Today we continue our interview with a blogger series with the
driving force behind Joystiq, Vlad Cole.When did you first get into blogging?
I first got into blogging as a college student in 1995 when I created a .plan file on my university's Unix system and updated it several times a day. I was very annoying about promoting this endeavor, encouraging everyone I came into contact with to "finger me, just do it, just finger me, you'll see." The approach lacked subtlety, but I could tell people were reading the .plan because I wrote a shell script to monitor system processes and catch users in the process of fingering me. Ahh, the good old days.
What do you think differentiates blogging from more mainstream media?
The amount that mainstream advertisers are willing to pay to appear next to blog content. We attract the same readers (in many cases, better readers) but the whole blogging thing kind of scares many of the old guard in charge of advertising spending.
In terms of content, only reader expectations. Readers have already come to expect blogs to look and act a certain way. The danger is that those expectations will calcify and we'll be handcuffed to a format that might not be as relevant as it could be. That's exactly what's going on now with mainstream media.
And finally, blogging is different from mainstream press in terms of pay. Bloggers aren't currently paid as well as traditional media, but if we keep growing like we are, and if the company continues to expand pay in lock-step with ad revenues, then one day we may reach parity with mainstream media. It's gonna take a while until a writer in the blogosphere has matched Mossberg's reported $400,000 annual salary, though.
When did you start blogging at Weblogs, Inc.?
February, 2005.
What's your experience been like at WIN?
This has been a fantastic 10 months for me. I've been thrilled to watch the company (and Joystiq) grow over time.
What do you do when you're not blogging?
[dead silence... -ed.]
1. I don't know whether to be insulted or relieved that Vlad has never asked me to finger him. I'll go with relieved for now. All fingering aside, Vlad is one heck of a lead blogger, and Joystiq is an amazing blog.
Posted at 4:49PM on Jan 12th 2006 by Brad Hill