Daily Kos Media Empire
Wired has an interesting feature on Daily Kos founder Markos Moulitsas Zúniga and his attempt to build a media empire.
SportsBlogs, which debuted in January, now has more than a dozen baseball blogs, each devoted to a specific team ranging from the Yankees to the Cubs. Former ESPN columnist John Sickels writes Minor League Ball, which is a blog devoted to the minor leagues. Using the blogosphere as their minor league, Moulitsas, the CEO, and Tyler Bleszinski, the president, recruited an eclectic collection of sports bloggers in the fall of 2004 and offered each a revenue-sharing contract, better blog software and a system for getting ads for their blogs.
Eventually, the duo hope to have blogs covering every sport, from NASCAR to professional hockey.
Aside from the not-so-minor quibble that Kevin Aylward launched SportsBlog way back in August 2003 and would seem to have something of a copyright claim on variants of that name, this is an interesting endeavor.
“I think he will be successful at it,” [Weblogs founder Jason] Calacanis said. “(Moulitsas) understands the nuance of doing a blog and he understands the nuance of doing a blog for a community of extremely passionate people. “He might be the only one with that skill set. We don’t even have that,” he said. “We have the skill set of building great blogs, but not with a community around it. It’s something we are learning.”
The interactivity that he’s built on DailyKos with the diaries, something I don’t fully “get” to be honest, should easily translate to sports.
He’s a natural.
re: Diaries.
I think I ‘get it.’ A log of blogs build up a regular group of commenters. Maybe they require registration. A community spirit, with ‘in jokes’ and rivalries and friendships, builds up. This kind of large blog becomes essentially similar to a forum or bulletin board. The ‘regulars’ spend their on-line time there.
From that point, it’s a small jump to Diaries.