Thinkcorps

Wired has finally jumped into the fray—everybody blog! The magazine still doesn’t have a Web site, but whatever. Let’s ignore that for the moment and focus on what’s really wrong with this:

First, they’ve got only one blog up:
Beyond the Beyond—i guess it’s a celebrity blog? It doesn’t have much focus beyond that, plus it’s way ugly.

Second, is this (from Sterling’s first post):

Note that there is NO COMMENTARY ALLOWED in my pristine, high-toned blog here. Why? Because you might be a spammer, that’s why! When I have a big red anti-spam button I can push that will cause Homeland Security to arrest you immediately and deport you to Guantanamo, then you may comment. Until then, no blog-reader of mine will ever be forced to endure your lame illegal product pitches, and that goes double for you harebrained flamers and trollers.

Blogging is about community. Community is about linking and commenting. There are lots of good people that are working hard to improve the community and deal with the comment spam issue. In fact, there are several simple strategies for addressing it. I just can’t get past the subtext “blogging systems suck”. If it’s so bad, why not use a better tool?

Third, and most important:
Wired blogs will fail. Why? Because they already have a much larger and compelling space from which to share their ideas and prognostications—it’s called the magazine. And let’s face it, Wired magazine is cooler than a blog. Given the choice, what are you going to work on? Your 3500 feature for the magazine (complete with cool design, pictures and everything) or a blog entry?

[disclosure: i worked at Wired back in the days when it was just as disfunctional, but way cooler]