On the other hand, I can see someone wanting to pull together a group of related sites. That makes sense to me and probably has value for all concerned, but these jumbles of unrelated blogs don’t.

pcunix, love your comment!

If all your time, expertise, knowledge and sweat went into one blog, that blog would probably become brilliant.

However, are you subliminally trying to limit competition so you can have the whole ball of wax all to yourself? That’s a joke by the way, but was the first thing that popped into my head when reading that you have a network, but then go on to seemingly discourage others from starting one.

I see your points, it does seem a little like Playboy back in the 60’s saying “don’t get into the adult magazine business it sucks” when they’re raking in gazillions a year producing an adult magazine! A poor comparison, but the first thing that I could think of (OK I’m a perv).

Steve Pavlina’s site is great example as to why,

I’m not sure if they are just reaching for a Weblogs, Inc. number of blogs, figuring that’s what the next buyer will want. I think the key is to rationalize what blogs should be launched upfront, at least for the core. Around this core, of course, you can develop some more speculative ideas or blogs that may spark some buzz, benefiting the network.

In the final analysis, I don’t think the number of blogs really matters. You can always combine with another small network anyway-but you have to have compelling blogs.

While I say more power to the people who want to blog for networks, for me personally the whole allure of blogging is its independent nature.

It’s so obvious some of these are just hoping to “do a Calacanis” without understanding why that happened how it did. Companies are going to be smarter this time about just snatching up things based on a “hot trend”.