ingy

It is far and away one of "the" most successful promos each year. It is dependable, reoccurring and a giant hit with readers.

kokonutz

I have been loving the one-upsmanship over the AA/UA DOJ lawsuit.

It seems to be a race to see who was the LEAST surprised by it. Because, you know, they saw it coming the mostest.

FlyFasterFlyFarther

Support for this claim?

I'm surprised by how many bloggers haven't been writing about the DOJ suit to stop the merger. And I haven't seen lots of bloggers writing that they saw it coming? Take, for instance, VFTW:

gpapadop

I had this to say because I always have something to say

It is amazing to me seeing how many “aviation” expert bloggers are out there telling us what they thought of the DOJ lawsuit to block the AA-US merger and yet, I do not remember a single one predicting such a move!

kokonutz

Yeah, Gary was the least not surprised (he expected negotiated settlement, not lawsuit). But:

http://millionmilesecrets.com/2013/0...ger-cancelled/

http://boardingarea.com/thewandering...s-no-surprise/

It's always interesting when points and miles bloggers turn their attention to the aviation industry in general. And by interesting, I mean it suddenly looks like OMNI/PR.

Astrophsx

Seems like several bloggers are trying to promote the SPG card by posting the same thing. MMS has a 5 parter, while Milevalue using a misleading title with "free" travel while forgetting about taxes and resort fees.

sbm12

There is currently an 11-post series on SPG in progress, including this awesome nugget:

josephstern

The "change" to the program is more than likely just the new affiliate link.

hotelmotel

A recent 2+ week trip with limited internet access gave me a great chance to see the bloggers in a new light. Rather than daily (or thrice-daily) checks of my RSS, I basically had to comb through 200-250 new posts at the end of the trip.

It was eye-opening how little content there was. I think I read less than 10 posts out of all the new ones in the backlog.

A ton of junk on SPG credit card offer, MMS and TPG basically turning into giveaway blogs, and some political stuff rom VFTW.

Made me wonder why the heck I'm reading these things.

kokonutz

Oh NOES! The frog who was boiling slowly hopped out of the water!

gpapadop

I ask myself this every day. And they keep coming and coming...

hobo13

I have found that the number of blog entries I read has been plummeting.

When I was a kid, we only got about 5 TV channels. Yet, we watched TV every night as a family. Now we get about 300 channels, and we NEVER watch TV (unless it's college football season). It just seems like all the channels have the same crap.

The blog world is the same -- when it was just Ben and Gary, I read everything they wrote. Now my reader is just full of crap (despite only having maybe 5-6 miles / points blogs in it), and I usually just click the headline.

I guess Randy claims that he usually sees trees before the rest are seeing the forest. Just makes me wonder why that forest needs to have 75 blogs all saying the same thing by this time next year.

ingy

that's a simple question to answer: Money

BA uses a CPM model for their ads. so much per thousand impressions ( not clicks), just impressions. the more blogs, the more readers, the more MONEY

84fiero

I've noticed the same regarding TV stations and the miles blogs (other internet communities, too)...you get a point of personal over-saturation for one thing. And I think the more "channels" (or bloggers) you have, the more everyone grasps at straws to stand out and be relevant. Often resorting to jumping the shark.

Take MTV, used to be Music Television. At one point there were I think, 3 different MTV channels. Whatever it is that's left today, is full of pablum like 16 and Pregnant.

But I guess as long as they sell ads it will keep going.

Ah, that's very interesting to know!

I can barely sift through BA anymore, so many blog on the roster. When it comes to BA, I mainly only visit Seth, Ric Garrido, and Frequent Miler. If those 3 ever spun off onto their own, I'd never visit BA again. But if I wanted to look into others, I'd get dizzy trying to find what's interesting/relevant to me with their laundry list of bloggers nowadays.

I guess in many things in life, quantity pays more than quality.

hobo13

I'm always surprised at people who say they actually visit these blogs. Why wouldn't you just use a reader? If I really care about the comments, I do click through, but otherwise, just give me the text.