Blogs, the next big thing or pfffft

[Crush]

Are blogs:

A, The Next big thing
B, Drivel

For me B, I hate them to death.

[edited by: pmac at 10:11 pm (utc) on Feb. 1, 2006]

[DamonHD]

B for me too.

Now stand a little further away or else I shall splash your shoes... B^>

Rgds

Damon

[SlyOldDog]

Anything that the search engines like are doomed to fail because they will be exploited. First it was links. Next will be blogs.

Only the most tedious bloggers will see it to the end.

God I am bored just thinking about it.

[ken_b]

Some blogs are great.

Some (many?) are reguritated drivel.

Like the rest of life, you have to watch where you walk.

[claus]

C) They were

These days they're (becoming) just another way to publish. Nothing more that that, and that's good, really. So, blogging might just take off big time now, even if everything says that it has already peaked.

However, that "peak" is among the early adopters and people eager to try out new things fast. The majority is just starting to discover blogs.

IMHO

[DrDoc]

I can proudly say that I have never blogged :)

[willybfriendly]

Probably C

That said, a couple of months ago I started a blog that allows me to address the dark side of a niche in a way I never could as "myself".

Quite liberating actually. It may never be read by anyone but myself. None the less, it is cathartic.

WBF

[limbo]

I love the blogs I visit daily/weekly. Not for their format, for their content.

[MatthewHSE]

To me it depends on the content. I have a few blogs that I read regularly every time the owner makes a new post. Others I've seen are pretty much worthless except to the owner themselves and possibly their friends.

If a blog has useful information, I see it as just another type of CMS.

[phantombookman]

Good solid blogs with quality IBLs should be OK, the rest I expect will eventually go the way of Guest-Books imo

[dcheney]

Blogs can be used for a wide variety of things. For example, one of my sites covers a niche that often has changes several times a week. I am able to use the blog format to provide a bit more detail (still very brief) of changes that have just been announced. Typically each such announcement contains several links back into my main site where folks can get more details and see the related histories, etc.

For me, this has worked quite well. I really make little effort to monetize the blog, because most readers follow the links into the main site.

[jdancing]

I find blogs can be a huge time waster. I recently removed my feedreader because I found I was spending 3+ hours a day reading worthless drivel in search of a decent nugget of real information. I'd start reading one blog that would trackback to another then another etc... and soon the morning was almost gone.

[coconubuck]

It seems like this is always a question when something new comes up. I think blogs have made it possible for anyone to publish their thoughts, work and art. This in itself is a pretty major thing.

Not all blogs are great (most aren't - mine included), but I don't think the point is that all of them need to be quality. Not all websites are quality and still, they last and we've found some to be worthwhile. I'm sure early on someone asked:

Websites, the next big thing of pfffft

[mrMister]

Benjamin Disraeli once said...

"Blogs are fatal: they are the curse of the Internet. Nine-tenths of existing blogs are nonsense, and the clever blogs are the refutation of that nonsense"

[lawman]

Must be talking about a Benjamin Disraeli I don't know.

[trillianjedi]

This is a format vs content argument which doesn't really have an answer either way.

I read a couple of blogs, which are absolutely first rate. The nature of the format is the same as that of a daily news site - although it's called a blog, really it could just be another "website".

What's the difference, really? It's just a CMS.

TJ

[andrea99]

"Blogs are the next medium-sized thing, they won't go away for a generation but they won't take over either. They will simply be adopted by those with a propensity to write and will be springboards for new writers."

--William Gladstone, speaking in Parliament 1888.

[markbaa]

Like everything else, there's good and there's bad. Lumping all blogs into one pot is as useful as lumping all websites, or all ecommerce sites, or all forums into one pot.

There's more bad forums than good, but doesn't stop webmasterworld being useful.

[victor]

They are basically a rich-text usenet where everyone can set up their own, mainly private, newsgroup.

Take a stroll around Google groups to see the future of blogs.

[Knappster]

I agree that you have to distinguish format from content. Blogs are not all exercises in crosslinked navel-gazing.

Blogs don't bore people, people bore people.

[nabibaig]

<snip> - what it means?

[edited by: lawman at 11:42 am (utc) on Feb. 16, 2006]
[edit reason] Links To Blogs Not Allowed [/edit]

[heel72]

although it's called a blog, really it could just be another "website"

That's the thing really - we're just talking about another content creation method in the end. There's an extensive article in NYMag [nymag.com] talking about the Blog economy - good read, and makes the point that major media sources are already taking the whole medium over.

[edited by: lawman at 5:59 pm (utc) on Feb. 16, 2006]

[mister charlie]

i recall a time in the mid 90's when people thought the WWW was a fad, and not to be taken seriously. as recently as 2002, authors were stating that it would be impossible to really make money online.

when you have an outfit like boing boing, with only five part time writers, eclipsing the readership of wired magazine, you need to take a serious look at the possibilities.

ignore blogs at your own peril.

[heel72]

I don't think it's a fad, but there seems to be a case to be made that a boing boing-like success story is going to be more and more of an exception in the face of well-heeled competitors with instant clout.

[DamonHD]

Hi,

"Most people have a book [blog] inside them, and that is where it should stay."

I don't have my quotations dictionary to hand, so I can't tell you who said that (probably Wilde/Twain/Shaw!), but the point is that most people don't have much interesting to say, so making it easy for them to say it simply raises the noise level rather than the information content of the Web.

Of course that is NOT politically correct, and there are some excellent blogs (that I have been using for obscure CSS issues just last week for example), but they are a tiny minority, and the rest are simply the recorded wisdom of Paris Hilton without the obvious attractions.

Sorry, but people need to learn to THINK (1), and then speak (2), in that order. Editors normally ensure that that process has happened, blogs do not. Bv<

(Having said that, my client is leaving to go travelling, and I have suggested that he use a blog as a free CMS for his photos and words...)

Rgds

Damon

<ducks for cover>
<hides inside top-quality PC-proof tin-foil hat>

[ericfwebmaster]

the blogs I visit are mostly my friends and I like the way it keeps everyone up to speed on each others lives. They are more interesting than the basic "hey hows it going? just fine" conversations I have with them when I run into them for 5 seconds at the mall.

[DamonHD]

Hi,

I think my 3 days of stinking cold made me rather hasher than I should have been!

Most people have very interesting things to say when you get to know them, but most people don't have anything very interesting to say *in print*, IMHO...

Rgds

Damon