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Blog reading up 58% in U.S.

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the time-wasted-up-same dept.

mshiltonj writes "Americans are becoming avid blog readers, with 32 million getting hooked in 2004, according to new research, showing that blog readership has shot up by 58% in the last year."

2 of 231 comments (clear)

  1. Personality. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    That's because America is a cult of personality. People love following other people and drooling all over them and knowing everything they do, including when they take a shit or all of the drama about how their doctor is switching them from xanax to klonopin and how they got wasted the night before with some dude they met at a club that had some percosets to share. Honestly, who cares?

    And nothing has changed, except that we have renamed "home pages" to "blogs". There is no difference between a blog and a person's home page, except that one usually is now automated (as far as having an interface to use for adding content) and the other is manually done by editing HTML files.

    This is like calling murder and rape a "misdemeanor" and claiming that "felonies are down!". No, they aren't. You're just calling them something else now.

    Personally, I dont' read ANY BLOGS, unless you count Slashdot. But slashdot is hardly a "blog". When friends or acquaintances offer me their livejournal (or other blog) urls, I tell them "I"m sorry, but I don't read livejournals". It's nothing intended as offense toward them. I just don't waste my time reading things that I don't care about .

    The thing that offense ME about blogs is that you should take the time to have a conversation with ME and tell ME about your life and what's up. Rather than plastering every daily event and thought to your blog that all of your real life and online buddies read hungrily like little cult followers, take the time to have a conversation with me one on one and tell me things that you want to share with me. Blogs are distant, impersonal and filled with crap. Filter out the crap and TALK WITH ME.

  2. You Got Dooced! by krgallagher · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Here is a related article about people loosing their jobs because of what they have posted to blogs. It raises interesting questions about freedom of speech.

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