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?

[binarstu]

Why will the traditional media be going anywhere? Blogs serve an interesting and occasionally useful purpose, but will probably always lack the relative objectivity of good news sources such as NPR. For that reason, traditional reporting and news will continue to serve an important role. Claiming that blogs will replace and/or obviate traditional media is, it seems to me, overstating their importance.

Re:Rise and FALL?

[AKAImBatman]

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

Lord, I hope the majority are leaving the Internet. What your cat did today is not news for the entire world to hear. Nor is your diary-online. While a lot of people get a kick out of such Voyuerism, the rest of the civilized world doesn't really want to hear about it.

What we do want to hear about are intelligent thoughts on current issues, professional quality articles, "man on the street" information from hot areas (e.g. Iraqi bloggers), and other very USEFUL types of information. These bloggers are hopefully not going anywhere. :-)

Re:Rise and FALL?

[anagama]

Today, I wish blogs would fall. This comes from two days of intensive googling while I learned how to netboot an original ibook (no boot from USB, no firewire at all) because of a dead cdrom. I was all over the place: open firmware, tftp, bootp, dhcpd, yaboot, and endless useless tangents. I can't tell you how many pages would come in google where my search terms appeared, but were in completely unrelated parts of some knucklehead's blog. For example, blogger mentions ubuntu for ppc is available (a little one liner -- he never used it), and then makes some offhand comment about Apple's proprietary "netboot" server 8 months and 45,000 words later. This kind of junk poisoned a lot of my searches -- I'm not that clear on what my exact searches were anymore (I was up all night) but I can say I was annoyed.

Still, I got ubuntu running on the machine by netbooting the installer off my lan, than installing over the internet. Not bad for a machine with none of the regular routes open for installation.

Re:Rise and FALL?

[daniil]

The way i saw it, he was pretty much screaming "BLOGS HAVE GOT TO GO!!!" all over the place. And if such flamebait gets posted to Slashdot, then surely there's no harm in posting some myself in return :7

Re:Rise and FALL?

[davide101]

People that have something to say will have successful blogs. People will link to them. Discuss them. Search engines will learn how to rank these higher. Those with nothing to say will get no traffic, no links, and fail. Just like in real life, some people say valuable things and other people waste a little bit of your life by speaking. Anyway, isn't Slashdot a group blog with comments like any other? I can't tell the difference.

Re:Rise and FALL?

[jfengel]

Blogs are going nowhere. They hype surrounding them will certainly die down. The question is, where will they settle?

Occasionally, a blog will truly break news. Will that news continue to get extra airtime in traditional media because it came from the relatively novel source of a blog?

For the mass of purely opinion blogs, will they become like op-ed pages, or be marginalized as the opinions of nobodies?

So they're not going anywhere. There will be more and more of them. They'll get less and less play in news stories titled, "Hey! Did you hear that there are things called blogs?" The question will be how important they are.

My guess is, not teribly. Most bloggers are under-informed and lacking in insight. Those who are well-informed and insightful may get picked up by major media. Or a new medium may form to attract attention to "major" bloggers: advertising, support, perhaps even pay. Occasionally a new one will attract attention without that, and they'll fight with the older bloggers, whom they'll accuse of being "establishment".

In other words, same sh*t, different medium.

Re:Rise and FALL?

[daniil]

What your cat did today is not news for the entire world to hear. Nor is your diary-online.

Your friends (both of them!) might be quite interested in reading it, though...

While a lot of people get a kick out of such Voyuerism, the rest of the civilized world doesn't really want to hear about it.

Just because everyone can read it, it doesn't mean that everyone will read it. One of dot-bomb-boom's little lessons :7

What we do want to hear about are [..] etc. You know, i'm not really sure that's what we want to hear about. Thats something you want to hear about and -- to a lesser extent -- what i want to hear about (i do not really care that much about politics), but there's millions of people out there that don't really care that much about "useful" information, yet are more interested in, say, your cat's personal life. And these people are not ever going to leave the internet. It is quite likely, though, that personal blog craze will eventually pass (just like the fad of contentless personal homepages) and make way for more community-oriented services.

Re:Rise and FALL?

[soft_guy]

What your cat did today is not news for the entire world to hear.

If you don't like my cat blog, quit reading it.

Re:Rise and FALL?

[InfiniteWisdom]

If you don't want to read them, don't visit them. Not everything on the web has to be "useful" or "news", or even intended for consumption by the general public.

