Vancouver Sun covers Blogging Network extensively!
...And so when I started following the phenomenon of blogging, where people post their thoughts, the deep and the drivel alike, in online journals, it was difficult to understand why millions of people are signing on. Who could possibly care to read what is often intensely personal information and who has the time to write it?Lots of people, millions in fact, according to the statistics. Jupiter Research estimates about two per cent of people who are online have created a blog (short for Web log) and four per cent are reading them.
...At the Blogging Network that drive could be monetary. At www.bloggingnetwork.com, bloggers, readers and creators alike, pay a flat monthly fee of $5.95 US or $49.95 a year to use the site. Fifty per cent of that fee goes towards the people whose blogs you read. The system sets up intense competition for bloggers to top the most read list.
"What we were trying to do was come up with a venue for blogging where there would be a ready audience of readers, where there would be an incredible community and there would also be an economic incentive," said Lari, who has his own blog, readyfireaim, a twist on the dot-com days when Lari said the idea was to fire and figure out the target afterwards.
"If you wanted to blog regularly, there would be some way you would be rewarded for it."
...Lari echoed Berk's view that blogs are creating the new communities on the Web.
"There's a woman whose blog's name is Army Wife and she is dealing with life while her husband is fighting in Iraq," he said. "She has an amazing virtual support network now."