Why blog publishing in the UK has “failed”
11 months ago I asked where are all the good UK blogs? Now, almost a year later Ashley Norris the former founder of UK blog network Shiny Media wrote a piece on TechCrunch on why he thinks blog publishing in the UK has failed.
As someone who has been blogging for over 3 years now and has recently entered the content business I found it a fascinating read. I have to say that I agree (as I did a year ago) that we don’t have many huge high profile UK blogs like they do in the USA for example. However I don’t agree that the BBC is to blame, after all competition is healthy. If you read the comments you’ll see a bit of a fight going on and some rather heated discussion - and accusations.
What I’m listening to right now: Prince - “Hide The Bone”
Saturday, August 16th, 2008 at 12:23 am and is filed under Blogging. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
Welcome to my blog. My name is Kieron Donoghue and I run UK Offer Media Ltd. I thought it would be fun to post a daily (well hopefully daily) blog, writing about my experiences in Internet Marketing and more specifically Affiliate Marketing. I'll include some personal stuff too, probably about my other passions, music and cars. Please feel free to post your comments and thoughts too.
The Techcrunch link makes great reading. It certainly evoked a lot of feeling amongst the blogging community. Somewhere around the 50th comment somebody had just replied “Fight fight fight” which summed it up pretty well I thought.
A lot of people blamed the failure of blogs aimed at UK readers because the market or “number of eyeballs” is inherently smaller. I cant see this myself and as the global and US blog markets get saturated I expect smaller localised markets (eg the UK) will start to get targetted more by the big players. A bit like Tesco’s sprawl of local convenient stores in the last 5 years.
By the way Kieron, I remember one of your inspirational posts about Wordpress blogs back in Jan. I was wondering what became of your cousin’s Beautyglam site as it seemed to only last a few weeks after your post. My wife started a UK fashion blog a few months ago and it is definitely worth persevering because rewards do come for those who are patient(even in the UK !)
I think this depends on what you mean by “failed.” OK there may be fewer big-brand bloggers earning a high profile living at it but frankly I don’t think this represents a failure.
Most of the blogs I read that aren’t about my work - blogs I read for pleasure - in fact, I take that back, ALL the blogs I read for pleasure are one or two-person outfits and they are not there simply to make a fast buck for the blogger.
I’d rather read one person’s hard work and opinion than a blog like Mashable that just regurgitates press releases.
Just because blogging in the UK is more grassroots - you could argue that it’s more true to the original idea of the web log - does not mean that blogging in the UK is a failure. It just means online efforts at moneymaking are coming in other sectors.
was a great slanging match in comments, i love these little fights that occasionally erupt. not hugely professional of the participants but fun as a spectator.