Re:Rise and FALL?

[tomhudson]

Well, we can certainly do without Roland Pipsqueals' (or however he's spelling his name this week) blog, so I guess he's right (for some values of right :-)

Oh, and congrats on the FP.

Re:Rise and FALL?

[chphilli]

Sorry, I have to disagree.

Blogs can serve a purpose other than "useful" information: private communication. A large percentage of blogs (see: most Xangas, most LiveJournals, etc.) exist for small communities to interact with one another, not to be a "news" source.

For example: my blog probably doesn't say anything interesting to you, but it provides my friends and family with a way to keep track of what I'm doing, at their own leisure, rather than getting bombarded with emails.

The internet is not only a news/reference source. It is also a means of communication and entertainment. Not everything exists to serve your unique set of interests.


(How did the parent get modded +5 insightful for what amounts to nothing more than a personal pet peeve? (Might as well say goodbye to my post, because I obviously disagree with the moderators.))

Re:Rise and FALL?

[dsplat]

Individual blogs do rise and fall. I've watched several blogs I've enjoyed die as the people who wrote them merged their work into group blogs. I watched one group blog fragment as several writers were overwhelmed with real world obligations. I don't think blogs, wikis, or even Usenet are going to die any time soon.

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?

[badasscat]

Why will the traditional media be going anywhere?

I agree. I don't know about anybody else, but despite what the original article post says, 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? Hell, if you were in a safe enough place to sit and blog about it, then you just weren't close enough to even know what was really going on.

Blogs are a terrible source of news, IMO. They are a better source of opinion, maybe, and for bantering about things like the latest gadgets, but anyone who's either sitting at home typing up a bunch of crap or worse, simply posting a bunch of links to some other "real" news site, is not doing anybody much good at all. And even for opinion, they really mainly exist for those who want to have their egos stroked by finding others whose opinions simply help confirm their own...

I read blogs, and I write one too (when I feel like updating it, which isn't often). But they're hardly a replacement for traditional news. The whole blog craze reminds me a lot of the dot-com era, where everybody thought these small little online startups were going to come in and sweep the big, old, crusty traditional companies out of the way... Then reality set in. The same thing's probably going to happen with blogs. Does that mean blogs serve no purpose? No - I mean, technically, Slashdot is a blog. Engadget is a blog. Gizmodo is a blog. I read these multiple times per day.

But for real breaking news, and for real informed opinion, there is no way for blogs to compete with traditional news media. After all, you generally at least need a college degree to get a job in the news industry - I'm not sure how much you can trust your average high school dropout with access to a PC and a free blogger.com account. (Of course, traditional media's had its own share of problems the past couple years, but then that's partly because they're actually held to some sort of ethical standard. Blogs are not held to any standards whatsoever, and any blogger can get away with pretty much anything they want, however erroneous or borderline slanderous their statements may be.)

Re:Rise and FALL?

[jdray]

I think it's a little more disconnected than that. There are thousands (millions, maybe) blogs out there. Some are well written and insightful, others are the blatherings of pre-teen social climbers. Some blogs get traffic, others don't, but you can bet that traffic levels are not directly correlated with the quality of material in the blog. But, just as the talentless boors with nothing to say are constantly surrounded by people listening to their every word, and many of our society's most insightful thinkers can't get anyone to listen to them, there's a disconnect between what's popular and what's good. For evidence, look at the Nielsen ratings.

My sig contains a link to my blog. It gets a little traffic, and the occasional comment posted back. I try to write things that people want to read, and I generally know how to use the English language. I only put up a post every few months on average, because, frankly, I've got other things going. Mostly, though, I post things there because I want to write. One day I'll look back and say, "Hey, look what I was thinking that day," but I don't expect it to make me a living. That's just silly.

So, like a significant portion of bloggers out there, my blog probably appeals to a very, very small fraction of the population of Internet surfers as a whole. But I'm doing something I like to do and I'm serving some sort of mostly anonymous audience. I'll be happy with that for the forseeable future, and I'm probably not going anywhere. I am not, however, doing anything that will supplant "traditional media." I really think that the future will be one where blogs become considered one component of traditional media, some with quality, others lacking. It's the same way in broadcast news and periodical print media.

Oh, enough already. I'm starting to blather.

Re:Rise and FALL?

