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?

[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?

[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?

[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?

[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?

[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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Re:Blog Burnout is for the Ultra-HIp

[HardCase]

I've never read a blog.

You just posted a comment in one.

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?

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.

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: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'.

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.

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.

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."