The Rise and Fall of Blogs

i-Love-to-blog writes "Blogs have revolutionized information delivery. They not only made the world much more smaller, but a lot more personal, united and un-afraid as well. Events like the September 11 attacks and the Iraq invasion made news channels take a back seat. Wired claimed blogs to be what Napster was to music. They even have a wager on Weblogs outranking the New York Times Web site by 2007. People got paid to blog. Then they got fired for that. Some lost money for blogging their ideas. Most just hand out links these days. When was the last time your favorite blogger talked sense? Have blogs reached a saturation point? Blogging burnout is a humorous look at the rise and fall of weblogs."

Comments

Rise and FALL?

[daniil]

This is what i call wishful thinking.

Seriously, the guy's daydreaming or something, as no matter how much he should wish for it to be so, blogs aren't going nowhere (unless, of course, the masses of bloggers somehow manage to cause the internet to collapse under its own weight -- which i doubt. But even if they do, then i'm sure someone will still start a LiveJournal-on-a-cow or something like that). They might not retain their current form, but still, blogs are here to stay. The traditional media -- newspapers, TV, radio -- will be the ones to go, if they don't adapt to the new situation. And this should please anyone that considers themselves a liberal person.

- [tt]

Re:Rise and FALL?

[SquadBoy]

No. You're google-fu is weak. Train more young grasshopper.

Seriously since I *really* learned how to used Google I've not had this problem. I know that the Google Hacking for Pen Testers book is touted as a security thing, and it does well there also. But it is also a really good way to improve your google-fu.

Re:Rise and FALL?

[MightyMartian]

There are a few blogs I read. Most read like someone's diary, and I certainly don't consider them under normal circumstances to be any kind of "source". I think they're to the Internet what web pages were six or seven years ago. Everyone had a web page where they had pictures of their ugly kids, their ugly dogs, their ugly house, their ugly car and a ton of ugly animated GIFs. Eventually these pages just faded away, largely because the ISPs hosting them merged or went out of business, but the interesting pages survived. I think it's going to be the same with blogs.

Re:Rise and FALL?

[ShieldW0lf]

The problems with traditional media in todays day and age are numerous.

Traditional media is full of propaganda, not only because the government occasionally directly demands it, but because if journalists print the truth they often get sued, fired or both. Or they lose their sources because they're deemed too dangerous to talk too and thus their career is over, soon to be replaced by another journalist who's willing to "play ball".

Traditional media also censors huge amounts of newsworthy stories because they are vulnerable to ridiculous lawsuits from companies damaged by the truth. There was a very high-profile example of this in recent history when reporters with high journalistic standards tried to do an expose on Monsanto.

There are also lots of instances of traditional media being skewed by the owners of the companies to further their own personal and political agendas. For example, CanWest, one of the two major media conglomorates in Canada has centralized editorials which are intentionally biased towards their ideology and published nation wide, and they have repeatedly fired reporters and editors who fail to fall into line. Although I am not as well informed about them, Fox News is another that I understand does this.

Traditional media used to consist of a multitiude of small media outlets that reported the truth as best they were able, and if they did not, it was easy to determine that this was the case because there were a multitude of sources for news that you could compare them against. But in modern times, the media is controlled by only a few large organizations and that safeguard is largely removed.

Blogs are shit as news sources go. They're not generally created by competent writers or subjected to editorial review, and they have absolutely no credibility when it comes to presenting an unbiased viewpoint. Their strength, however, lies in the fact that they are not centrally controlled, so by weeding through them with a critical eye you can move towards the truth.

In my opinion, traditional media still has a place in our world, but not in the form that it has evolved into. Large, centrally consolidated media conglomorates need to fall, or they need to operate in a fashion where they serve the function of making the news and editorials created by a vast multitude of smaller media outlets easier for the public to weed through more effectively. If there is another way for a huge media outlet to operate and be trustworthy, I don't see it.

As it stands now, they aren't a source of news and truth, they're a source of propaganda, and people are becoming more and more aware of that fact and thus turning their attention elsewhere. Like to blogs. Until and unless the media outlets cease to be a source of propaganda and earn the publics trust, people will turn to alternates like blogs in ever increasing numbers because for all their flaws, they're all we've got.

Re:Rise and FALL?

[LlamaDragon]

I was thinking something similar, but not at all humorously. I post things in my blog that are of some importance to me, and that I think my friends may find interesting. I recommend a website or a book. I show off some pics I took in the mountains. I post a few odds and ends about my daily life so that friends and family can keep up with anything interesting in my day to day life...if they want to. If they want to call me up or have dinner instead of reading the blog they're free to do so. Likewise, you don't have to read about my personal thoughts and views if you don't want to. And honestly, I'd prefer a lot of people DIDN'T read my blog, because it's going to be a waste of time for people who don't know me. In the event I really have some important message to get out to The People, I can rely on my friends to get the ball rolling, but I haven't had much to say to The People yet and I doubt I will.

So the entire world can go elsewhere and ignore my blog completely and we'll all be very happy without me having to "leave the internet" and without you having to ever see what I jot down.

Re:Rise and FALL?

