CORRECTION: Steve Rubel has clarified that his post is predictive, not reporting a done deal. So I'm revising my own post accordingly:
Steve Rubel of Micropersuasion muses about one possible participatory media organization of the future : eBay and Craig's List Will Merge in 2005 to Create a P2P Media Giant. It's a prediction, not a fact right now, but here is how he thinks it would work:
eBay and Craig's List are already the leaders in facilitating person-to-person commerce. They have also been steadily growing closer together - in August eBay acquired a 25% stake in Craig's List. In 2005 they will take this to the next level when eBay acquires the rest of Craig's List it doesn't own and then enables customers to blog right on their unified site. This will usher in a new era where citizen journalism is directly funded by person-to-person commerce. eBay community bloggers will be able to earn revenues either from their own auction listings or from classified sponsors who choose to advertise on their eBay weblog. In short, eBay will empower consumers to establish a micro version of the media business model that has been around for generations, but only accessible to the big boys.
The top people from Ebay and Craigslist will be here at Harvard next week for the Berkman Center's Internet & Society conference. It will be interesting to hear their perspectives on this.
Rebecca, it's a prediction, not a fact. I will revise my post to make this clear.
Posted by: Steve Rubel | December 04, 2004 at 04:01 AM