Now that Opinion Journal has weighed in on the blogging alliance thing, the news is now just reaching many other blogs.

This new dealie is an indirect threat to the Pajamas Media venture we have been spottily reporting on since its launch last November. Indirect because we fail to see at this point how Opinion Journal will really encroach on whatever business Pajamas Media has managed to conjured to to this point.

But the news that dilettante and erstwhile conservative Glenn Reynold of Instapundit.com has joined in with Opinion Journal, may well represent a real crack in the tenuous business known as Pajamas Media. That's our take anyway.

We don't pride ourself on trying to be some kind of swami. We are just laying out what the possible scenarios are.

At Hog On Ice , Steve seems to think that blogging is dead, and he bolsters that contention with statistics, which all makes perfect sense, but our take is far different.

What we will be seeing over the next few months will be a correction within the Internet; a shakeout as it were. A lot of players who offer services such as blogging are likely to shut down, or be sold, to fewer, better capitalized companies. Google, Yahoo! And AOL are some of the likely survivors.

There is an overabundance of web space on the Internet. You can see it system wide. Even Network Solutions, the costliest place in the Internet to register a name, recently offered web space as low as $1.25 a month, paid yearly. Even taking into account for automation and scripting, can any company afford to sell its drive space and bandwidth for $1.25 a month?

Investors, as investors will do, will demand greater return on their technology investment and will likely take their money elsewhere if they don't get it. That means whoever is allowing their web space and bandwidth to go for less than two bucks a month will either have to shutdown or search for a buyer. Our guess is the great lion's share will just shutdown and liquidate. That means eventually web space will be going up in price and a lot of bloggers getting these sweet deals will likely shut down as well.

The “blogosphere” in some limited, critical ways will shrink, and only those who are already at or near the top will continue to prosper.

In that, we also have a different view.

We believe that blogging is almost as revolutionary as the web itself. We believe that blogging is a tremendous means of business communications, of putting a human face on the marketing of any product or service, and that includes the Internet. That is why we offer in our little business blogging software because we believe it is a great way to not only make announcements about products, but to get customer feedback and in real time.

When we start to see this in many companies, many many “purists” will just quit blogging when they see this new medium being used in the most sensible way it can be used in business. We like to call them leftwingers.

When the Great Dom.Com crash of 2000 took place what we saw was extravagance and insanity, folks who were driven to invest in something they understood little about. If you ever get a chance to get in front of the archives of the Wall Street Journal, say around 1999-2001, do yourself a favor and read the many features published about some of the excesses. After several hours of this it will dawn on you that very little of that is going on at this point in time. The excesses are not so extravagant and so neither will the failures be so spectacular.

Some things will just quietly shut down, web property will change hands and the market will get some much needed relief.

Blogging won't be dead. It will just be changed, and likely for the better.


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