This Marginal Revolution post generated some disagreement (see this and this). The debate seems to be over portal blogs versus those who have more original content.
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 the best stuff, and comment on it most effectively.
I have picked up a quite a few new readers over the last two months, and I do get some emails from people suggesting, or occasionally criticizing what I write about. So here is what I think about it and why I have this site.
I read. A lot. A whole lot. I have a bad habit of marking up things I read with my own thoughts, and tearing important articles out of magazines/papers and throwing the rest away. I originally started this blog so that I could stop all that. By linking to what I think is important, I can easily keep a searchable record of things that interest me. The other purporse of this blog is discussion. I like the comments that people leave, whether or not they agree with me, and I sometimes learn things from them.
Most of the articles I link to have some example of a good or bad business practice. I also do some economics, and occasionally something funny or ironic in the business world. I occasionally write original content too, but not very often.
The people who I think would find this site most interesting are people who don't want to read twenty different business periodicals every month, but want to see the most important articles from those periodicals. I don't intend to be a business news summary site, for that, go here for a good one of those. My goal is to link to articles that make people think about good and bad business practices, and the future direction of business in the world. I try to add a little something about what I think, to show why I was drawn to the article. I know you all come here for different reasons, so I just wanted you newbies to know what you can expect over the long term.
As for the portal/original content debate…well I don't read Instapundit that much either, but not because I don't like Glenn. I just get tired of reading about Iraq and California. I think portals have their place, as do carnivals, and I like that I have access to those quick summaries so that I can browse quickly to find what I like. Jay Solo does a lot of linking and original stuff, and I spend a lot of time on his site because he frequents areas of the blogosphere that I don't. He reads tons of good blogs that I wish I could get to every day, but I can't, so I rely on his posts for what is the best stuff on those blogs. Overall, I do like original content sites very very much, but it boils down to the fact that their are only 24 hours in a day, and as much as I hate to, I do have to sleep and work part of that time. I think most people like "features writing" better, but they don't have time to read all those blogs. Notice that 15 seconds is the average time spent on Instapundit. While people average more than 2 minutes here. I am sure some sites that do almost no linking and all original writing have even longer average visits.
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