[Absentminded-Artist]

That is not always the case. I have an interesting blog, IMO, but how many people does it appeal to? I cover neurological disabilities like AD/HD, Depression, and tic disorders and how to cope with them WITHOUT medication - and always with a bit of humor mixed in. Mine is a lone voice out there. I've been blogging for six months and I have 4 readers subscribed to my feed. Four. I've been searching for just as long for blogs like mine and can't find them so one would think that I would corner the market. And I do to the extent that the market allows. People find my site mostly by searching for info on the topics I mentioned. But how many people are looking for that info?

Wil Wheaton says he has a cold and 140 people wish him well. I write an essay on blogging or psychotropic meds and they are met with silence. That may sound like sour grapes, but the raw fact is that I'm not a celebrity. He is. Getting heard above the din of thousands of blogs is tough to do without money, connections, or fame. My site is simply lost in the confusion no matter how well written I think it is. Check out this excellent news story about the problem: http://observer.guardian.co.uk/business/story/0,69 03,972764,00.html. Freedom of speech is nothing more than an exercize in vain futility if nobody is there to hear what you have to say.

So here's a shamless plug. Read my blog
http://thesplinteredmind.blogspot.com/ and let me know there whether I'm wasting a bit of your life by speaking or not. Heaven knows I could use the activity in the comments section. ;)

The Real Question is:

[BWJones]

The real question is how many blogs are actively maintained and is there any useful information in those blogs that are maintained? I started "blogging" per se back in 2001 making irregular entries up until February of this year, when I decided to post more regularly. However there is content there that gets an incredible amount of traffic. I get several hundred Google hits/day for everything from specific images to reviews I did for Macintosh specific stuff like CPU upgrades and commentary about the science of vision loss when using Viagra. Surprisingly, there are many search terms where my blog comes up in the first three Google and Yahoo searches, and my site is a very small personal site where I write mostly for friends and family. Friends blogs that cover more specific issues such as venture capital or more common interest subjects garner traffic in the thousands to hundreds of thousands of hits per day. However, there are many blogs with infrequent entries, and low traffic levels that may in fact contain very useful information. The trick (search companies know) is to find that information and rank it according to its usefulness, playing off of the Long Tail Model of Chris Anderson.

Over-time

[TrippTDF]

I think blogs are still at an early stage, and their full potential has yet to be realized.

I like the idea of a future where virtually everyone is putting their ideas down for others to read. As the internet generation gets older, I think it will be more common for everyone to keep a weblog. The benefit to business is huge... imagine if every office worker was required to spend a few minutes a week on a company weblog, posting their ideas for managers and others to look at, or maybe if there was a company message board setup like Slashdot?

Journals and blogs

[jfengel]

At least to my mind, a "journal" is an online diary, intended primarily for yourself and your friends. A "blog" is a soapbox or editorial page directed at the outside world. The difference is the size of the target audience.

Sometimes there's news in a blog, too. When news happens to a journal-keeper (e.g. you suddenly find yourself living in a war zone), your journal may well become a blog. A blog could also have news if it's for something other than world news. When a sourceforge developer posts daily news updating his progress, I'd call that a blog rather than a journal. Same with a politician recording his daily meetings.

The smaller the target audience, the more I'd call it a "journal" and less of a "blog". Most people think of "blogs" in terms of world news, for the largest possible audience. Since 99.999% of journal keepers live where there is little news of interest to the outside world, those who wish to be bloggers mostly get to write opinions rather than news. Those can be interesting, especially if you happen to find one who is very insightful.

The difference becomes one of the writer's attitude rather than the actual content. I keep a journal, and sometimes post political analysis, but it's only for my friends, and it's mixed in with other personal or random crap. The same political analysis, word for word, posted with the intent of attracting attention and discussion, would be a blog.

I'm not getting these definitions from a dictionary; it's my analysis of how I've seen the words used. YMMV.

Re:Journals and blogs

[diverman]

Amen. Previous poster really needs to expand his definition to one that has existed for a very long time.

Re:Point of blogs

[Anonymous Coward]

I have had an online dear diary that none of the real-world friends know about. Online friends do because they're removed from the situation and as long as I give an unbiased description they can give unbiased advice.

I sometimes wish I had done that. Unfortunately, I met my current gf through my site. Now I can't write much of anything, since so much of what I do involves her, and she doesn't want me writing about her.

Next time I'll keep it secret. Hell, I'm posting this anonymously because I know she googles for my nicks...

Re:Is variety so bad?

[AKAImBatman]

The problem with so many blogs like this is that they lead to a low signal to noise ratio. i.e. How does one go about finding useful blogs when the blog listings are full of garbage? Not to mention, how do you keep Ms. Kitty Owner from spilling her junk over to useful blogs via the community features?

That's why it's a problem. If those blogs could somehow be removed from searches for useful blogs (topical index, maybe?), then everyone could be happy. :-)

My Primary Source of News on 9/11

[Carnage4Life]

I was pretty glued to my local news channel on 9/11 (here in New York). Is anyone actually going to sit there and tell me in all seriousness that their primary source of news and info on 9/11 was somebody's blog?

Actually mine was Slashdot and Slashdot is a blog. I don't watch TV and I get most of my news online. Slashdot happened to be the only news-ish website that wasn't buckling under the weight of the traffic on 9/11.