"...but the mission of SportsBlogs Nation is to make lots and lots of money."
"That got him thinking about the formula itself. One element was partisanship, certainly, but another ingredient, he suspected, was loneliness – like what he felt when he started Kos. It reminded him of how homesick he felt as a Chicago Cubs fan in the Bay Area.
Hmmm. Moulitsas recruited a friend, Tyler Bleszinski, to start a blog about the Oakland A's with the same blazing passion as Daily Kos. "Tyler was my proxy," he says. Athletics Nation took off, and soon Moulitsas and his pal were launching sites for other teams – the Cubs, the Yankees, even fantasy league teams – under the banner SportsBlogs Nation. Today, the homepage averages 3 million visitors a month, about 20 percent as much traffic as Daily Kos.
Reader comments comprise the bulk of the content, just as they do at Kos, but the forums aren't nearly as raucous. No one calls for the abolition of Israel or the impeachment of George W. Bush; politics is the only prohibited topic. Another difference: human interaction. Fans gather for games, and in the Bay Area the A's treat them like VIPs. Not only does legendary general manager Billy Beane actually post to Athletics Nation, he has given fellow bloggers credit for helping to shape his thoughts.
Moulitsas says his goal for Daily Kos is to reenergize the progressive movement, but the mission of SportsBlogs Nation is to make lots and lots of money. Someday. Last year, Moulitsas and Bleszinski considered looking for venture funding. They talked to multimedia mogul Mark Cuban and San Diego Padres executive Paul DePodesta, but nothing came of it. No problem, says Bleszinski. The site now gets enough traffic that it'll soon support itself with advertising. "That doesn't mean we won't take VC funding at some point, but we're not aggressively seeking it," Bleszinski says."
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10/06/2006 03:50:00 PM
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