commercialization [1111.1999]

I'm not going to rationalize this, I'm just going to lay my cards on the table and see what you all think. Linkwatcher is going to go commercial.

See, I've been getting an *awful lot* of requests to list people in my blogsearch tool. So much that I go to my webpage and I don't even read half the sites listed. Not that they're not good.. I just have other things to do.

I started the fresh blogs lists because I found myself checking other people's sites four and five times a day, looking for updates, and figured a bot could do the job a lot better than I could. If you were on the list, it was because I regularly visited your site. I've said this before: my weblog is for me.

But now everyone's thrilled about using my list.. People are asking me to link their commercial logs (I even got a request from the editor of Yahoo! Internet Life for their NetBuzz page)... And the list is getting bigger and bigger. The signal to noise ratio is going down, down down.. (Brig - that's half the reason I didn't take you up on the offer for your list.. I felt mine was getting too big.. the other half being I've got other fields in my database that I'd have to input manually)

Anyway, I think I'm going to set up some new pages for the people who want everything, and filter the list on my page down to 20 or 30 blogs I read regularly... Which means I won't be using those other pages myself, and therefore see no reason not to put ads on them. Who knows, maybe I'll even offer a service like netMind to watch all sorts of links for people - not just blogs.. (That was the original intent, you know)...

To clarify: the metalog itself will be ad-free, and a little more focused. The other pages, including the search engine, will contain ads.. The money will go to paying for a machine on which I can run unlimited scripts, therefore allowing me to check more links in less time.

Given the reaction to Cam's question about ads, and the discussion of Dave Winer's stuff.. I'm curious what you all think about this.

(posted to an ultra-secret-weblogger-conspiracy list)