the reports of feed and suck joining forces is all over the place, but i’m going to blog ’em anyway, so i can capture them in the glorified annotated bookmark bin [and who says there is no place for self-referential linking].
anyway, zdnet has a nice overview that the new parent of the two online pubs, automatic media, is going to focus on building communities, instead on generating content:
“All of the sites owned by Automatic Media will share a common advertising sales force, technology and administrative resources, a move that should cut costs and increase the efficiency of individual sites. The Webzines will maintain their distinctive brand names and editorial voices, though they plan to weave hyperlinks to each other throughout their respective sites.”
“Automatic Media doesn’t expect most of its growth to come from
hiring teams of high-paid journalists and writers to expand editorial operations. Instead, the
company plans to place a growing emphasis on user participation in discussions about the stories
and columns on Feed, Suck and other editorial sites. That approach, aimed at attracting
advertisers as the user base grows, has the double advantage of being highly interactive and
relatively cheap.”
dave contributes his 2 cents and homes in on this important point:
“The Web is not a mirror of the print industry, that’s why advertising is not so important. The unique thing about the Web is that it’s interactive. We all know that. The challenge is to squeeze quality, high-integrity writing out of the readers, and present it back to them with your seal of quality. That’s a much employing writers and running ads as the print industry does.
I was disappointed to see that Automatic Media is using SlashDot-style conferencing for the Suck-Feed
combination. I strongly believe this is the wrong approach. Better to start new Sucks and Feeds using the traditions of sarcasm and literacy that each of these pubs have done such a great job of starting.”