[Rei]

There can be a nice connection between blogs and the media; blogs aren't always op-eds and indy reporting. For example, Cursor.org could probably be defined as a blog (published daily, packed full of links, not done by a major organization, etc), but simply serves as a "media roundup", non-editorially collecting and summarizing underreported stories from various news agencies, organizations, and occasionally, other blogs.

Other blogs can compliment traditional media in other ways - for example, Juan Cole is a professor of history with a focus on the middle east, and often adds a lot of context and detail from foreign sources into events going on and what they mean within a historical context. The implications of, for example, the election in Lebanon are a lot meaningful when the history of the leaders and tribes involved in voting, and detailed descriptions of the voting system and how it has been used/manipulated in history are available.

Not all blogs are just "Looks like Bush really was AWOL!" or "It seems that Kerry's grades were worse than Bush's!" editorial-logs.

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?

[simpl3x]

"or worse, simply posting a bunch of links to some other "real" news site, is not doing anybody much good at all."

IMHO this very wrong. Ever try to find something essoteric? Something not quite easy to find on a site for a variety of reasons? As I've been blogging for about a year on design, I get quite a number of hits from people looking for a link. Not everything is easily Google-able. Bloggers are, again in my opinion, adding to the the information base of the web by categorizing things. Not everybody creates content, but Yahoo didn't begin by creating information, but linking to it.

I think the actual problem is too much opinion. Who really cares about what everybody thinks. I want respected opinions. The web opens up the possibility of this by creating a publishing platform, but it doesn't make the material valuable. The value is in those links...

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?

[KagakuNinja]

I don't know about anybody else, but despite what the original article post says, 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?

Sure, on 9/11, for the first time in years, I was watching TV for hours. But afterwards, I hit the internet, because TV and newspapers were ignoring the wider implications of 9/11 that mattered the most to me.

For example, on 9/11 every politician, Republican and Democrat, seemed to be reading from the same script. "Act of war", "A new Pearl Harbor". This seriously freaked me out. The decision had already been made to go to war before we had any facts. And it was obvious that there would soon be an inevitable crack down on civil liberties (i.e. Patriot Act)

I've stopped directly consuming the mainstream media, because it is so ethically compromised that it is no longer relevant to me. The current indifference of the US media over the Downing Street Memo is case in point.

Re:Rise and FALL?

[Anonymous Coward]

Blogs are a terrible source of news, IMO. They are a better source of opinion, maybe, and for bantering about things like the latest gadgets, but anyone who's either sitting at home typing up a bunch of crap or worse, simply posting a bunch of links to some other "real" news site, is not doing anybody much good at all. And even for opinion, they really mainly exist for those who want to have their egos stroked by finding others whose opinions simply help confirm their own...

Well, then there's Christopher Allbritton, a freelance journalist who happens to run a blog.

back-to-iraq

I really don't consider his "postings" to be merely ego stroking or blathering about nothings, and for myself it's certainly been a source of insight into the goings on over there; at least, it provides some perspective to weigh against the slug fest broadcast over the traditional news media wires. The reader feedback (comments) is even, at times, compelling.

While it's true that in blogs there are more journals than journalists, I also think it quite snooty to believe that blogs are trivial just because they're blogs.

Re:Rise and FALL?

[jejones]

But for real breaking news, and for real informed opinion, there is no way for blogs to compete with traditional news media. After all, you generally at least need a college degree to get a job in the news industry...

And that ensures that one is getting accurate information from the traditional news media because...? I guess I should believe that a random military officer went to the trouble, in the early 1970s, to typeset his private memos about GWB; after all, the folks at CBS have college deg--oops, college degrees!

Of course, traditional media's had its own share of problems the past couple years, but then that's partly because they're actually held to some sort of ethical standard.

And who's been holding them to that standard? Blogs, in large part. Media are supposed to be a countervailing force...but they've become sufficiently large and powerful that they themselves need a countervailing force, and blogs are providing one.

Blogs are not held to any standards whatsoever, and any blogger can get away with pretty much anything they want, however erroneous or borderline slanderous their statements may be.

Blogs are held to the same standards as other sources of information--if people discover that they are erroneous, they won't pay attention any more and go somewhere else for information.

Re:Rise and FALL?

[smagruder]

Exactly, I don't care about the "murder, weather and sports" that the local news insists on reporting, and I don't care about the "corporate perspective on irrelevant matters" from the national news. It has all become tripe, all worth ignoring.

I look forward to grassroots news that springs from active citizens involved in every community around the world. There is actually growing interest in this concept.

