Rule number one of maximising Internet traffic is to have content, lots and lots of content. Web 2.0 creates user generated content by the bucket load and we are not talking about a small bucket here. The bucket is mind bogglingly massive. Check out the traffic data for the big boys http://www.ebizmba.com/articles/user-generated-content and that does not even include the top dogs Google et al listed here in item1 at http://potpolitics.com/2008/06/04/so-you-want-to-be-a-general-you-can-forget-that/Now imagine the advertising revenue that sort of traffic is hauling in... Well you don't have to imagine, Bear Sterns estimate that YouTube alone will make $90.2m in 2008 just in the U.S.
Money, money, money. Do the people who actually create the content actually see much of it? I say very few, a tiny minority. That's the way a pyramid scheme works. The people at the bottom work under the illusion that they will gain when in fact it is those at the top that suck up all the cash. You could say Digg, Technorati etc need the cash to develop their services, and that some provide much more user friendly services than others, but I'm not the least bit interested in being fair the moment.
Monetize, publicise, optimise. Blogs about blogging and blogs about nothing more than exchanging links. Social networking that is about getting as many of your friends to join as possible, that's it get them all together, one big juicy advertising sales target.
You may say Polybore is a hypocrite for carrying advertising on his blog. Look if I can get 2 cents a month I know its going to a good cause. I'm not labouring under the delusion that I'm going to be hauling in tens of thousands of dollars in advertising, and I'm not going to try and generate traffic to my site, by coning people into thinking they have a chance to earn masses of cash through following my "sage" advice.
I just want people to visit my blog because I like writing and I've found out it's more fun if you have an audience. Phew. Need a beer after that.
Credits for the image: Author: Luca Cremonini Source: http://www.railsonwave.it/railsonwave/2007/1/2/web-2-0-map URL: http://www.railsonwave.com/assets/2006/12/25/Web_2.0_Map.svg Note: The cloud-map picture above (constructed by Luca Cremonini on December 25, 2006, for railsonwave.com) has been recreated in svg format from the image of Markus Angermeier and was improved with links to Wikipedia sources.
Original Source: Markus Angermeier Source: http://kosmar.de/archives/2005/11/11/the-huge-cloud-lens-bubble-map-web20/ URL: http://kosmar.de/wp-content/web20map.png
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