Also, I think we’ll have to see how large an audience he builds with the email. He talked about limiting it to 500 originally, as I recally, but the most recent edition of his newsletter (yes, I subscribed early on) says at the top that it has more than 1,600 readers. I suspect this is just a precursor to something else, though I don’t know what.

In any case, Jason is always interesting to watch.

People want content that’s valuable to them personally. And unlike downloadable content like audio, video or eBooks, blogs as they scale become nothing more than another news outlet…a commodity. This in turn alienates the original audience (usually rampant individualists) who then leave in favor of a new venue where their voice can be heard again.

So what is the net result? The people with the most valuable feedback leave in droves, which in turn makes the blog less fun for the writer(s) and leads to an unfulfilling blog.

But by tapping a core audience of faithful and limiting the audience, he creates exclusivity and value that is unmatched. And he gets only the feedback that is worthwhile to him.

Plus you have to look at this in the larger spectrum. His blog is not his only bully pulpit. It was just one piece of his twitter, podcasting, social networking bubble. So he uses these other venues to communicate to the larger world, while reserving his more thoughtful musings for a more engaged audience. I frankly think it’s brilliant. But I guess we’ll have to see how it works.

Bob