Mark Fletcher,CEO, Bloglines says Bloglines had an organic growth policy since its lauch.Fletcher writes, Ask Jeeves was different than the other investors that approached us. They wanted us to continue to run Bloglines as a stand-alone property, and also integrate Bloglines into their other properties where it made sense. And they were willing to commit a lot of resources to Bloglines to help us expand our features and capabilities. Just as important, it was clear from day one that the Ask team understood us, and our service. we thought they had much more of the start-up/fast moving mentality than any of the other companies we talked with, and that approach made them feel like the right partner for us.
Jim Lanzone wrote,First and most importantly,our primary focus will be on building the Bloglines service to fulfill Mark’s vision for it, adding resources to their toolbox to get there faster and better. There will be no short-term changes to Bloglines that weren't already on their roadmap. We will take our time determining the optimal business model for the service. As part of a bigger company there will be more options for Bloglines - from indirect monetization (through increased usage of our other brands) to direct if there is a model that makes sense for everyone. In terms of integration with Ask Jeeves, one of our first priorities will be to pair the Bloglines team with our Teoma search technology team to build world-class blog search. We'll also help distribute Bloglines to a broader audience, from MyJeeves to the portal properties owned by askjeeves..
Gartner writes,With Ask Jeeves' purchase of Bloglines, battle lines between the various media titans begin to take shape for dominance of the blogosphere the battle shall heat up considerably in 2005. If 2004 was the year of the blog, then 2005 is the year of the blogosphere. A blogosphere is a creation-distribution platform that allow consumers to create, share and manage blogs, podcasts and Vblogs extensions to "traditional" blogging. Given the complexities of adding multimedia content to the Web, advanced blogospheres will need to provide consumers an intuitive solution to add audio and video to their blogs. Given the bandwidth constraints of multimedia content, these advanced blogospheres will also need to tackle issues such as file compression and digital rights management. By the end of 2005, each major portal (MSN, Yahoo!,Google and Ask Jeeves) will need to have robust blogospheres in place to remain competitive.
Each major portal has at least one element in place and will be on the hunt for acquisitions and partners.Microsoft has Spaces, a blog-like offering, and emerging content management capabilities with its search products and My MSN, but will need a more open and cohesive strategy to lead this space. To compete on the big stage, Microsoft will need to offer a less-proprietary platform that encourages Web users at large to participate.Google has the popular Blogger blog creation tool but lacks an RSS aggregation product. Blogger also will need to be more podcast- and Vblog-friendly.Yahoo has added considerable content management power to its My Yahoo service but currently lacks a blog creation tool. we earlier covered yahoo may acquire six apart.Self contained blog platforms like Tucows, Drupal could also be in limelight. Significant action is taking place in the blogsphere - commensurate with the phenomenal growth in the number of blogs. Business models with monetization schemes would begin to emerge.
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