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In my opinion, he made over 2 million dollars because he owned the name weblogs.com, which Verisign bought for 2.3 million. I don't think it has anything to do

In my opinion, he made over 2 million dollars because he owned the name weblogs.com, which Verisign bought for 2.3 million. I don't think it has anything to do with his weblog. It has to do with the success of Blogger, and after that, blogging in general. If I had never maintained a blog, but owned the name weblogs.com, I would be 2.3 million dollars richer right now too. I seriously doubt that Verisign wanted weblogs.com because of their pingback system, seeing that it was becoming less and less relevant as Technorati and other similar sites grew. But I do agree with his main point that his blog made money, and Dan Lyons is wrong.

jerf 18y ago
He did not simply "own the name weblogs.com". Weblogs.com was the first service that could be pinged to say your weblog has been updated, which he implemented first in his company's environment, then in PHP (IIRC). It then showed a list of all updated weblogs. This worked pretty well before the spammers showed up. It wasn't just a name sell, it was a service sell. (That may not sound like a very difficult service, but there were scaling issues as time went on. And... at the time that it sold, $2 million wasn't much money, either.)
- deleted 18y ago
  [deleted]
- sounddust 18y ago
  I already addressed your point in my original comment. I believe that Verisign bought weblogs.com mainly because they wanted the name, not because of the service. The site was already losing traffic and becoming irrelevant when he sold it, due to the increasing number of much more useful related services such as Technorati. In fact, if I'm not mistaken, Technorati had a valuation of over 12 million dollars one year before Verisign bought weblogs.com for 2.3 million.
  - jerf 18y ago
    Yes, I admit I missed that last sentence. However, I think your contention that they didn't want the service is wrong, since they are still running it. Swing on over to http://www.weblogs.com http://www.weblogs.com and see for yourself. You may think it was a dumb decision on their part. (I do. Weblogs.com did its thing back when the weblog world numbered in the hundreds or few thousands, but even pre-Twitter it was pretty obviously increasingly worthless at the time it was sold. Even if the tech side scaled, the social side did not.) But clearly they did want it, and still do want it enough to continue running it. (Though I wouldn't be surprised it gets shut down any day now...)
tokenadult 18y ago
Who established the term "weblog" as the standard term for that kind of website? The term "weblog" had to be the expected name for the phenomenon before the domain name weblogs.com would have much value. Does anyone own the domain name onlinediary.com or linkcommentary.com or some other possible descriptive name for what we call a weblog?
- wmf 18y ago
  I think Jorn Barger coined the term "weblog", it entered widespread usage quickly, and Dave Winer registered weblogs.com after that.

jerf 18y ago

He did not simply "own the name weblogs.com". Weblogs.com was the first service that could be pinged to say your weblog has been updated, which he implemented first in his company's environment, then in PHP (IIRC). It then showed a list of all updated weblogs. This worked pretty well before the spammers showed up. It wasn't just a name sell, it was a service sell. (That may not sound like a very difficult service, but there were scaling issues as time went on. And... at the time that it sold, $2 million wasn't much money, either.)

deleted 18y ago
[deleted]
sounddust 18y ago
I already addressed your point in my original comment. I believe that Verisign bought weblogs.com mainly because they wanted the name, not because of the service. The site was already losing traffic and becoming irrelevant when he sold it, due to the increasing number of much more useful related services such as Technorati. In fact, if I'm not mistaken, Technorati had a valuation of over 12 million dollars one year before Verisign bought weblogs.com for 2.3 million.
- jerf 18y ago
  Yes, I admit I missed that last sentence. However, I think your contention that they didn't want the service is wrong, since they are still running it. Swing on over to http://www.weblogs.com http://www.weblogs.com and see for yourself. You may think it was a dumb decision on their part. (I do. Weblogs.com did its thing back when the weblog world numbered in the hundreds or few thousands, but even pre-Twitter it was pretty obviously increasingly worthless at the time it was sold. Even if the tech side scaled, the social side did not.) But clearly they did want it, and still do want it enough to continue running it. (Though I wouldn't be surprised it gets shut down any day now...)

tokenadult 18y ago

Who established the term "weblog" as the standard term for that kind of website? The term "weblog" had to be the expected name for the phenomenon before the domain name weblogs.com would have much value. Does anyone own the domain name onlinediary.com or linkcommentary.com or some other possible descriptive name for what we call a weblog?

wmf 18y ago
I think Jorn Barger coined the term "weblog", it entered widespread usage quickly, and Dave Winer registered weblogs.com after that.