll be even more stuff not to read.
posted by hama7 at 7:00 PM on February 13, 2003

10 million AOL users with blogs? Are you kidding me? If they had anything to say they would be saying it elsewhere already. These blogs will be just like home pages used to be. They will have fun setting it up, add lots of stupid pictures and garish colors, post a few links to popular entertainers, and lose interest in a month or less. Does anyone seriously think otherwise?

You got it right on, monkey my man.
posted by lazaruslong at 9:43 PM on February 13, 2003

I noticed he didn't explain exactly how weblogs would be "valuable to advertisers."
posted by sixdifferentways at 2:25 AM on February 14, 2003

(that annoying AOL voice) "you've got comments!"
posted by Peter H at 12:33 PM on February 14, 2003

"you've got trackback"
posted by Peter H at 12:35 PM on February 14, 2003