James Joyner has surveyed some blogger (myself included) on the Open Source (Pajamas) Media roll-out and has also culled some relevant blog-post quotes on the subject.

As James notes, I was not in the initial round of invitations sent out by PJ Media, but did have some discussion with them back in the summer and agreed to become a content provider (to the point of being sent paperwork that I faxed back and everything). However, I never heard back in any capacity.

My assumption was that the goal was to be an advertising consortium, with the advantage over blogads being that there would be a central actor soliciting for advertisers. I also thought it would be an attempt to syndicate blog content.

Like most bloggers, I am interested in raising my profile, so I was initially interested. However, at this point, it is unclear to me what OSM wants to be. One thing that about their front page that immediately struck me is that it doesn’t emphasize blogs. The only direct blog link is to Jeff Goldstein’s liveblogging of the launch. Really, the more I look at the page, the more I am struck by how un-bloggy it is (just having a blogroll or links to other pages that have links to blogs doesn’t count. The mystery of what the goal here is thickens.

John Hawkins fully captures my view on the enterprise:

For example, is OSM trying to be the Huffington Post, Blogads, the Associated Press, or something inbetween?

Hawkins also has links to other blogger-reactions to the launch.

And John and I aren’t the only confused ones. Kevin Alyward, at the event launching OSM, wrote:

I’m here and I still don’t completely get it, but keep listening…

Looking at their site (here) there is no obvious answer.

And hey, I’m not even on the Blogroll (which is appears to encompass most of the TTLB–what’s up with that?)

A side observation: I wonder how much the fact that OSM is an analog to MSM was behind the selection of the moniker? (And this is one weird disclaimer about the name–so their name is really just OSM, and not “Open Source Media”).

And here’s an observation about something that strikes me as especially odd: if you look at OSM member sites (even Roger L. Simon’s) there is not graphic, button, ad or anything that indicates that it is an OSM site. Roger has a bunch of misc. ads on his right sidebar. Jeff Goldstein and Glenn Reynolds still have blogads running. (Now I will note: it was my initial understanding that one could be associated with PJ Media/OSM and still have ads from other sources–but listening to James I get the impression that that changed, but I am not certain).

At a minimum, it would seem that the the launch would include the blogs in question would be given a small graphic with a link to display on their pages. Heck, the day I started the Academy at the TTLB I provided a graphic…