Late as I usually am to most parties, there’s been a lot of talk during the past couple of days about Shyftr and the way it would be aggregating content without attribution (although I guess they’ve backed away from that and will be providing author credit.)

ReadWriteWeb kind of summed up this discussion by placing it in context of the commoditization of creative content, primarily blogging.

I’m not as concerned about this concept as some people must be as I don’t make any income from blogging.  I would probably see it differently if blogging was a significant source of income for me.

I wrote a comment that summed up my current thoughts on this topic:

When 5,000 bloggers write about making money online, it’s rather hard to avoid commoditization of content.
Something to consider, though: you can copy someone’s words, but it’s harder to copy their tone, ideas, and point of view without inadvertently identifying the original source. I can do a decent Seth Godin imitation, but I can’t get it 100% right. However, if you read his words, even under a different author’s name, it’s hard to mistake who really wrote them. As for the rest of us, I think Mark Evans and other writers have got it right - we need to keep working on drawing people to our blogs. If only I knew how to make a widget. :)

What do you think?  Is this much ado about nothing?  Is blog content becoming a commodity? Is it a no-win scenario or a death spiral?  Or is this just another market reality to adapt to?

If you enjoyed reading this, please consider leaving a tip to help fund the activities of this blog.

If you're new here, welcome! Please consider subscribing to my RSS feed to stay up to date with my latest posts and articles. Thanks for visiting!