Blogging for $; Bubble 2.0; Heads Roll at AOL

Top Stories for the Week of August 21 – August 25

What’s in a blog? Windows Live claims to be the world’s largest blogging service so Scobleizer decided to define what a blog is and measure who had the most. This prompted an argument with Windows Live’s Mike Torres over whether private spaces are blogs, and Scoble asked whether empty spaces count, public or not? /Message gripes about Scoble’s public-vs.-private distinction–of course private spaces are still blogs–and breaks down the value of splogs, plazas and link blogs. Meanwhile, splogs may destroy everything, writes Micro Persuasion, quoting studies showing that up to 56 percent of active English-language blogs are spam.

But the blog-value debate quickly degenerates into whether “A-list” bloggers and readers are more valuable to advertisers than others–an idea that’s too Old Media for words, says Publishing 2.0. So what do those A-List bloggers really make? Lots, estimates business2blog: from a low of $720,000/year for Michael Arrington’s TechCrunch to around $7 million annually for Drew Curtis at Fark. Scripting News chimed in with real numbers: $2.3 million last year on expenses of roughly $1,000 a month. Silicon Beat admired Michael Arrington’s star turn at CNN Money and just knew he was going to be big, but wonders where that “1.5 million regular” readers figure came from.

Maybe Web 2.0 is a special kind of bubble, writes John Battelle, without insane IPOs but also with companies that fail to fail. Other signs of the bubble: Friendster recapitalized at $10 million and Facebook is valued at $500 million (via SiliconBeat), plus online video startup Grouper sold to Sony for $65 million (via Mashable!). If no one’s bought your company yet, TechCrunch recommends Bullshitr, which automatically creates everything you need to sell it to Yahoo. And hurry up, before anyone else hears Tim Berners-Lee dissing Web 2.0 as Web 1.0 (via Read/Write Web).

TechCrunch covers the cluster$!%& over AOL’s user-data disclosure: Heads rolled, including the CTO, but are they the responsible heads? Stephen Colbert’s got tips for protecting your identity on AOL, like don’t type using your dominant hand so the password won’t appear in your handwriting. Mashable! also describes YouTube’s launch of branded channels, starting with a Paris Hilton channel that has 13 videos. Maybe ads on these channels will solve YouTube’s ludicrous bandwidth expenses, but if not, the Wall Street Journal reports YouTube video ads are on the way.

In politics, the whereabouts of kidnapped Fox News correspondent Steve Centanni and cameraman Olaf Wiig are still unknown, but Palestinian prime minister Mahmoud Abbas claims the two are safe, blogs Huffington Post. A previously unknown Palestinian group, the Holy Jihad Brigades, demanded the release of unspecified “Muslim prisoners” within 72 hours in exchange for the two. Speaking of impossible demands, Pat Buchanan told Fox’s Bob Beckel that Hispanic immigrants aren’t assimilating into America because they’re into “rap culture” (via Think Progress). And Judge Anna Diggs Taylor, who ruled against the Bush administration in her NSA wiretapping decision, has a potential conflict of interest, writes Blogs for Bush: She’s on the board of a foundation that donated money to the plaintiff, ACLU of Michigan. Even if this helps the administration’s appeal, what’s really needed is a full-blown Supreme Court review of the NSA program, blogs Captain’s Quarters.

JonBenet Ramsey murder suspect John Mark Karr awaits extradition to Colorado (via Foxnews.com). A writer says he has already secured rights to the Karr family’s story, according to NBCSandiego.com, which also reports Karr’s distress at appearing in court in an orange jumpsuit. Karr isn’t half as upset as Boulder residents, who are back in the media spotlight yet again (via Boulder, CO). Bizarre off-screen behavior got Tom Cruise canned from his sweet production deal with Paramount, blogs Gossipist, who can see scolding Lindsay Lohan but not somebody who can make three phone calls and own half of Korea. Here’s a round-up of Cruise headlines plus all the headlines newspapers should be using. And despite overwhelming blogger hype, Defamer reports that Samuel Jackson’s Snakes on a Plane just barely edged out Will Ferrell’s Talladega Nights for the weekend box-office crown.