Economy of the Blogosphere

This guy is getting two law school credits for keeping a blog this semester. More power to him, I guess. He doesn't say exactly where or how, but implies he did more than a little outreach to drum up interest.

Meanwhile this guy took out an actual ad for his blog, in the margins of Carol Althouse's blog. This interests me as a purely commercial ploy, implying that he sees his blog as an important academic calling card, a way to garner some credibility, a way to get noticed. I mean, well, duh, that's kind of obvious, isn't it? What I mean is, the stakes for blogs seem to be rising. I'd be curious to know if blogs have begun to come up (for better or for worse) in tenure discussions. It's inevitable they will, but has it begun?

I've noticed an upwelling of interest lately in blog-as-research or blog-as-scholarship, at least in the academic law community. The concensus seems to be... yeah... well, sorta... sometimes... you know...

[This is me, too lazy and it's too late to search out any links to support my last paragraph. Sue me, I'd rather go make chocolate chip cookies.]