The Butt Ugly Weblog

Somewhere else. Personally I believe that Finland is too small for "professional blogging". The critical mass just isn't there. Or is it?

It goes down to what is considered blogging, what's not. For example, sektori.com could in some sense be considered a blog, and they just might be big enough. The line between journalism and blogging just blurs there. But are they really a separate thing? If so, can you blog professionally, or are you a journalist then?

--tuomas, 20-Mar-2006

If we have magazines that cater for a thousand people, why couldn't blog networks survive?

And no, I don't think you get to be a journalist if you're a professional blogger. You can have a journalistic blog, though.

--JanneJalkanen, 21-Mar-2006

As this concerns my business, I feel obliged to answer...

I don't think there is any more business in blogging than there is in emailing.

The thing is, however, that most Finnish companies are happily unaware of blogs and the opportunities that go with them. Most executives don't even know what a blog is. In Finland, which is seemingly technology oriented and modern, this is simply shocking. With business blogs we have missed the boat long ago and we need to swim fast.

I see that the business in blogs is at the moment in teaching the potential bloggers and their organisations what blogging is and what the opportunities are.

Another business area is blog aggregation. This is why I will open soon a business blog aggregation service at blogs.suomalainen.fi (or www.yritysblogit.fi). This is the first step towards making the executives see that blogs are not personal diaries. They make business sense.

However, even a blog aggregation service is not something you can yet charge for. The business at the moment is everything around it: consulting, advertising and the like.

But we are getting there.

--Sami Suomalainen, 22-Mar-2006

Concentrating on business aggregation does not sound good, IMHO. A lot of the good stuff is coming from pro amateurs, and I fear that drawing the line may be very difficult.

Consultancy is always good. The people who made the big money during the last bubble, too, were consultants...

Finland is technology oriented, yes. But funnily I've never seen blogs as being technology oriented.

--JanneJalkanen, 22-Mar-2006

I think the site suomalainen has understood some basic things all wrong.

If they talk about business blogs and list F-Secure´s blog that´s ok, but you cannot also list the Helsingin Sanomat blogs and say they belong to the same category as the F-Secure blog. F-Secure is a business blog and the Hesari blogs are blogs run by a media company (for business purpose). This is two totally different things.

Then when it comes to blogging and business I do not see why it wouldn´t be possible in Finland. Blogs are just a new format to publish content. If there are news sites that make money in Finland you can make money on blogging too. When it comes to web business in general it´s all about traffic anyway. The more traffic the more potential you have to make money.

I´m currently trying to prove all this by creating a finnish blog network. The concept is somewhat broader than just a blog. The sites are built up around a news blog, but have other features also. Well, this is no 100 % blog concept. Wish me luck - I´ll need it :-)

--nico, 26-Mar-2006

Wehey! Good luck, nico. There's business potential in blogs, yes, but you have to be quite careful in how you establish and position your network...

--JanneJalkanen, 27-Mar-2006