TheWeblogWire a PRWeb Killer?
I think TheWeblogWire, which launched today, is a brilliant idea. Mashable broke the news….
The idea itself is interesting: The Weblog Wire allows companies to submit press releases, and bloggers to subscribe to these releases via RSS. Submitting a press release costs $99, or $149.99 if you want The Weblog Wire to write it for you.
Two reasons why I think this idea is a good one..
1) Bloggers want to break the news as quickly as possible, they will signup to receive the feeds.
2) Marketers want bloggers blogging about their product, services, etc.
TheWeblogWire’s success will be dependent on their own marketing strategy, unfortunately getting a little buzz from some blogs won’t be enough for them. It’s just not the right channel to reach the people submitting through other news wires, such as PRWeb. I’m excited to see what else, if anything, they have up their sleeves for marketing as I would really like to see them gain traction.
Cameron Olthuis is the Founder of
Hey Cameron, thank you for the awesome review. You hit the nail on the head with what we’re trying to accomplish/ user value proposition. We’ll be employing some cool marketing techniques. If you ever need anything or just want to chat, email me whenver. Thanks again!
-JLB
Cameron, first off, nice site, i dig the clean look.
glad you like our little project, I see Jason beat me to the commenting, but I had to add my 2 cents. There is alot of stuff up our sleeves, its just a matter of having only $500 to build this with.
So once we start generating revenue, expect alot of cool features.
thx,
Brian
Wow, you guys are quick!
Brian, thanks for the compliment. I kind of blanked on the whole ‘$500′ thing when I was thinking of your marketing strategy. Thanks for clearing that up.
I’ll be tracking your progress, be sure to keep me in the loop of with new features and progress,
Cameron - why will we bloggers subscribe to receive these newsfeeds?
Will - Bloggers will subscribe because they are itching to be the first to break stories. Now obviously it’s not for every blogger, but ones like Micro Persuasion, TechCrunch, Gigaom, etc. Provided the releases aren’t junk, like 99% of the ones that come from PRWeb are, I think it will be a valuable service to both parties. Imagine company X wants to annouce they just raised $10m, it’s a lot easier for them to send out a press release than email each individual blogger. Now this might not be the best example because that news would spread fast enough on it’s own, but I think you get the point.
This probably isn’t for blogs like yours and mine, but you never know.
Would you agree?
Ah, OK. So the value is in the service effectively seeding the press release to the bloggers.
I guess my question then would be:
If 99% of the releases on PRWeb are junk, why won’t they also be junk on TheWeblogWire?
I’m not trying to be difficult here (!) I’m just struggling to see why this service will succeed and appreciate you enlightening me
No problem, this is why I blog, to engage in these type of conversations. I wish it would happen with all my posts.
This service has a long way to go before it’s a home run. It’s a great idea with a lot of potential but it all depends on the execution. At this point there is nothing that will prevent the junk press releases, but I’m hoping there will be at some point. This would obviously take a huge chunk of potential business but I feel it’s the only way for it to ultimately succeed.
What are some things that you think will keep them from succeeding?
its always the simple concepts that get the most attention and bring in the big $$$. Clean and simple with a purpose. I see this really taking off as long as bloggers take the bait.
bookmarked for sure.
getting their message across.
unlike most companies they are having to market themselves to 2 different groups: the companies and the bloggers.
they have to prove to the bloggers that they have the latest greatest news releases all while proving to the companies that people are getting their message. it wont be an instant world changing success but as long as they can keep a steady increase of interest by both parties i feel it will work.
it all really boils down to how well they can reach their 2 seperate audiences. bloggers want it, companies want it. they just have to prove their worth to each.
Well said Andy
Guys, We set the initial price high, $99 to filter out garbage. After lots of complaints, we dropped it to $49, not sure how long that price point will last.
I think one way people can filter out garbage stuff is by customizing their feed selections, and not subscribing to the farming feed if you aren’t interested in it (not that we even have farming yet, but maybe eventually!). Also the price hopefully will filter out stuff, imagine if it was free, every spammer on the planet would have descended upon us like vultures.
Eventually people will be able to target the exact fields/subfields they are interested in receiving feeds of, and even the type of feed (audio, video, text).
hope that helps answer some questions, and thanks for discussing it. This discussion is more helpful to us than you can imagine (think about it, its a distributed focus group).
I’m still not convinced.
Once the initial enthusiasm and discussion has died down I see this as a big fat marketing challenge: TheWeblogWire must market itself to not one but two target audiences, both bloggers and marketing & press departments. This is tough but obviously do-able as the same is true for lots of products and services.
I guess there’s an SEO headstart from all these nice backlinks we’ve been generating in the blogosphere!
What I do love about this case study is the $500 budget behind it - that’s inspiring and cool. Good luck to you guys.
Will - I agree 100%. That’s a huge challenge, that’s the point I tried to make in the last paragraph.
Cheers!