Are In-Depth Articles Better Than Blog Postings?

athloi writes to tell us usability expert Jakob Nielsen is stressing the importance of well-thought-out articles as opposed to off-the-cuff blog postings. "Blog postings will always be commodity content: there's a limit to the value you can provide with a short comment on somebody else's comments. Such postings are good for generating controversy and short-term traffic, and they're definitely easy to write. But they don't build sustainable value. Think of how disappointing it feels when you're searching for something and get directed to short postings in the middle of a debate that occurred years before, and is thus irrelevant."

Comments

Balanced ecosystem

[Raindance]

I think there's an argument to be made about supporting a balanced blog ecosystem.

Obviously if everybody posts short blurbs, it just doesn't work, for obvious reasons. On the other hand, if *everybody* posts long, well-thought-out articles, it'd be hard to find 1. What you're interested in, since often the shortposters serve the function of aggregating cool things, and 2. Where the 'blogosphere' action is. There'd be fewer conversations, and indeed, short posts are part of a conversation.

Luckily, there appears little danger of everybody posting well-thought-out articles.

Personally, I'm starting to reap the benefits of longer articles on my science/tech blog. Lots of repeat readers. But it's so hard to get exposure when you have fewer chances for 'hits'.

Re:Balanced ecosystem

[tkrotchko]

"if *everybody* posts long, well-thought-out articles, it'd be hard to find 1."

Well, yeah, but that just means you have a lot of well-thought-out articles. It's hard to find a downside to that. More research is always better.

Blogs, on the other hand, are streams of consciousness. I don't see an "ecosystem" at work so much as just a bunch of people offering their opinions. It's like calling Bill O'Reilly a "verbal blogger".

My point is, there is a lot of value is well-thought-out articles. There is significantly less in offering opinion about the news.

I've been complaining about this for a while

[LoadWB]

I complain to colleagues about this urban web-sprawl quite a bit, especially in relation to Microsoft. I used to have three sources of information: TechNet, MSDN, and the Knowledge Base. Now you have to look at product blogs, official product blogs, product feature blogs, and so on. It has become almost impossible to find information. While searching for information on Server 2003 SP2 versus Small Business Server 2003, I finally came across a newsgroup post which linked to a KBA which referenced a blog. Absolute crap!

Depth and Reputation

[Kelson]

This reminds me of a comment someone made on the introduction of the iPod Shuffle (bear with me, it's relevant). The idea was that, at the time, the iPod brand was perceived as signifying the high-end digital music player. By expanding into the low-end, Apple was trading a loss in the value of their brand (since it no longer meant "high-end" by default) in order to gain another segment of the market.

Similarly, Nielsen's article suggests that by tossing off random blog articles, even if you also post highly insightful material, you lower the average value of what you post. You effectively cede some of your reputation.

That's even more of an issue with topic-based blogs. If your focus is, say, US politics, or astronomy, etc. you have to stick close to your topic, or people will start complaining, "Why are you spending all this time talking about your cats!"

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[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:Sound-bite Society

[Chris Burke]

I didn't read your post, but "sound-bite society" is a catchy sound-bite.