Today’s topic about the new gatekeepers is a close cousin to the guards at the clubhouse door I’ve been talking about for a while. I’m happy to see others thinking about this, even if they approach the issue in a slightly different manner.

Scott Karp has a very interesting post today about one of his posts that got legs yesterday and his efforts to sneak past the guards and into the blogging clubhouse. Like him, I and many others are standing in line waiting for the bouncer to either let us in or get distracted so we can dart past him.

Scott talks about the glut of good bloggers and the transition of the old media onto the web and ultimately wonders if there will be new gatekeepers standing between the non-blogging readership and the content we all keep plugging away writing. He says that in many ways the guard at the clubhouse door plays the gatekeeper role formerly held by the old media that stood between readers and the content. I think that’s right, but I don’t think all of the guards are doing it on purpose. Clearly some are (see my prior rants for more on that). But for many, I think the gatekeeper role is just a function of their early arrival, hard work and resulting popularity. To understand the gatekeeper, you have to know how and why the gate was erected. Sometimes to keep you out. Sometimes it’s just the nature of things.

So how will our readers find us, other than by the grace of the almighty link?

Sites like Technorati (which I love almost as much as Flickr) help, but Scott suspects (as do I) that Technorati is used mainly by, well, the technorati. The challenge for us is to be found by the non-geek readers who vastly out-number the geek ones. As old media becomes new media this question will have to be answered. We need to make sure the answer isn’t another version of the old system.

Scott’s take is that the A-Listers guarding the door may, if we aren’t careful, largely determine what the typical reader sees- via links and whispered cross-blog conversations.

Mathew Ingram has a different take on it, viewing the popular web destinations more as turnstiles than gatekeepers.

I think there’s an element of both gatekeeper and turnstile to it. Gabe Rivera had a stroke of brilliance when he created Memeorandum and let the algorithm determine what appears there. It may indirectly play to the strengths of the A-Listers, who get way more inbound links than the rest of us, but there’s no subjective decision to keep us out. Like Mathew, my posts generally appear there pretty regularly, except for those odd and frustrating 3-4 day periods where my posts seem to disappear from the radar completely, only (so far at least) to return a few days later.

But there is definitely a very real pecking order in the linking activities of the A-List bloggers. I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with that, and I have been fortunate enough to get links from some of them (thank you). This pecking order, as it may and will change over time, however, is what may create a new breed of gatekeepers.

Perhaps gatekeeping is just the inefficient blogosphere market’s way of determining the best blogs. But it is an inefficient market and there is always a very real chance that you can get stuck on the wrong side of the gate.

As you can tell, I’m still trying to figure out how I feel about all of this. On the one hand, I feel sort of good about things, having had some conversations with a lot of really interesting people (including some of those elusive A-Listers). So part of me feels really humbled that I have been allowed to participate. But in other ways, I feel like an outsider looking in- that I could write the most thoughtful and innovative post in the world and it would get passed over in favor of some off-hand comment made by an A-Lister.

That’s why I hope we can minimize the role of any newfangled gatekeepers. Because if the playing field is fairly level and we can’t get where we want to be in the blogosphere, there’s no one to blame but us. We can handle that. But if the playing field is not fairly level, then all we’ve done is knocked down one wall and built another.

No more walls.

TAN made a very interesting point in the comments to one of my earlier posts. I was talking about the sysphian task of growing a new blog, and he noted that he thought I was mixing two conversations: blogs as a business and blogs as a trend/cultural phenomenon. That got me thinking, and here’s what I’ve concluded.

It’s the blogging as a business part that causes the difficulties I’ve been talking about. Not so much business blogs or the cultural phenomenon of blogging.

What’s the Difference

First, let’s define what I’m talking about:

Business Blog- a blog operated by someone as a part of a larger business involving the sale of goods or services other than the blog itself.

Blogging as a Business- a blog that is operated by someone whose primary business is the operation of the blog itself (i.e., where the sole or primary revenue stream is ad revenue from that blog and/or the prospect of selling that blog).