Re:Rise and FALL?

[Thangodin]

I have to agree with this. And frankly, the complaints about the mainstream media from bloggers is the pot calling the kettle black. Even the best political blogs out there probably post more outright lies and distortions in a day than the mainstream media does in a year. I can spot bias when I see it, thank you very much. I don't need some online pundit to harp on about it.

I also find that people who spend all their time cruising the web for their information end up rather, shall we say, eccentric. I have a friend who considers himself a liberal, but has actually managed to become a Nazi--he doesn't wear the uniform, but get a few drinks into him and he will start spouting vintage Goebbels propaganda. The reason is that the Nazis distributed their propaganda amongst the arabs back during the war (the Baath party is actually the Iraqi version of the Nazi party.) This stuff is now resurfacing; it forms the basis for a lot of the Islamic anti-semitism, and is also making its way back into vogue amongst some parts of the radical left through the anti-war movement. So you end up with "leftists" embracing the beliefs of Adolf Hitler. As Northrop Frye put it, an open mind should be open at both ends, and should excrete as well as consume.

If the mainstream media does not carry stories, it probably isn't because the story is supressed or too dangerous. It's probably because they looked into it, and found out it was bull. I've discovered that if you fact check the fact checkers in blogs, you will usually find that their "facts" evaporate into a puff of inuendo when examined carefully. I can't tell you how many times I've followed links on popular blogs like instapundit and found myself standing up to my neck in garbage. Everything in blogs should be taken with a LOT of salt.

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?

[Vicente Gonzlez]

Yeah, Slashdot does look a lot like a blog to me. I suppose the main difference is that in most blogs I've read people know what they are talking about when they talk about it (e.g. about technology). But it seems that half the people here have no idea...

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. ;)

Burnout eh?

[jb.hl.com]

This idea of a burnout sounds good.

BURN THEM!!! BURN THEM ALL!!!!!!!!

Lameness filter encountered. Post aborted!
Reason: Don't use so many caps. It's like YELLING.

It's a feature not a bug

My comments

[beforewisdom]

My comments can be found on my blog

Next Slashdot headline

[savagedome]

How the blogs about saturation of blogs have reached a saturation.

Blogs aren't going anywhere.

[Scoria]

The term might be. Eventually, we'll once again refer to them as "journals."

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.

Really?

[AKAImBatman]

You mean the world doesn't want to hear about the latest dress you got, or your personal problems with your boyfriend/girlfriend?

What a shocker.

Maybe next they'll take reality TV off the air. Nah, that's probably a bit much to hope for.

I don't have anything against the idea of blogging (I recently set one up myself), but my opinion is that it should be kept as professional as any good magazine. Once that professionalism is breached, it becomes nothing more than a massive IM topic.

Re:Really?

[cgreuter]

You mean the world doesn't want to hear about the latest dress you got, or your personal problems with your boyfriend/girlfriend?

What a shocker.

This is why one of the great things about blogs is that you don't have to read them.

I don't mean to pick on you specifically here, but I really don't get why people complain about blogs. Sure, the majority of them are self-indulgent, pointless and relevant to no more than six people worldwide. So what?

I could see the complainers' point if it was on some common resource--a public web forum, USENET newsgroup or public mailing list--but it's not. Each blogger uses a single, specific website that they're paying for (one way or another). It's really, really easy to just pretend it doesn't exist.

The thing about blogs is that the vast majority exist for the the sole benefit of the blogger. They're not writing for you--they're writing for themselves, and that's not a bad thing. It means people are learning to express themselves and that they're creating content rather than just passively absorbing it. It's a healthy trend (IMHO).

(By the way, I don't blog. I made a vow long ago not to blog until I'd written my own software and I haven't gotten around to that yet.)

if a blog falls in the woods...

[HomerJayS]

All the blogs on the web could go away tomorrow and
a) very few people would notice
b) even fewer would care

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?

Re:Over-time

[Xiaran]

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?

No. Please no. I have enough to do just to keep up with the torrent of email I receeive every day. A business orientated slashdot? Ive kidna done that(a local company usenet server... happens in a lot of tech companies). Ive rarely seen them used for any particularly productive purpose. Mainly used to ask people when/where they are going to lunch and post links to amusing flash animations/games.

Bet URLs

[dubl-u]

The bet is part of the Long Bets project, which is run by the Long Now foundation. The permanent URL for the bet is http://www.longbets.org/2.

