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.