A couple of interesting articles for weekend reading, about competition in the blogosphere:

Wired on Engadget vs Gizmodo.

NY Times on PaidContent vs TechCrunch.

The thing that really stands out, especially from the Wired article, is the intensity of competition. If blogs were characterised by strong network effects, this could be seen as competition “for” the market, with each blog hoping to emerge as the winner later. But I don’t think network effects are that strong in blogs. Just as multiple newspapers can survive, so can multiple blogs. This suggests that the competition is more like good old fashioned horizontal competition. Strong horizontal competition usually means low profits. That’s great for consumers, and bad for investors.