CNET Networks (Nasdaq: CNET) is giving birth to new blogs, but will they be the strapping, free-wheeling entities that blogophiles dote on and media types coo over?
The company unveiled the CNET Blog Network yesterday, a collection of 14 blogs scripted by 18 seasoned industry sources about technology's influence on a variety of topics.
It being CNET, you know you're getting blogs devoted to tech-friendly things like cell phones, Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL), and open source. However, CNET is tossing in a few lifestyle blogs covering things like parenting, golfing, and politics (even if those, too, have a tech-friendly bent).
Blogging isn't a new art form for CNET. The company already has Crave and Webware, as well as an active community of journalist bloggers toiling away on ZDNet.
However, CNET's blogs haven't gotten a whole lot of loving from the media in the past. Perhaps it's because they have been lax in breaking Silicon Valley stories the way that tech industry blogs like TechCrunch, GigaOm, and ValleyWag have.
With minimal barriers to launching a blog, CNET has often turned to slick video productions to go where the home-based scribbler can't. These give CNET a definite edge when it comes to product reviews or tech tutorials that are superior with a visual punch. Bookmark CNETTV.com and it can become an addictive experience to see the latest clips. However, slick production values and high editorial standards often eat away at the renegade spontaneity of conventional blogging.
So even if CNET is making a deeper push into blogging, it may not feel that way if you prefer your entries served up hot, quick, and grammatically deficient. The free-range musings on Google's (Nasdaq: GOOG) Blogger or News Corp.'s (NYSE: NWS) MySpace has never been what CNET has been about, beyond the experiences you may find on some message boards through CNET's portfolio of dot-com properties.
CNET providing a broader blogging network may be more accurately interpreted as CNET's attempt to deliver snappy third-party content quickly. It could work, but either way, odds are you'll read about its success or failure on a different blog first.
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Longtime Fool contributor Rick Munarriz is a fan of CNET but misses the MP3.com days. He does not own shares in any of the companies in this story. He is part of the Rule Breakers newsletter research team, seeking out tomorrow's ultimate growth stocks a day early. The Fool has a disclosure policy.
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