Stephen Downes

The buzz late last week and over the weekend was around AOL's planned foray into blogging, a foray unveiled by means of a private showing to some influential blogger (the amount of publicity generated shows that the marketing plan obviously worked). Jeff Jarvis says out loud what everybody has been thinking: "The real point: Ultimately, your content is more valuable than professional content." Think about that. When you open the morning mail, and you have a letter from your Aunt Mabel and a copy of a glossy magazine, which do you open first? A lot follows from this simple observation, and while I'm not sure how much of it AOL understands, it is clear that the get at least some of it.