Back in 2003 Markos Moulitsas told Howard Dean that Dean could become President if he upgraded his Web site, from a blogging platform to a Community Network Service.
I called that "scaling the intimacy."
Dean didn’t, Bush was re-elected, but Markos took his own advice. The Daily Kos is now the unofficial Democratic Party clubhouse, with tens of thousands of users, and hundreds of thousands of irregulars.
If I want readers for something I write, if I really care about that, I no longer just post it here. It’s suicidal (to my interests) not to post it there as well.
I point this out not to pat Markos on the back, but to point out to all of you that, in any business, standing still is not an option. You grow or you die. And Markos is, above all other things, a businessperson. So he has begun the task of up-scaling yet-again. Kos is going to ditch its present Scoop system and go with Ruby on Rails, an open source Web framework.
Unlike Scoop, which is optimized for discussion, Rails can be optimized in many different directions. It can be used for ecommerce, for file hosting, for asset management, or group chat, or sharing audio files. It can also be used as a blogging platform.
While the media is just now talking about blogging, and some trendsetters are moving toward the CNS space, in other words, Kos is preparing to become a sort of "AOL for Liberals", a service capable of going in many directions, all at once. This also means Kos has many different business models open to him, many different ways in which people can put money into his business and feel they’re getting value-for-money.
It’s important to note that this has been organically, from the bottom-up. Here are some of what I consider his keys to success:
- Good Programmers – Unless you have someone as committed to the
technology as to the content or the marketing of something, you don’t
have a business. - Clear Mission — Knowing what your own site is about, and sticking
to that, is essential to success. If you want to do something else, you
have to start something else. - Benchmarks — Kos has always had a thing for statistics, and for
the customer view of those statistics. Good management uses statistics
to set benchmarks for future growth. - Transparency — Kos doesn’t hide his hand, but shares his business
strategy with his users. It’s in delivering that you gain success.
There’s no secret sauce other than hard work.
Right now
DailyKos is probably worth millions of dollars, although that money
would likely dribble out of a new owner’s hands pretty quickly if Kos’
vision were lost. With this upgrade he has the opportunity to build a
business worth tens of millions, perhaps hundreds of millions.
Who’d a thunk you could make an honest fortune in politics?
