Salon has just joined the weblogging bandwagon — you can now get a weblog (running Radio Userland) for $39.95. That’s not so coincidentally the exact same price Dave‘s folks charge directly, so I think we can safely assume this is not the giant revenue-generating plan we’ve been waiting for to save Salon.
They’re keeping a recently-updated list and a most popular list, and Scott Rosenberg (Salon’s Managing Editor) has set up his own blog to metablog on the whole deal.
I sense that this move will be met with much snarkiness in the established blogosphere… I’ll admit that was my reflex instinct myself. But that’s the wrong reaction, I think.
This is a Good Thing, because anything that potentially “grows the pie” — of both weblogs writers, and weblogs readers — is a Good Thing. Or so I have said.
Salon is almost certainly only the first of many, here. Can YahooBlogs or AOLblogs be far behind? And yes, the inevitable MSBlogs.
If you doubt the Goodness, consider this when you are pondering your stats next: think of all the thousands upon thousands of daily readers of online mags like Salon who aren’t in the habit of reading weblogs, mainly because the thought never occured to them. Those are your future readers — and Salon just created a massive free advertising campaign for all of us.
So to all those new Salon bloggers: welcome to the revolution, folks! Now go write some good stuff we can all link to.
Update: Dave Winer provides his thoughts on the deal: “Salon is granting my wish — they’re opening their site to amateur authors… As they often do, Salon is leading the way. They are the first publication to offer such a service to its community. We are proud to enable this innovation with our Radio UserLand technology.”
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