Comments on: Weblogs, Inc, Sold

By: Steve

Steve — Sun, 09 Oct 2005 16:31:33 +0000

I’ve just started (at the same time by co-incidence) a tech blog network based on the weblogsinc model. http://grepblogs.com/about/

me: steve.osdir.com
-Steve

By: Jon

Jon — Sat, 08 Oct 2005 03:42:31 +0000

I don’t know enough about the whole blog networking thing to have a deep insight, I just like the fact that it legitimizes the whole thing even more.

By: Anthony

Anthony — Fri, 07 Oct 2005 23:09:23 +0000

Fair enough that makes sense.

By: John (SYNTAGMA)

John (SYNTAGMA) — Fri, 07 Oct 2005 15:22:01 +0000

Depends on the blogger, Scrivs. Look at Chris Anderson at The Long Tail. He’s blogging a book. If you don’t own the content you tend to produce snippets. If you do, you may want to make it into something else, or at least the outline of something else.

By: Scrivs

Scrivs — Fri, 07 Oct 2005 03:38:30 +0000

I wouldn’t consider “offline rights” a big deal, especially when adding all those posts up still wouldn’t make a decent chapter in any book. It’s more like AOL has no use for that stuff other than online.

By: Jeremy Wright

Jeremy Wright — Fri, 07 Oct 2005 00:57:08 +0000

Anthony, my fear is that whenever anyone at WIN talks, it could be seen as coming from an “AOL perspective” (like when companies get bought by Microsoft) then from WIN themselves, or the individuals as bloggers.

By: Anthony

Anthony — Fri, 07 Oct 2005 00:31:47 +0000

Jeremy, can you explain what the difference is between bloggers and AOL blog employees?

By: Jeremy Wright

Jeremy Wright — Thu, 06 Oct 2005 16:55:15 +0000

John, Darren and I talked about that point immediately after he wrote it. It’s a solid one, and one we’re likely to incorporate in some way

By: John (SYNTAGMA)

John (SYNTAGMA) — Thu, 06 Oct 2005 16:52:42 +0000

Yes, but look at the contract, Jeremy. Problogger and Blogebrity have got bullet-point versions of it. The item that catches my eye is : “Bloggers will have ownership of their content offline”. This is real sanity as it means they can use the subsidiary rights to publish books etc which will bring added prestige to the network. But it won’t detract from the network’s right to retain the content online and receive the income in perpetuity. It’s a win-win situation.

I believe b5 would benefit from this. If the bloggers retained copyright, and granted b5 the World Website Rights, the network would have all it needed, and bloggers would not be selling their souls needlessly. Big name writers wouldn’t be put off joining the network because of restrictive practices on the subsidiary rights.

Maybe AOL has something to teach us here.