Reading this new paper by Drezner and Farrell on the weekend, called "The Power and Politics of Blogs", got me thinking about the future and reality of blogging. (Thanks to Steve Rubel for the pointer).
Early adoptors of blogging have tended to see blogging as an alternative to the main media, or at least as a corrective to the worst excesses of the mainstream's haughtiness about its privileged position as our society's information priests (we tell you what you need to know and when).
That's a very good thing in itself. I enjoy watching journalists squirming about all these bloggers writing whatever they like (gosh). No doubt thousands of us, even millions, have rushed to the blogosphere eager for the opportunity to participate in the debate. But now there are stories about blog burnouts and a growing number of blogs that are just not maintained very regularly, perhaps even abandoned. Alternatively, successful bloggers are going mainstream picking up advertising dollars and so on. And as Global PR Blog Week showed, I think, blogs have a big future in the corporate sphere. They are cheaper and more appealing than internet sites, they allow real interaction between big outfits and their stakeholders, and they allow companies, politicians etc to overcome the pernicious media middleman. PR being the old antidote to this 'media middleman' problem means that blogs will pose some interesting dilemmas for the PR profession.
The Drezner / Farrell paper illustrates that blogs can have a political impact but it also shows that the blogosphere is already starting to reflect the world around us, with an elite group of blogs getting most of the attention and having most of the power - these are the bloggers who will get registered for political conventions, get written up in the media and attract the advertising dollars.
Some of us may be able to drum up some business helping corporates get underway with blogging etc
Just about everyone else will be confined to the status of amateur, forever.
I think most bloggers have leapt on-board through a sense of adventure. The old - head west, pioneering spirit. We have put up sites, blogged away to our hearts content, just to be part of it all.
What happens when it settles down to an elite / corporate phenomenon?
We'll need strategies.
We can't spend hours everyday posting frequently as the SEO freaks insist.
We are not alternative news sources. We don't have opinions on everything. I can't be bothered linking to everything I see that others might find interesting, I'd like to but life's too short.
Yet if we slowdown, kick-back and just post to our blogs occasionally will that mean that no-one ever comes. I know we're not suppose to fixate about traffic - but its human.
I really feel like I want to have a clear blogging strategy - my 'let's just do it and see where it leads' enthusiasm is starting to dry out.
One strategy that does seem viable to me - is a sort of open source literature search type activity.
Under this model I don't give a stuff about the audience, I post about things that I find interesting now and probably will in the future too.
I post my comments and thoughts, as I might in a notebook.
Only its open-source, if you're interested you can read it, but who cares? I'm really blogging for myself. Any comments etc I get from open-sourcing it is a bonus.
That way blogging 'fits' into my life and doesn't just drain away the hours on some 'media-alternative' folly.
Anyway, I'm going to think more about this.
There is probably a bit of a problem with blogging if a new or 'elite' media corps is the longterm result - witness Weinberger's invitation to the Democratic Convention (see worthwhilemag.com), there seems to be a great old "gee whiz, look at the media looking at us" in his report on the Blogger's Breakfast. Given that he is an experienced journalist this is a bit insincere and surely younger thinkers will be alienated from blogging if corporate types take it over to share information.
I am already finding the material at worthwhilemag a bit bloody predictable - they seem to be fishing without much idea of how to reach people who are significantly different from themselves.
I think your subject list is a great idea, keep it up.
Posted by: genevieve | 28 July 2004 at 05:28 PM
A good discussion opener, Trevor. Blogging is really just another tool or channel in the overall means by which people communicate with each other. The nature of the medium, how easy it is to do and the reach it gives you is what makes it exciting and why there are so many people blogging (eg, Technorati have 3.3 million blogs watched - and that's not all of them).
As has been commented on in other posts on your site and elsewhere, the really interesting thing is how organizations will embrace blogging as a communication channel. Why will they do it? Just as a new-look marketing or PR gloss/spin in their go-to-market needs? Or as a genuine means of building new or better relationships with key audiences inside and outside the organization? Somewhere in between? I'm sure we'll see some real hits among the many misses that are already out there.
I'd argue that blogging presents folk involved in organizational communication with a real opportunity to re-engineer themselves and their functions. Otherwise, the 'blogging phenomenon' will be snatched away from them by others who are more nimble, because this is a medium that just won't wait for traditional planning, strategizing, etc.
Posted by: Neville Hobson | 02 August 2004 at 01:43 AM
Speaking as one of the bloggers who will forever remain an "amateur", I like your idea. In fact, much of what I posted on my now-defunct blogs were links to websitess, ideas, and stories I wanted to remember, but didn't want to print out or add to my increasingly large and unwieldy list of bookmarks, particularly since bookmarks can be lost. But even as an admitted amateur, I still feel the need to make my blog appealling to the public. That unspoken pressure made it increasingly unpleasant to continue posting. Add to that self-imposed pressure the fact that I live in a very small, chatty town and, well, blogging became a bad idea.
But, the information geek in me still loved the idea of blogging. I enjoy reading blogs, both popular and obscure, and have gleaned a great deal of useful information from them. For that reason I want to continue my blogs, but with a different frame of reference. And for that reason, your analogy of a notebook is an excellent one - a public notebook where I can write down my thoughts, remember items for future reference, and perhaps as importantly, notate those items so I remember why I thought they were important. I have many paper copies of articles, etc. that, for the life of me, I can't remember why I wanted them. (Of course, until such time as they become relevant, but by then I've tossed them for the aforementioned reason).
Unlike their paper counterparts, blog "notebooks" - "noteblogs" maybe - can't be lost, don't have to be stored and can be easily backed up. I don't have to spend forever and two days scanning things I find interesting and then trying to notate said scanned item. For most of us, the blog seems like a natural place to store ideas for later use. Not everyone needs or wants to store ideas. As an infojunkie, I want to store ideas. Plus, for me, framing the blog in my mind as a "personal storage site" instead of an "inform the world" site, makes upkeep much more palatable.
Thank you for the good idea and the ever-so-slight paradigm shift, at least for me.
Posted by: Debbie E. | 03 August 2004 at 02:51 AM
Trevor,
A few things that occured as I read your post:
- I don't see blog attrition as a problem. People have been starting and abandoning personal websites, blogs, journals since people started going online. The difference now is that a blog (as a new variety of CMS) is easier than ever to get started, so lowering the barriers and letting way more people try it out...it doesn't mean that more people have something worthwhile to say.
- Blogs are just web sites, albeit with some new features, like tracback, permalinks and rss feeds etc...the benefits of these things will be absorbed by all types of sites in the coming years.
- The lasting impact of this great period of excitement and experimentation will be a richer ecosystem of 'web sites" (all kinds) which work like the interenet is supposed to work, connecting people and enabling public discourse. "Markets are conversations". Everyone should revisit the Cluetrain.
- Your strategy for blogging sounds like a good one, blog when you want to. I would add to that, take part in conversations when you have something to say. By taking part in conversations and contributing you will be adding value. If you do have a blog and say interesting things people will listen if you are part of the conversation. But if you publish a blog and don't contribute to the bigger conversation the chances are you will not be heard. Think trackback and comments.
Actually it is entirely possible to be part of the conversation without your own blog, and wouldn't it be cool to be able to aggregate all the comments that you had made on different blogs onto one page.
Charles
Posted by: Charles | 06 August 2004 at 07:12 AM