bloggers - porn industry redux

Today on Slashdot, I saw this elegant response explaining why the poster knew micro-payments aren't working yet: the internet porn industry doesn't use them.

Which got me thinking. About porn. Kidding, kidding. Well, about porn as a business. One thing one can notice about porn sites is that what I would call "one business" is not equal to "one .com". A whole group of sites will use a traffic tracker such as Clickzs to determine who has sent whom business. I don't know the details, but I believe that the idea is that the ring of sites then settle the books at the end of the month, or whenever. I doubt many of them make much money, but if they were losing money, they wouldn't still be around. And they are clearly still around.

Which got me thinking about blogs. From my limited reading, bloggers link each other for content just like porn sites. But there's no traffic tracker yet. This opportunity seems ripe. Imagine a company, call them BlogTracker.com, who gathers up 20 top bloggers and proposes to aggregate and advertise them if they'll take some ads. With the (initially small) ad revenue, BlogTracker starts advertising the new virtual magazine it has created, drawing more traffic and in turn commanding slowly rising prices for ad space.

Could it work? I don't see why not, so you tell me.

principled governors, compromising senators

feliç any nou and all that...

Listening to a fluff NPR retrospective on Oregon's outgoing governor this morning, I heard hints of the much better story they could have discussed: the freedom of US governors to develop into "lone, principled men" while US Senators become waffling, compromising bargainers. The first hint came when NPR mentioned Kitzhaber's continuing popularity despite having taken various unpopular stands throughout his terms as Oregon's governor. My carpool partner Sidy mentioned the obvious parallel to President Bush. Neither of us like much that Bush does, but only a fool would ignore the resonance his trait of standing his ground has had with voters.

That's when the governor-to-president link really hit me. I've heard it mentioned, but thinking back on Carter, Reagan, Clinton and Bush Jr, the common trait is clear. As compared to wishy-washy Gore & Bush Sr, for instance.

None of which bodes well for the sundry Democrat senators announcing their runs for President.

Do not misunderstand me, though. The skills of bargaining and compromise that senators learn more deeply probably would have kept us out of the hole Bush has dug for us in Korea. Both skillsets have merit. I mean only to point out which one resonates more deeply with voters. Which, now that I think about it, explains the comments I see about Gephardt casting himself as a man of principle...