Who are the customers again?
- bloggers, people who like to write, people who review things, etc...
Unfortunately, most of the people who get online do not create content.
A prelim-SWOT had me stuck on the externals: Opportunity and Threats.
BCNN Opportunity:
- create first blogging news service
- monetize user generated content
BCNN Threats:
- rate of adoption by customers (bloggers, etc...)
- copy cats
When I got home, I started to search for competitors who have already monetized blogs:
- About.com, though not a blog, pays all their "guides" rather handsomely to keep the content flowing; http://beaguide.about.com/compensation.htm
- a number of other pure-play blog who haven't hit the mainstream yet;
So it made me wonder -- does monetizing blogs make people more ready to leave their current blog service (blogger.com, wordpress.com) and sign up with the PayPerPosts of the world? It hasn't happened yet,
though these services were started in 2005, which means the Threat of a slow rate of adoption is real.
Now, that I've recorded my thoughts from last week, I can fast-forward to this week's thoughts.
I've been reading a bunch of Paul Graham's writings/lectures/info, both from Y Combinator's site, and his own website, http://paulgraham.com/, and the one thing that he stresses is to make something that people
want... http://paulgraham.com/start.html
I asked myself, do people really want to use a blogging news service? [unsure]
Do people really want to earn money from writing their blogs? Well, I have a blog and I never wanted to put Google's adsense on it... I've always thought advertising was rather annoying because it changes the aesthetics of a web page.
So I spent the past couple of days documenting my thoughts from last week, only to have my thoughts from this week slow my momentum for Bison; I'm shelving it for now based on the question of whether people would really want this service.
Next in line is Condor!
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