Honestly.

[Tuxedo Jack]

There are good blogs, but those are few and far between - most of them are just "OMG I WUNDER IF HE LIKEZ ME HEART HEART" and such. It's nauseating.

I honestly don't see the point of an online diary. A diary's something you write in a lock up, not post online for the world to see - and if these kids can funnel this kind of energy into writing shitty blog entries, why the HELL can't they at least learn to write with proper grammar and spelling?

Re:Honestly.

[Gulthek]

Since you seem to have trouble connecting, then just think of those millions of "shitty" blogs as an incredible historical resource.

What would we give to get semi-daily commentary about personal problems and day-to-day events from the 1800s? (Answer: a lot. A LOT)

People forget that big events are pretty well documented in history, but we loose the ephemera all too easily. Personal blogs are ephemera to the extreme.

Blog = Personal webpage

[GillBates0]

Nothing more, nothing less. People've been doing it for more than a decade. It's only now that Joe Sixpack and the media discovered it as another amazing thing that the Internets could do, and starting hyping/buzzwording the crap out of it.

Even companies are jumping on the "blog bandwagon" by starting "personal blogs" of their upper management. For what purpose, I cannot ascertain, except probably as an advertising avenue.

I hate it when CNN or some major news channel reports "happenings" from the "Blog world" or "Blogosphere" and waste my time, the viewers' and their own....time that could be better spent on reporting something worthwhile (not that they would anyway).

Re:Blog = Personal webpage

[Teddy Beartuzzi]

The difference was when folks were putting up their personal web pages, they *knew* they were crappy & insignificant.

Now, everyone thinks their inane self-indulgent ramblings are important, or worse yet, "journalism".

Re:Blog = Personal webpage

[poot_rootbeer]

Now, everyone thinks their inane self-indulgent ramblings are important, or worse yet, "journalism".

The opposite is also true -- when actual journalism appears on blogs, some people mistake it for "inane self-indulgent ramblings".

A blog is format, not content.

Re:Blog = Personal webpage

[swillden]

But in the past people were very careful to avoid unwarranted generalization.

Now, everyone paints with an unbelievably broad brush.

A blog bubble?

[appleLaserWriter]

Sounds like we've got a blubble.

Blog (un)Accountability

[Kainaw]

I pay little attention to blogs because there is no accountability. Here is an example:

On /. a while back was a 'story' that Congress had passed a bill that made some law that the /. crowd was sure to be upset about. I went to the story - it was on a blog. It was supported by links to three other stories - all on other blogs. Those stories cross-linked to one another to support themselves. Finally, I went to the Congress' website and searched for the law. The true story: A subcomittee passed a resolution to send the bill to the general floor for discussion.

I am NOT claiming that print or video media is better. Once a story gets in a newspaper, it quickly becomes fact. I am also NOT claiming that the public is incapable of having accountability. Look at Wikipedia. There is plenty of accountability with peer oversight. Blogs, on the other hand, do not have any oversight. They don't have to get past an editor or fact-checker. Then, the general public is too lazy to check the facts. You end up with a large group of people believing some idiot's blog-rant to be fact.

I think that is truly it for me - idiots becoming dumber by getting their facts from bigger idiots.

Re:Blog (un)Accountability

[Danny Rathjens]

It's no different from my grandfather spouting things he learned frm Rush Limbaugh as if they were facts.

1,000,000 Monkeys

[cyngus]

Maybe a million monkeys at typewriters can't produce Shakespeare after all. I think blogs are like almost everything on the Internet. They start out small, get hot, mainstream, and they are all the rage. Then people realize they aren't really adding value.

Blogs change the publishing path, but changing the path doesn't make the content any better. Blogs have enabled people with something intelligent and relevant, who didn't have a way to before, to get themselves heard. Unfortunately it has also allowed a lot of people with nothing to say a way to spew more junk for everyone to filter.

Changing the medium doesn't automatically make better content.

Re:1,000,000 Monkeys

[Ranger]

Maybe a million monkeys at typewriters can't produce Shakespeare after all.

Remember, if a monkey can't fuck it up, he shits on it.

it has also allowed a lot of people with nothing to say a way to spew more junk for everyone to filter.

See the above comment. All those monkey/bloggers can't fuck up the internet so they clog it up with shit. The problem is They think it IS important. Unless I'm paid for it, I know it's not important. I think blogs are for people with adult ADD and aren't capable of writing a real journal.

