Barry Diller wants to rudely turf Mr. Jeeves but the blogosphere is fighting back. A blog created by an ex-Ask Jeeves employee has launched a campaign to stop IAC/ Interactive from sending the online butler into premature retirement. For those of you unfamiliar with Diller's evil plan, IAC wants to rid AskJeeves of its long-time mascot and give the site a new name - Ask.com. Looks a lot like a make-work project to me given that Mr. Jeeves is one of the few cool things the search engine has going for it. I wonder how much brand value was associated with Mr. Jeeves when IAC acquired AskJeeves earlier this year for $1.9-billion?  Speaking of popular dot-com mascots, whatever happened to Pets.com's once-ubiquitous sock puppet?

If you ask most people why they blog, they'll probably tell you it's the ability to write/rant about topics of interest, engage with other people or simply indulge themselves in a vanity project. But in the wake of AOL's $25 million purchase of Weblogs.com, it turns out a lot of people are in to blogging for the money if the chatter about valuation is any indication. The culprit is Tristan Louis, who cleverly examined Weblogs' blogs and came up with a valuation based on the number of links (using Technorati as the tool). He figured each link into a blog is worth $564.54. This means my blog is worth about $146,000, even though it generates a minimal amount of advertising. Mind you, I've done a terrible job trying to get advertising because it's not why I write this blog - although a few bucks to pay the mortgage is nothing to dismiss. It's fascinating how the slightest sniff of money causes the true capitalists to come out of the woodwork. That said, there are blogs worth something so don't be surprised if there are more deals done by companies like AOL looking for traffic. Om Malik's Gigaom.com, for example, probably receives huge amounts of traffic and it's worth about $1.1 million using Louis' formula. Do you think Om would sell if he was approached? As much as Om loves his forum, I think anything is probably for sale at the right price. My biggest concern about the fallout of the AOL-Weblogs deal is that people who blog will be corrupted by the money. (sounds rather naive, doesn't it?) Rather than blogging because they love it, they will do it, in part, for the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. I guess this is an inevitable part of the market's evolution given that many blogging tools  have already been financed and snapped up. But it doesn't mean you have to like it.