Yet Another Update on Pajamas Media subject logo: ENJOYSHOW
2007-04-06
Posted by: badanov

The above referenced link is from Dennis the Peasant ( aka Dennis the Linecrosser ) which is unfortunately our only link to news concerning Pajamas Media.

As you may recall, recent news was that Jeff Goldstein took a revenue hit from Pajamas Media because of recent attacks including attack on his very family, an unfair turn of events if you ask us. The resulting missing traffic apparently factored into the decision for PJM to gig Jeff.

Being that the news came only three months before Pajamas Media's contract with its member bloggers was due to expire, while we didn't report it explicitly, it appeared to us that there may be some rumblings with in the PJM hierarchy with regard to the revenue aspect of this internet startup.

To most mere mortals seven million dollars is a lot of money. A person that inputs this kind of wampum expects a turn of some kind in order to keep his support with the business, and the expectation isn't just a return but a series of returns rich enough said investor won't walk off to find a better rate of return.

New internet startups, as was shown in the late nineties were notoriously bad for a decent return of investment, if any, and Pajamas Media at its inception being a small startup is a glaring albeit small exemplar, so this was a huge risk for the main investor.

Now, according to Dennis the Linecrosser, a number of participating blogs have left or have been dropped, we guess in response to increased pressure from their investor for a better return. If you believe Stephen Graham it was more likely the business model, which was essentially sell internet advertsing on member blogs and share the revenue, was unworkable.

Pressure from above would also explain Charles Johnson's sudden flurry in activity in "upgrading" his website for the AJAX browser side web programming suite. If PJM is cutting costs who better to cut than Pajamas Media IT staff? Charles was already a fairly competent html/java prgrammer, and the AJAX/SQL stuff is not such a stretch. Something that he could apply to PJM's web property if they get funding for another term, without paying a web programmer.

Pajamas Media was a strange idea, essentially an internet add consortium in which ads were sold and placed on members blog and the resultant revenue shared amoungst all the members was a flimsy plan unless it was planned to expand ad sales to run on other blogs and websites. And we haven't seen any Pajamas Media ads anywhere but Pajamas Media blogs.

The next few weeks will be interesting. We suspect that if this business plan is intact other large political bloggers will be asked, likely confidentially, to join in; and we won't know until the deal is sealed.

What will really be interesting is what the 800 pound gorilla in Pajamas Media, Mrs. Malkin, will do; if she continues to be associated with them or she bails.

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