Of course Ben (and Gary as well) has a huge following--in fact, he's one of the most read points blogs as we all know. And, in part, that's because he was a relatively early presence in the field and his blog had a history of producing some real and interesting content. I enjoyed Ben's early days blogging because he brought a real sense of wonder to the adventures he was having.

But he's lost a fair amount of that wonder, unless he's salivating over the First Residence, and like so many bloggers has traded off a certain amount of interesting content for credit card links. As I mentioned above, the free market drives this stuff, and it makes sense that bloggers are more likely to survive if they can make money off their avocations. That's why I don't get too incensed about the credit card links because in that view, they make sense.

On the other hand, you can't expand or even keep the number of suckers you have if occasionally you let slip that you know they're suckers. And the truth is, the average traveler (and don't be fooled, there's no way anyone can now believe Ben is the average traveler) may want to fly in the premium cabins and be called Mr. Super Platinum hotel guest, but Ben shouldn't expect to keep the majority of those travelers who know it's probably more realistic that they're going to fly Delta, United, and American on domestic trips rather than every freaking A380 out there no matter what weird routing is required to do it.

That's the danger in calling a traveler's need to fly Delta a lot "scary"--you reveal both that you think the average traveler is a sucker and that you're becoming more removed from the average traveler's experience--which eventually makes you less interesting to the majority of your readership. Add in a heavier mix of content-free material, and an inevitable drop off in readers will occur.

Few things on the internet stay static--just ask MySpace.