*That* is wishful thinking

[EvilStein]

"The traditional media -- newspapers, TV, radio -- will be the ones to go, if they don't adapt to the new situation"

I highly doubt that. There are billions of people on the planet that have never read a blog and have absolutely no desire to, but they still get 'traditional media.'
To say that traditional media will just fold if they don't adapt to blogs is.. well, a rather typical self-serving blogger thing to say. :)

A somewhat relevant example is that the MPAA/RIAA hasn't gone away yet. They haven't adapted to the new situation, but they're still wielding a mighty sword.

The traditional media isn't going to go away, no matter what bloggers think. The two will exist in their own realms, appealing to the appropriate audience, if anything.

Point of blogs

[SamMichaels]

I'm sure someone with a psychology degree can offer more insight into this...but...

Blogs are just a way for someone to avoid the confrontation of dealing with it in real life. You can talk about that girl you like...and you know she's going to see it because you have the link in all your profiles. You can finally say what you really think of that jackass who picks on you because a friend of a friend will let him know the link. And of course the "OMGLOLBBQ!!!!111ONEHUNDREDELEVEN!!".

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. That whole "ohhh I hopehopehope she reads this because it's in all my profiles and I announce to everyone when I update it" is a bunch of creepy, insecure crap.

Re:Point of blogs

[vorpal22]

Blogs are just a way for someone to avoid the confrontation of dealing with it in real life.

That may be one very small aspect of blogs for some people, but I think that you've made an unnecessarily large blanket statement based on that fact.

My LiveJournal serves many purposes for me:

• It keeps my friends and family informed on the going-ons of my life.
• It exposes me to a wide variety of new people (I actually met my husband through LJ, who found my journal through a mutual friend).
• It provides me a central, backed up place to store various pieces of information (recipes that I create, math problems I'm investigating, etc).
• It provides me with a healthy emotional outlet.

I could continue, but I think I've made my point clear. I don't expect anyone to read my blog and it amazes me that I have the readership that I do (my LJ friends of list sports approximately 450 people); those who aren't interested simply don't have to investigate.

Re:Blog Burnout is for the Ultra-HIp

[HardCase]

I've never read a blog.

You just posted a comment in one.

Whay does everything have to be sooo revolutionary

[flanksteak]

Blogs have revolutionized information delivery

Oh please. Blogs are just the next step in vanity publishing, an industry that exists because a lot of people think they have something worthwhile to say and are willing to spend their own money to say it. And while a slim few actually do, most of it is pointless blather or just links to other blogs.

The day that a blog gets more hits than the NYT is the day that the Intarweb is past saving.

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

[kfg]

The smaller the target audience, the more I'd call it a "journal"

Tell it to the Wall Street Journal and the journalists who work there.

KFG

Re:Journals and blogs

[diverman]

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

I see your double negative and raise an objection!

[Mille Mots]

...blogs aren't going nowhere...

Hrmm, let's expand the contraction so we get:

...blogs are not going nowhere...

Applying some very basic logic, if we accept that blogs 'are not going nowhere,' that must mean that they *are* going somewhere. Agreed?

Now, your next assertion:

...but still, blogs are here to stay...

*must* be false if we accept, as you have stated earlier (although somewhat illogically), that blogs are going somewhere. The blogs in question can not simultaneously 'not go nowhere' and be 'here to stay.'

Now who's doing the wishful thinking, hrmm?

Typical American outllook

[lawpoop]

Some new technology failed to change the world and usher in a new utopia, so instead of blogs nestling in and finding their place in everyday life, anyone involved with blogging are tearing their clothes and gnashing their teeth, wailing out loud "Why?! Why oh why did we ever BLOG?!"

Is variety so bad?

[Infonaut]

Lord, I hope the majority are leaving the Internet.

I've never really understood this sentiment. Blogs aren't like TV. They're not pushed to you. If you like someone's "What Scruffy the Cat Did Today" blog, you can grab the RSS feed and get your daily dose of Scruffy amusement. But if you don't like it, it's not like there's nothing else on the Internet.

The beauty of the blogging medium is that what you read is up to you. You can go with soley corporate-sponsored blogs. You can read obscure rants from marginally intelligent blogs that have only three readers. You can concoct your own mix. However you choose to make use of blogs, the tremendous variety of thoughts, opinions, and stories is what makes the phenomenon so powerful.

