Jason Calacanis, the CEO of Weblogs, Inc., has a post with his predictions for 2006. One of his forecasts has 60% of the blog networks folding by the end of the year.
30 of the 50 blog networks will fizzle out and/or die. Only one or two (other than Gawker) will break 20M pages a month. The blog network space is just way too crowded, and if you can't go big at this point you're gonna have a real hard time doing a *real* network (say 20 blogs or more). Now, you'll do just fine if you stay focused on a narrow niche that you can own.
Calacanis doesn't say which 50 networks he is referring to but most of the existing independent blog networks just recently launched and will probably give it at least a year. It may be 2007 before there is much consolidation. What is more likely is that more networks will launch. A lot of newspapers are also launching blog networks and several already have 20+ blogs. As we mentioned earlier the AJC is approaching 50 blogs in its network. In 2006 we will see just how big newspaper blog networks will get. Will the average newspaper blog network size be 25? 50? 100? Will every newspaper have a network with as many blogs as Gawker Media or Weblogs, Inc.? How many will the New York Times and MSNBC.com have? These are the questions that will be answered next year. A list of independent and MSM blog networks can be found here.
