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

I'm so honored!

[kaedemichi255]

My first award ever! *tears*

Re:I'm so honored!

[Seumas]

I won Person of the Year from ABC this year! lol How damn trendy. I'm so disapointed. Here are some photos from last month's shoot that a photographer friend did of me. And here's some photosohpped artwork that some fans sent in, of me! I took a dump today and it was a funny brownish color with some yellow in it. I use Colgate toothpaste. Did I mention, I'm Person of the Year according to ABC? What a bunch of conformists.

Mood: Depressed
Music: Black Tape For A Blue Girl

[pump up my ego] - [read other people pumping up my ego]

This is a much better selection than 1998

[Tezkah]

"E-mail" is our person of the year!

A Zen question...

[Eric Giguere]

If a blog is updated and nobody reads it, does it actually matter?

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.

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?