Doc gives a bit of advice to newspapers. Some great ones, a few of which I’ve mentioned here before. My favorite:

Fourth, start following, and linking to, local bloggers and even competing papers (such as the local arts weeklies). You’re not the only game in town anymore, and haven’t been for some time. Instead you’re the biggest fish in your pond’s ecosystem. Learn to get along and support each other, and everybody will benefit.

The shark doesn’t eat the remora. Likewise, the big media companies shouldn’t compete with the bloggers, but recognize their importance.

Also of note, Doc mentions the controversy happening out in LA with ther LATimes publisher. And now he’s out  .

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Newsome counters a Jarvis post on Social Networks by saying he is singing to the choir :

As as far as niches go- the entire blogosphere is a niche. The tech blogosphere, where most of us hang out, would be a sub niche. A niche inside a sub-niche is not a niche. It’s a clique. That’s a quotable excerpt that will almost certainly not make its way up the mountain.

I don’t normally subscribe to the A-List argument, but it is true that, as in life, there are cliques in Social Networks.

Some are more enviable than others and some are more open to outside input than others.

But Kent has been linked to nearly a thousand times and I see Doc Searls and Dave Winer in that group.

Between both of my blogs, I’ve been linked to about one-tenth of that amount and linkers have included Jarvis, Searls and Winer.

I think they are doing an excellent job.

So is small the new big?

Yes, but look at it this way. I think it compliments Jarvis’s Law of Open Networks.
The Law of Network Fluidity: The number of working affinity groups within a social network should increase proportionately with its number of nodes. All nodes must be able to freely pass into and out of existing and new affinity groups.

If not, then you may have an A-list syndrome.One last point of clarity. I do not mean that a network cannot have a private or exclusive group. Just that there is no unintentional blockage that might signify a network design flaw or central control.

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I was just listening to a BloggerCon session on How to Make Money with Blogs hosted by Doc Searls.

ADDED: I forgot to mention the podcast is available at itconversations.com

Some felt advertising on blogs or in feeds was a viable solution while others like Dave Winer thought that was nickel and dime and missing the bigger opportunity.

I’m against ads in feeds for one reason, at least. The internet shuts off what it doesn’t want, and eventually gets what it wants.

If we haven’t yet learned this from the Music Recording Industry, Tivo etc., then I don’t think we are as far along as I thought.

Put another way, any unwanted or missing feature is an opportunity for another solution that will deliver a service without the unwanted feature or with the wanted feature.

The customer always wins on the web, because there is no scarcity.
So, the paradox works this way:
1. Ads in feeds will only work if users want them.

2. If users want them, they aren’t really ads, but content.

Most businesses use the phone. Most do not make money off phone traffic, ads, or even use it as a way to process an order. They use it to communicate in all kinds of ways.

Blogs will be used to communicate in all kinds of ways. Very few will have a business model tied directly to eyeballs or direct sales.

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