As the number of blogs has flourished, a curious development has been the lack of sizzle in the blog search market.
You would figure that blog search would be a hot market given how many blogs are being created and how finding good blog content is becoming increasingly difficult. Yet, the market continues to stumble along with the same cast of characters (Technorati, Google, Sphere, et al) doing their thing. I mean, things are so dull that even acquisition-hungry Google hasn’t made an acquisition.
So, it’s surprising and refreshing to see Blogdigger acquired by SonicMountain, which owns the podcasting network, Odeo. Blogdigger’s Greg Gershman is a classic entrepreneur who has been battling away for five years trying to enhance and expand Blogdigger so congrats to him for his perseverance and ability to attract a buyer.
While this deal is unlikely to shake up the blog search market, it will hopefully give it some much-needed attention. I still believe there’s a lot of potential for someone to capture the imagination of blog readers and bloggers with a search engine that simply performs well. For all of Google’s search prowess, its blog search engine is nothing to write home about, Technorati has definitely lost any mojo it once had despite a management change, while the other players lack sizzle and
For entrepreneurs exploring the idea of starting a blog search engine, the challenge will be convincing investors that it’s an opportunity with lots of potential. That said, there seems to money available for blog networks (or, at least, there are blog networks looking for money) so perhaps there will also be an appetite for blog search start-ups as well.
Technorati Tags: Blogs, Google , M&A, Blogdigger
One Comment
Mark, thanks for the mention. I agree, it would be nice to see some shakeup in the blog search market. I gave a presentation recently that outlined the history of blog search and how the startups reacted to Google entering the space; it’s been interesting to see how this has affected various sites and how they have adapted.
Included in this discussion, however, should be other non-search approaches to blog content. Sites like Techmeme and MyBlogLog should be considered when looking at business models based on blogs as well.
Hope to be able to make it to mesh this year, it’d be nice to meet face-to-face!