When I talk about the complicating effect that the prospect of a dollar has on the blogosphere, I’m really talking about blogging as a business. Business blogs have other revenue streams and, for them, the blog is largely a marketing, communication, information distribution thing.

Take Steve Rubel, for example. He is without a doubt as well known as any blogger anywhere. And he has a great blog. But that blog (I imagine- Steve please correct me if I am wrong) was conceived as a part of Steve’s pre-existing public relations business. It wasn’t like Steve threw a blog up there, started writing posts and called it a business. So while Steve has one of the most popular blogs in the world, it is a part of his business- not his business.

And while Steve is very well known in the blogosphere, we must remember that only a fraction of the people in the world read blogs and follow the blogosphere. I bet more people know Steve from any number of his past and other activities than they do from his blog. And, again, we’re talking about one of the most popular blogs in the world. If I’m right and Micro Persuasion is only an ancillary part of Steve’s larger business, how in the wide world of sports can a new blogger hope to turn his or her blog into a business.

Business blogs use the blogosphere as an extension of the sort of conversations that take place in the real world. For them it’s the conversation that matters, not where or how that conversation takes place. Amy Gahran talks a lot about this over at The Right Conversation.

Compare that to blogging as a business- where someone starts a blog and begins writing with the plan to make a living or a meaningful part of a living. Unlike Steve, who sells his PR and consulting services, what is this blog selling? Nothing other than via the occasional Amazon affiliate referral. This blog is only selling ads for AdSense or whatever other ad program it uses. Stated another way, this blog is completely dependent on generating traffic and maintaining readers to view and click on its ads. Once someone has clawed their way up the Technorati 100 list, human nature (not to mention the need to eat and live indoors) dictates that the now successful blogger guard his or her asset carefully. For sure, there’s a marginal utility to other bloggers. Someone has to engage in conversations with you and link to you. But too many bloggers talking about similar stuff is sometimes viewed the same as too many beers- it turns a good time into a bad time.

Steve makes money either way because he is selling something other than eyeballs. The blogging as a business blog only makes money if it can attract and keep readers. Hence, the competition factor that serves as a disincentive to welcome new voices to the table.

To say that I’m whining about this is one thing (I don’t think I’m whining, but I can see how some might interpret it that way). But to pretend these issues don’t exist is to keep your head planted firmly in the sand.

So What About All Those Ads

I used to do a lot of ad selling when ACCBoards.Com was independent. We got millions (and I mean millions) of page views a month. In the halcyon days of the dot.com bubble, we were making 5 figures of revenue a month. We signed a purchase agreement for 7 figures and a ton of stock. Then it ended. Almost immediately. I still get weepy when I flip through that dusty old file.

Is another bust on the horizon? I believe so. Steve thinks so. Even if it isn’t as drastic or painful as the last one, we learned (or should have learned) that these things are cyclical. What goes up, and all that.

So, at best, the new blog as a business blogger is trying to do the blog equivalent of playing in the NBA. There are Kobes and there are Jasons (I’m going to keep calling him the Kobe of the blogosphere until he responds). But there are many more good players who never make it to the top. And if you’re doing it to make real money, you have to get to the top. There’s very little money in the minor leagues- blogging or basketball wise.

Putting it All Together

So, yes, you can have a blog that is neither a business blog nor blogging as a business. Yes, yes, a million times yes. That’s what I’ve been saying a blog is and should be.

My point is that other people who also have blogs but have somehow decided that their blogs are going to make them rich make the blogosphere a more complicated, less welcoming place. It’s not a conspiracy, and it’s not sour grapes. It’s human nature and the way business (and blogging as a business) works.

I just don’t think blogs, in and of themselves, should be first and foremost about trying to make money. That is my point distilled into one sentence.

All of this doesn’t necessarily preclude having a popular blog. Or even a successful blogging as a business blog (there are always a few who make it to the NBA). It just makes it harder. A lot harder.