I'd hate to see blogging become just another means of obtaining pre-vetted "useful" (as defined by whom?) information from the usual sources.

I'm not going to be reading the Scruffy the Cat blog any time soon, but I'm happy it's out there.

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. :-)

Re:Is variety so bad?

[slimy_dude]

You can read obscure rants from marginally intelligent blogs that have only three readers. Hey! That's my blog!!

Ordinarily I am a fan of pedantry

[Acy James Stapp]

But every other language besides English allows and encourages the use of the double negative. I know it's hard for a programming-hardened brain to understand, but Boolean logic is not really a big part of the normal human's thinking. Let's allow a little imprecision, get off of our high horse, and allpw people to say what they intend to say without busting their ass because they don't feel the need to conform to the rules of some arbitrary seventeenth-century prescriptive grammarian. You understood what the original poster meant, didn't you? You're smart, aren't you? The double negative has a grand tradition in spoken and literary use; if it was good enough for Chaucer and Shakespeare it's good enough for me.

Re:Ordinarily I am a fan of pedantry

[Anonymous Coward]

You spelled "allow" incorrectly.

Re:Blog Burnout is for the Ultra-HIp

[JPelorat]

Slashdot is not a weblog. It is a forum. It is not some "Real World" WebTV, aka, weblogs, where you just sit and consume some emo's angst and marvel at his or her lack of taste in music.

It is a community where a large number of people have discussions (and flame each other) about various news topics.

A weblog is one-way 'entertainment'.

Why Blogs Have Become So Popular

[Ted Holmes]

Blogs are here to stay, because they simply represent the evolution of the Web page.

The biggest reason Blogs have become so very popular, and why they are here to stay in growing numbers is because they made publishing online easy for everyone. Blogs don't require you to know HTML before you can publish your ideas online. Just type your thoughts into a form, and the software builds the code automatically.

So, Blogs dramatically reduced the "friction" to publishing online. Millions of non-geeks now have their say.

If you mentally replace the word "Blog" with "Home Page" in any article you read online, it'll seem like you've stepped back in time to the dawn of the Web. That's how people talked about the web a few years ago.

Blogs have accelerated grass roots democracy, leaching the "Mass" from Media, splintering it into untold numbers of demassified niches. The impact is very big and will deepen.

I've just finished a piece on the impact of new digital media upon the mass media and entertainment industry in an article called: "Is Big Brother Dying or Just Being Born?". It makes the case that the digitization of media will force mass media in all forms, to take it's rightful place as another niche.

In a nutshell, Mass media will be good for mass events. But Blogs represent the birth of grass roots media. Aggregated through RSS, they'll soon out-perform mainstream.

Re:Blog Burnout is for the Ultra-HIp

[generic-man]

Calling Slashdot a "blog" is like calling Candid Camera "reality television" or FM radio "streaming audio." A neologism loses some of its punch when you start retroactively applying it to pre-existing examples.

Blogs Are Here To Stay And The Impact Will Deepen

[Ted Holmes]

Blogs are here to stay, because they simply represent the evolution of the Web page.

The biggest reason Blogs have become so very popular, and why they are here to stay in growing numbers is because they made publishing online easy for everyone. Blogs don't require you to know HTML before you can publish your ideas online. Just type your thoughts into a form, and the software builds the code automatically.

So, Blogs dramatically reduced the "friction" to publishing online. Millions of non-geeks now have their say.

If you mentally replace the word "Blog" with "Home Page" in any article you read online, it'll seem like you've stepped back in time to the dawn of the Web. That's how people talked about the web a few years ago.

Blogs have accelerated grass roots democracy, leaching the "Mass" from Media, splintering it into untold numbers of demassified niches. The impact is very big and will deepen.

I've just finished a piece on the impact of new digital media upon the mass media and entertainment industry in an article called: "Is Big Brother Dying or Just Being Born?". It makes the case that the digitization of media will force mass media in all forms, to take it's rightful place as another niche.

In a nutshell, Mass media will be good for mass events. But Blogs represent the birth of grass roots media. Aggregated through RSS, they'll soon out-perform mainstream.

Sure they can...

[Short Circuit]

All the works of Shakespeare consist of millions of letters. It is merely up to the reader to arrange those letters in the proper order.

(In other words: Read it, compare it, judge it, learn from the differences.)

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.

