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Time for the Blog Portal?
By Mark Evans | March 25, 2008
If you’re a fan of any of the major high-tech blogs such as TechCrunch, ReadWriteWeb, GigaOm and Mashable, you may be finding them increasingly difficult to read these days.
It’s not because the content isn’t interesting or high quality. The problem is there’s just too much of it.
With multiple writers pumping out lengthy posts throughout the day, it’s becoming an editorial tsunami. As a result, TechCrunch et al have arguably become less user-friendly because there’s just so much stuff to wade through.
Part of the problem may be the traditional blog format they’re using in which posts appear one on top of the other. It means that finding a particular post that caught your eye earlier in the day can be difficult to find again if it’s five or six screens down the road.
So, what’s the solution? One tactic may be the creation of spin-offs such as GigaOm’s NewTeeVee, WebWorkerDaily and Earth2Tech.
But there’s another approach. As much as anyone doesn’t like using the “P” word these days, it could be time for the emergence of the blog portal.
TechCrunch, for example, would be reborn with a three or four column design that featured five to eight stories on the front page with the biggest/best stories getting the most real estate. For readers, this would make it easier to look at a wide variety of content before diving into the blog posts that were the most interesting.
It is difficult to envision any drawbacks with the concept of a blog portal compared with the current linear format. A TechCrunch portal would have as much, if not more, real estate for advertising, although some widgets such as Swicki and MyBlogLog may have to be sacrificed. And if Mike Arrington wants any advice, he could always ask Arianna Huffington, who has made The Huffington Post a red-hot online content property.
So, what do you think? Is it time for the arrival of the blog portal.
Update: Fortune has a profile on Arrington that describes him as the ‘Wizard of the Web 2.0″.
Technorati Tags: Blogs, GigaOm, ReadWriteWeb, TechCrunch
Topics: Blogs |
