Aside from being optimistic about The Tribe’s chances against The Evil Empire, I’ve been thinking a lot about where blogs are headed. Being a blogger, that only makes sense, right?
Consider the following:
- 24/7 Wall Street’s “TechCrunch And Huffington: Who Will Buy the Big Blogs?“
- Industry blogger Jim Stroud’s near-miss sell.
- Oldie, but goodie, Jobster buys Recruiting.com (which used to be a blog).
From the 24/7 post:
The largest blogs will get offers. Too many big media companies need additional outlets and content on the web. The problem for the potential buyers is keeping the talent at the blog sites. Most rely on just one or two big names. But, that is not unlike the issue that TheStreet (TSCM) has with Cramer. He is the franchise. They have to give him incentives to stay.
The post talks a lot about growing traffic as a big reason so many blogs are appealing to big media properties, which got me thinking about the employment space: Are popular employment-related blogs becoming more appealing to bigger players?
If you’re a little bored, take a gander at Onrec’s US media kit. (Remember Onrec was acquired not too long ago as well.) In it, the pitch is focused on their Alexa traffic vs. the competition. Now, with their logic, let’s take a blog near-and-dear to my own heart, Cheezhead, and stack it up against who Onrec sees as its other major competition, ERE, HR.com and Workforce:
If this is to be believed, Cheezhead (in black) has more traffic than all of them. Now, if you think Alexa is crap – and I agree – then what does Compete.com say?
This scenario, in which Onrec ranks last, seems more realistic. Granted, such data doesn’t track things like e-mail marketing, membership, RSS feed sign-ups, etc., but you get the idea that some blogs shouldn’t be ignored. And from my own site metrics, I can tell you the numbers via Compete are very close to being correct. Plus, Compete tends to garner a lot more respect when compared to its, um, competition.
Now, this post isn’t meant to shine a light on my own blog. The point is this: Blogs are growing up and buyers are waking up. If the pundits are right, the biggest blogs are going to start being bought-up by even bigger media properties. As macro becomes micro, industry-specific blogs will be next. Niche blogs which aren’t acquired may become competition.
The interesting thing about our space, however, is it won’t just be the media sites who shop around. What job sites can benefit from acquiring popular blogs, for example? Or will they shy away believing Jobster’s move to buy Recruiting.com was a failure? More importantly, will an acquiring organization retain the personality behind the brand? Popular opinion says Recruiting.com has never been the same since its former leader, Jason Davis, left.
And in that same vein, let’s ask What’s next? Social networks perhaps? That same Jason Davis is growing RecruitingBlogs.com at a healthy pace. Anyone thinking he doesn’t have a “Sell By” date in mind for his blood, sweat and tears is not paying attention to history.
By the time he reaches a few thousand members, the offers will come. And a savvy buyer will lock-down Davis for longer than 1 year. That’s good business, considering many members of the site joined because of “J.D.” in the first place and won’t see a penny from an acquisition.
Popularity: 3% [?]
October 4th, 2007 at 3:56 pm
Good talk just now Joel. As I’ve been saying for a while on my blog, and just demonstrated to you with ERE’s actual server statistics privately, both Compete and Alexa are WAY off.
I do agree with your larger point though – blogs have arrived. More accurately, SOME blogs have arrived. The vast majority of them will never be consistently interesting enough to attract a large enough following to really be attractive acquisition candidates.
October 4th, 2007 at 10:40 pm
You will come to a place where the streets are not marked.
Some windows are lighted. But mostly they’re darked.
A place you could sprain both you elbow and chin!
Do you dare to stay out? Do you dare to go in?
How much can you lose? How much can you win?
October 5th, 2007 at 10:23 am
I agree that Blogs create value that can be measured through the traffic they drive to their site. And, in many instances, but not all, there is a credible voice providing valuable info – like Cheezhead. Why do people read blogs and gravitate towards one over another? Because they feel a relationship with the blogger! Take this corporate and the experience, trust and value will be diluted. As you mention with Jason’s Recruiting.com – its never been the same. There will certainly be buyouts and successes but, as example, Cheezhead would not be Cheezhead without the head Cheez! Sure, companies can drive traffic – but will it be the same – definitely not! Where will the original voice go? My guess – after a long Carribbean vacation….off to the next new, new thing and the cycle will be anew!
October 5th, 2007 at 10:29 am
Am shocked to see Compete.com data being presented as anything like reality. It’s no more reliable than Alexa, perhaps less so. Our own site has ~200,000 unique visitors a month and Compete has just estimated us at less than 5,000!! I’d therefore be careful about drawing any conclusions about the respective readerships of sites from either service…
Great work asides from this though, been an avid reader now for a good year or more. Tony
October 5th, 2007 at 1:11 pm
Thanks, Tony … if you know of anything better that’s publicly available, please let us know.
October 8th, 2007 at 8:37 am
Joel – unfortunately both Alexa and Hitwise are similarly flawed. They are useful tools if used with caution, but very often their input data can be a bigger contributor to the differences you see in the charts than any actual differences between the sites.
Take ourselves and e-consultancy.com; a year ago we shared our respective UV data as we were really surprised these services were reporting e-consultancy to be considerably bigger than ourselves. Sharing UV data proved to us both that this wasn’t the case.
Their traffic is predominantly independent consultants, contractors and people working in small businesses – all of whom use ISPs who are potential contributors to services like Hitwise. Our own visitors are almost entirely from corporate domains (Accenture, IBM, etc) and so this data is not shared with the types of organisations that produce these comparison stats. They’re also unlikely to be allowed to have the Alexa toolbar installed. Hence the fact that we have a readership reach into these types of organisations counts against us with these comparison sites – even though from a recruitment advertising perspective it’s a positive thing that we have this reach.
So my original comment – and this one too – is just to warn advertisers against reading too much into these types of comparison services. You could end up allocating your $$s to sites that don’t have anything like the traffic reach that you thought…
Tony