October 26, 2003

Weblogs as Portals

If Tyler Cowen is right, then TAM will never become an uber-weblog. He writes,

Glenn is so successful because he understands the idea of blogs as portals. (This is my view, not Glenn's own self-description.) Blogs that offer too much of the author, and the author alone, are vulnerable to other blogs that cream-skim them, and other blogs, thereby offering the superior product. The question is not who can write the best stuff, but who can collect on the best stuff, and comment on it most effectively.

I consider this weblog as my version of talk radio (minus the sound) and a place to write. TAM isn't a portal. It's a content generator. Tyler is correct that with so many good weblogs around good portals like Glenn and the many weekly Carnivals are desparately needed to prevent info-drowning.

To counter Tyler is Professor Bainbridge with a number of points. His strongest is that technology can make a portal weblogger obsolete:

My news aggregator already does a better job of finding stuff in which I'm interested than does Instapundit (no offense to Prof. Reynolds, as I did enjoy last week's Instalanche).

To defend Tyler, a good portal requires an editor with a keen eye and the ability to add insightful remarks. Glenn does that extremely well.

This argument had many "thinker vs. linker" parallels that John Hawkins has written about.

"The Future of Blogs, More"