AOL has decided to shutter PVRWire and several other blogs in the Weblogs, Inc network on 1/31. According to Jason Calacanis, former head of Weblogs, it sounds like their blogs need a million monthly page views to “scale” as a viable business model. Not only is there plenty of room for long-tail content, but I believe it’s necessary to serve specific communities and act as feeders for the larger, all-inclusive tech blogs. However, these long-tail niche blogs will have a hard time being justified and surviving in a large corporate environment.
The truth of many blogs is that a huge percentage of visitors arrive via from search engines. Divester, PVRWire, etc have amassed a great deal of content which will continue to make AOL a little money and drive traffic to their other sites (SEO) even after they’ve been “shut down” — yet they will have no ongoing monetary outlay for talent/writing and, more importantly no management overhead.
I’ll miss reading PVRWire and the opportunities I’ve had to collaborate and contribute. Since Chris, Brad, Matt, and JJ joined Martin last summer and early fall they have done an amazing job expanding coverage and quadrupling (or more) monthly page views. I hope they end up hired by other blogs, or start new sites if their passion and free time permit.
Hi Dave – thanks for the kind words. It’s a shame that the site is closing, but it’s been a real blast.
I fully agree with you (as do many others) that there is a definite spot for these niche sites. However money (page views) is usually the deciding factor.
As far as the searching goes, since the beginning of this month 2 of our top 7 pages are from October and November 2006 (for a combined 10000+ page views). Most of those referrals came from sites such as Google, Yahoo, Digg, etc.
My own personal PVR site (which I abandoned when I joined PVR Wire) still get’s its fair share of hits each month even though nothing has been update since August.
So this is proof that just because PVR Wire is not updated, it doesn’t mean that it won’t continue to generate money for AOL.
All in all it’s sad that it’s ending, but it’s nice to see that we will be missed. Thanks.
Hi Dave– thanks for your acknowledgments. We’ve done many blog “retirements” during the last three quarters, and there is always some sadness to it. PVR Wire had a great, great run, and the current staff (including producer Victor Agreda) has done a slam-bang job. Traffic is up, staff enthusiasm is high, and the blog is enjoying a cool traffic-to-volume ratio, a stat I am keenly aware of.
So why the retirement? These decisions are amazingly complex. I’ve learned a tremendous amount during my time in AOL about online publishing generally, niche publishing in particular, reaching consensus in a group, and the priorities of non-editorial departments I work with every day. I’m not telling secrets when I say that it all boils down to deciding how we’ll divide our (not unlimited) resources.
A retirement is not a failure! That is one point I want to make loud and clear during this period. A retirement is a shifting of resources. We are not ending the contracts of any affected bloggers, and are working to relocate them in the network.
As I said before, PVR Wire had an outstanding run, and everyone involved, past and present, should be proud of that.
Thanks again, Dave.
Brad Hill
(Ed. Dir., WIN)
I’m saddened by the fact that niche blogs like these are going down. The digital photography weblog went down too. If these blogs are doing very well (relatively speaking to similar niche market blogs) then how can AOL apply a blanket policy? A slightly different take on the same subject matter keeps the conversation lively and healthy.
Thanks for some great reading PVRwire!