Some people create blogs that guarantee fresh content every day. In spite of writing many blogs I find it hard to have something useful, interesting, or original to say everyday. I think I perform far better when I do things sporadically.

I know when I have fire or passion or interest, but I end up getting bored or burned out if I do the same thing every day. That means for me being a daily poster is probably a bad fit…although recently I bought a community site and sort put myself in the position where I think I will have to post daily.

Some fields will require that people fight to be first with the story to compete, but as more automated decentralized social communities form around different topics (say Digg: movies) many of the first with the news type blogs will die a slow marginalized death unless they do one or more of the following

• reinforce their market position using some type of social software
• create custom programs to help them find news quickly and hunt for it early in the morning
• create relationships with key industry sources
• are in fields so small that they have virtually no competition
• have a killer brand built up
• stick to what they know better than most others
• envoke emotional responses that make people want to come back
• offer free time saving software
• work in small groups where they cover each others holes
• start to offer more in depth information

ThreadWatch is a great community site, but increasingly I have seen the tech news bits being done better by Digg because they are more decentralized and automated. I think the answer for ThreadWatch to doing well is to focus more on the search stuff than the tech news information.