ABC's 'People of the Year' - Bloggers

Sammy at Palm Addict writes "ABC News have declared Bloggers to be their 'People of the Year'. 'A blog - short for "web log" - is an online personal journal that covers topics ranging from daily life to technology to culture to the arts. Blogs have made such an impact this year that Merriam-Webster named it the word of the year. This week, their influence has become readily apparent.'"

Comments

And you're just noticing now?

[LostCluster]

Matt Drudge's site could be considered to be a blog... that means bloggers have been influencing news events since at least 1998.

No, no we're not.

[jacobcaz]

As a blogger I feel compelled to say, "No, please don't hold blogging up as an ideal." Yeah, it's the power of the fourth estate in the hands of the masses, blah, blah, blah. Remember, by and large, the masses are asses.

Face it, 99% of all the blog material out there is shit (my own included). We need better blogging out there, not more of it!

They should have held up one or two exemplary examples of blogging done right - good content and timley information (and a lack of words like "dat", "ur", "OMG", "LOL", and "ROFLMAO")

<John Stewart>
Stop, please stop butchering language. You're hurting our vocabulary and you make yourself sound stupid
</John Stewart>

Re:Like all influencial Internet movements...

[SQL Error]

Ah yes, the dark side of Movable Type:

Blogs are infinitely more successful than Kuro5hin and the K5ers are going to stamp their feeties and hold their breath until they turn blue!

Kuro5hin: News for losers. People who don't matter.

Who are the real bloggers anyway?

[Regnard]

It's without a doubt that not all blogs are of the same weight, BUT...

Who or what will determine if your blog does matter? Page hits? Comments? Flames?

I guess it's all a popularity thing to me.

blog == over-rated

[SunPin]

Precisely. No talent clowns running software where they haven't the first clue of how it operates so, to camouflage there true scourge to humanity, they invent a hip synonym for "journal."

All those asshats can keep modding me down if they're so insecure but I'll still classify blogging as THE MOST OVER-RATED CONCEPT OF ALL TIME.

Re:Yes, completely apparant.

[Atzanteol]

Translation:

My personal agenda hasn't gained ground. Therefore blogs aren't working.

Dear blog haters... (A short manifesto)

[gregwbrooks]

OK, let's start with the givens most folks will admit to:

• Most blogs are crap. At least, if you're comparing them to wide/deep sources of general information.
• Blogs do clutter up the results of the major search engines.
• Some blogging/CMS tools are elegant, but many -- including many of the leading ones -- are pretty kludgy.

Now, here are the givens that too many Slashdotters won't admit to:

• The web isn't here to serve you and you alone. Maybe parts of it are, but on the whole it's a lot more like a community (and like a community resource, if you're talking about the infrastructure and tools such as Google) and a lot less like your l337 hax0r basement clubhouse. We geeks cannot simultaneously bitch that people should become more technically literate while at the same time shooing Aunt Edna away from the web because her MT weblog is boring and plastered with comment spam.

  You want to tell me you popped out of your mother's womb and started coding Perl before you could crawl? Please. We have all ascended a tech learning curve -- and the smart ones are continually looking for new ones to climb. Blogging is in its infancy in terms of both form and tools -- it will evolve for the same reasons you're not still coding COBOL -- people, left to themselves, will find increasinly efficient ways to communicate and transmit information.

• For millions of people, weblogs have created what many of us found incredibly valuable in our formative years: A cadre of People Who Understand. Most people (usually as adolescents), cast around in search of a group they can feel like they really belong to -- a group that understands and appreciates their viewpoint and contributions to the group. For many of us, it was finding someone who knew Linux, or hanging out with other D&D players, etc.

  But you know what? That big issue of finding a community of one's own isn't limited to geeks -- it's indicative of the prevasive loneliness that may be one of the most dominant characteristics of modern, first-world society.

  And blogs have had a huge impact on that.

  Today, there are thousands (perhaps millions) of interconnected online communities centered around blogs. No, they're not running FUDforum or other bulletin board software, but they still fit the core definitions of a community, whether online or off. Millions of people are learning more about how the internet works and information that was isolated is increasingly communal and (wait for it, RMS...) free.

  How can that be a bad thing?

Bloggers are "People of the Year"?!

[alien_blueprint]

As Homer J would say, it must have been a pretty slow year!