For some time now I’ve been wrestling with how to fight for web hits, why news and contemporary event blogs are losing eyes, etc.

It’s a tough crowd, out there.

The following is the type of website story that can get a quite a few hits:

The Most Fab Or Drab Celebrity Outfits Of The Week

There are three components here:
Buzzfeed
Fashion
Celebrities

Combine those and you get more than 50,000 hits.

Yet important topics on any current event website will get but a tiny fraction of that attention. HuffPo has done well in the past because they got all sorts of people on the train early, so it’s now sort of the go-to site for many. But I wonder if HuffPo is growing anymore or just getting by on momentum.

Concept-centric is quite different than Image-centric, as far as creating a product for people to consume.

“Fashion” is very much about visual appeal, without words. It’s a a form of communication, without an alphabet.

“Celebrity” is a form of philosophy, a statement about being, and ethics, and society. It’s status without politics.

I don’t know what the next big thing is, as far as the web, blogging, etc. I do suspect that writing tomes on social ills will appeal only, ever, to a small crowd. Pictures are good, but unless one is the creator then whatever is seen on one IP can be copied to another IP.

The parallel in music is apparent - create something and it will be copied quickly, and the originator may never get the credit. On occasion I walk by a music classroom where there are always a crowd of young, talented musicians. No matter how good they are, I ask myself if they can ever make a go of it, as far as their music returning to them a living, even if only to make up for all the costs involved.

Finding, and keeping, a market in this age of 24/7 instant access to everything is quite the challenge.