Likelihood of Success

A VC in New York explains “Why 15 Million Is A Big Number”:

cNet suggests that the blogging bubble has burst. I don’t think it’s a bubble. I think its a revolution. We are taking over the media, slowly but surely. And this revolution isn’t going to burst. It may morph as new tools emerge that allow people to express themselves publicly.I think the more interesting number would be the percentage of internet audience time that is spent on social media. I am sure it’s still growing (maybe exponentially) and traditional media (including cnet) is declining.

There’s another number we’d like to know, too, or rather another set of numbers. I don’t have to tell a VC this, but: Who are the readers of the 15 million blogs? He cites a “ten to one rule” —

The 10 to 1 rule says that in social media, for every 10 readers you need one content creator. So 15 million bloggers will serve 150 million blog readers. That’s a ton of blog readers.

That’s interesting, if it’s true. “Rules” like that are the stuff myths are made of. But even if it’s a slice of that — who are the readers? I believe, because I am prejudiced, that it is a large percentage of “opinion leaders” and leaders of other sorts — political, commercial, technological. I don’t have to teach a VC the concept of demographics.

We both agree: Focusing on a single datum such as the growth in the number of blogs is silly. People don’t start new car or aircraft companies too often, either, but a hundred years ago they did. De facto barriers to entry, even those “erected” by a perception that there’s nothing special in starting just another blog in a crowded field, bespeak a maturation of the significance medium, not an apogee.