What's Better: Blogger or Columnist?

The front page of Slate today is a strong indication of that the user-driven model has taken over the web. Their feature space highlights two stories. One about the decline of the blog business and another soliciting user content. I just skimmed the stories, but the headlines are quite enough to make the point. There are a lot of people out there capable of creating compelling content, or have access to juicy secrects that make for good content. But there are not a lot of people who can sustain good content over the long term.

Anyone can start a blog, and every smart or connected person can write a few good pieces. But eventually they fizzle out. This has been known for awhile, but now it seems larger media organizations are finally getting this point and trying to take those people and run their content instead of having those people trying to sustain their own micro-blogs that may never make it in an increasingly saturated blogosphere.

I totally agree with this model because everybody wins. The bigger sites get more diverse content, and the smaller content creators get a bigger audience. Writers go from being obscure bloggers to highly-visible columnists for doing what they do anyway.

So the biggest question for larger sites is: how do they get contributors?

My answer to this question is brand. What kind of user experience are they creating for readers, and more importantly, for contributors? Is it a place that contributors will want to be part of? A place so compelling that a contributor feels that they are better off putting their material on another site than they are on their own blogs. Good examples of this user-driven model right now are SuidideGirls and ThePhatPhree. But these are specific-genre content sites, not general-interest sites like a Slate or a Salon. But Slate and Salon, in my opinion, lack the cool factor -- and Slate especially is losing that factor more and more as it gets absorbed deeper into the Washington Post/Newsweek umbrella.

Of course this is what we're tring to to with Guerillasphere: create a user-driven environment that has a tone and feel that people want to be a part of. For those following along, I hope you don't lose interest, because even though it's been 5 months since we shut down our old site to begin re-building, we haven't disappeared. Guerillasphere is very much thriving behind the scenes; it's just very hard to build quickly when you're not Microsoft or the Washingtonpost. But I guess that's the guerilla ethos, and that's what we're going to give to users and contributors when we finally finish in the next couple months. So please be patient and don't forget about us.

As for the Slate story about the dying out of the blog business, the interesting thing is that they failed to mention Nick Denton's blogging empire. He's the man behind the Gawker family of sites, and all of his properties are wildly successful (and I suspect profitable as well). But as a true guerilla, I'm sure he's fine that he's not mentioned in there, so he can just keep on taking what's his from the unsuspecting monoliths.