Comment on blogs and blogging.

[randomness]

Michael Gartenberg of Jupiter Media says in http://www.technewsworld.com/story/Microsoft-Clears-Space-for-Bloggers-38606.html (a story on why Microsoft's release of MSN Spaces is no big deal):

"'Web logs as an activity require diligence and commitment and a burning desire to say something and tell it to the world. That's why it's just not a mainstream activity,' he said.

"'Most people don't create content, they consume content, and we have a word for them: consumers. Far more people want to read others' content than create their own.'"

I don't disagree with Gartenberg--either about the release of MSN Spaces essentially being a non-event, or that most people are consumers--but I never particularly thought of blogging as requiring much diligence or commitment.

I'm just somewhat surprised that blogging is characterized as something requiring anything but the ability to froth at the keyboard. Always seemed to me to be a pretty low bar.

After all, isn't there the stereotype of "some blogger in pajamas" floating around; that doesn't strike me as the image of someone particularly diligent or committed.

Comments

[klingonlandlady.livejournal.com]

Depends on what kind of blogging you mean- the serious and diligent writers of content, be it political or cultural... or the dopes in pyjamas like me who just want to say hi to their friends and talk about how they cleaned out the sink drain today.

Humans like to chat and stay in touch with their friends... that's a common activity not far above consuming.

[kenjari.livejournal.com]

It seems like Gartenberg is only considering bloggers who are more like writers or journalists, blogging for the purposes of informing, entertaining, or editorializing. I think he is not considering the people I would consider "social bloggers", those whose main purpose is communicating and interacting with a circle of friends. I consider myself very much one of the latter, and I think many of the people whose blogs I read also fit into that category.

[kenjari.livejournal.com]

Humans like to chat and stay in touch with their friends... that's a common activity not far above consuming.
I hadn't thought of it that way until you mentioned it, but yeah, in a sense us "social bloggers" aren't so much creating content as we are using a service.

[awfief.livejournal.com]

I'll note that many of my friends post to lj with diligence and commitment, and have a burning desire to tell the world that they just cleaned the sink drain.

We just call it obsession.

[syzygy.livejournal.com]

Well I think he has a point, but it applies much more to freestanding blogs. With LJ, there's much less effort necessary and with the network system more reward available.

But I think even social blogging, for many people, is more about creating than consuming. The "blogger in pyjamas" stereotype may partially come out of writers who are part of the publication structure being threatened by those who are not so restricted--and use their freedom successfully.

[achinhibitor.livejournal.com]

Dunno, but there are millions of bloggers out there.

"There's really only one requirement for a Prophet, and you've got it."
"What's that?"
"A mouth."
-- 'God' to J.R. 'BoB' Dobbs

[mentalapse.livejournal.com]

Interestingly enough, the bloggers who were given official media credentials for the DNC were kind of the big jokes around the office. They tended to be far less organized and diligent about getting housing, etc. Most people wondered why we were taking them seriously. I doubt any of these folks saw themselves as real "media" types--and these were some of the most obsessive of bloggers.

There's certainly a small percentage of bloggers who do crazy stuff like fact-checking, but from personal experience, even purposeful blogging about news or politics or whatever is a chance to vent one's spleen, keeping the benefits relatively high compared to the costs (especially for those of us who can do their blogging while ostensibly doing real paying work).