Incorrect assesment of observable data

[SuperKendall]

...*must* be false if we accept, as you have stated earlier (although somewhat illogically), that blogs are going somewhere. The blogs in question can not simultaneously 'not go nowhere' and be 'here to stay.'

The is obviously false, through observation I can see a blog *here*, yet also one *over there*. Thus blogs in fact are staying and going somewhere simultaneously.

I think your problem is that you have not cought up on the latest in Quantum Blog Theory which states that blogs exist simultaneously as a disturbing wave of commentary (dynamic and profound) and also a picture of a cat (static and useless). They exist in both states until you collapse the probability wave and thus get either a political missive rippling through the blogosphere or a friday night cat-blogging.

Interestingly reading the blog from the story link was so lacking in meaning or interesting content that I'm pretty sure the whole blog was, in fact, a clever steganographic encoding of a picture of a a cat.

Re:Rise and FALL?-I disagree

[gadlaw]

Blogs are not a terrible source of news. The idea that the monolithical, 'report the same story' news services is all there is worth reading or listening to is foolish. When the riots were going on in China recently and try as I might I could not find any deep analysis or reporting on those anti-Japanese riots I looked for relevant blogs to fill me on on what I was missing. Like URL:http://angrychineseblogger.blog-city.com/ and URL:http://pekingduck.org/ which not only gave me a chinese point of view, they also posted pictures not available on the usual news sources. Pictures and commentary from those riots taken by someone there at the riots and who posted those pictures on a chinese language blog. Sure you are going to get a lot of tripe but you'll also get pointed to news and discussions you wouldn't have otherwise found.

Re:For a fan of pedantry...

[Tim Browse]

I think it's time to repeat that amusing but probably apocryphal story about double negatives and double positives.

A respected linguistics academic was once lecturing (you can tell it's an UL already, can't you?) on the subject of double negatives and pointed out that English is one of the few languages that has no instance of a double positive construct being used to mean a negative.

The story goes that a voice from the back of the hall then called out, "Yeah, right."

Blogs were always tripe, and will always be

[tod_miller]

Before you mod, my thoughts:

The bad blogs, were, well bad. The good blogs were, well, good, but bad. How so?

Well, blogging became a trite and annoying word, and those who could have had sane web content published to their site using automated means, whose instead to label this technology as an action.

The fact that the verb was the technology is an irkish trait.

The verb should have been removed from the underlying technology, the whole process of writing has been around, suddenly a technology comes around that does... nothing... one day all these forum / im / chat processes were relabeled with a piece of jargon, and everyone wanted to do it.

If you trace the ancient entymology of 'blog you will find an antique phrase:

web log

web is a protraction of world-wide-web, a name given to the http related protocols that run on the 'net (route: english, from word 'Internet' from older phrase 'interconnected network'). log is the same as the ancient word 'log' meaning a piece of felled tree.

The act of web logging means you kept a series of diary like thoughts. However, most were not diaries, but link dumps, or a way of changing the front page content of a website. Which makes sense.

But, althought you write a diary on a diary, and a newspaper on a newspaper, and a tv guide on a tv guide, and a sightseeing book, in, a , erm, sightseeing book, they are not all the same thing.

You can call it publishing, but blogging has other roots, and the misuse of the term is like garlic salt on an open eye wound.

My favourite blog was my friends, it was unpretentious, only about 5 people ever read it. I preffer that.

Basically, write an article if you have something to say, if you want to write a how-to, write a how -to.

Don't blog a how-to, or blog a hack.

And weblogs.com can die, as can any other 'auto-content-blog-content-write-for-us-
content- for-the-sake-of-linkable-content-
google-friendly -badgerisms' can go and die.

Making it too easy to publish things that went into the global conscience of the web, just made it easier for the people who saw little value in what they wrote to just write more of it, and make it EASIER (or more difficult for google) for them to infect the mainstream.

Blogging was one hell of a signal/noise screw over, and for that, they can tongue my sweaty starfish, the bastards.

Blogs will die...

[dantheman82]

Would everyone who writes their prediction about whether blogs will die just write in the same comment whether they said Apple will never switch to Intel CPUs?

Actually, I'd like a truth meter about all posters so I can read only the +25 insightful. I think this will keep Slashdot professional.

Re:"Objectivity"?

[I_M_Noman]

CNN has a suprisingly low audience, and exists mainly as a propaganda outlet for Rupert Murdoch's conservative political views

You sure you mean CNN? I could have sworn Rupie owned Fox News.