As I've continue to clarify my focus at This Business of Blogging, I've begun to use related books as jumping-off points to consider basic, underlying concepts related to blogging and web publishing.
As previously noted, in a post titled Founders At Work: Flexible Approaches to Entrepreneurial Business Models, I explored the need for flexible business models in web publishing and, though I didn't fully articulate the point, this idea can be applied even to the thematic focus of a blog written as a form of self-expression.
Today I completed a short post titled Julia Angwin's Stealing MySpace: Expanded Notions of Web Publishing that uses a book about MySpace as a starting point to consider the fairly simple idea that social networks can be considered web publishing platforms that move us towards new perspectives in what constitutes digital publishing. Such perspectives are further expanded by widgets and even by iPhone apps.
As I note towards the end of that post, simple ideas are often dismissed as obvious but the masters of the obvious often reveal themselves to have missed the point when they themselves act. Newspaper publishers are a particularly strong example of businesses filled with smart people who regularly have difficulty understanding the relevance of fairly simple conceptual shifts that have resulted in a complex media environment.
Be that as it may, I continue to work out some basic ideas that have been important to me at This Business of Blogging and I hope some of you will find them of interest.
