Blogs and advertising

Kottke has an interesting point on the increasing number of ads in blogs. I guess people need to defray the costs of hosting, and I'm inclined to accept that the presence of ads doesn't immediately disrupt the look and feel of a page. (Of course, I may be biased myself - see the tiny little ad space in the sidebar?)

As I commented over at the original kottke article, I think ads do disrupt the aesthetics somewhat, but I don't think they really spoil the underlying self-publishing ethos. After all, there are ads in the alternative press. What's different to me are developments like the rise of the Nick Denton stable of blogs (Gawker, Gizmodo, Wonkette etc.) where blogging is developed specifically as a means of generating profits. I wonder what the effects of that on the blogosphere are?

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