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The Rise and Fall of Blogs 433

Posted by CmdrTaco from the please-fall-faster dept.
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."
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The Rise and Fall of Blogs More

The Rise and Fall of Blogs

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  • Rise and FALL? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by daniil ( 775990 ) * <evilbj8rn@hotmail.com> on Tuesday June 14, 2005 @01:12PM (#12814720) Journal
    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? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by binarstu ( 720435 ) on Tuesday June 14, 2005 @01:19PM (#12814802)
      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? (Score:5, Insightful)

        by badasscat ( 563442 ) <basscadet75@@@yahoo...com> on Tuesday June 14, 2005 @02:15PM (#12815501)
        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 [engadget.com], 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? (Score:3, Insightful)

          by simpl3x ( 238301 )
          "or worse, simply posting a bunch of links to some other "real" news site, is not doing anybody much good at all."

          IMHO this very wrong. Ever try to find something essoteric? Something not quite easy to find on a site for a variety of reasons? As I've been blogging for about a year on design, I get quite a number of hits from people looking for a link. Not everything is easily Google-able. Bloggers are, again in my opinion, adding to the the information base of the web by categorizing things. Not everybody

        • My Primary Source of News on 9/11 (Score:4, Interesting)

          by Carnage4Life ( 106069 ) on Tuesday June 14, 2005 @02:57PM (#12816025) Homepage Journal
          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? (Score:3, Insightful)

          by jejones ( 115979 )
          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...

          And that ensures that one is getting accurate information from the traditional news media because...? I guess I should believe that a random military officer went to the trouble, in the early 1970s, to typeset his private memos about GWB; after all, the folks at CBS have college deg--oops, c

        • Re:Rise and FALL?-I disagree (Score:4, Insightful)

          by gadlaw ( 562280 ) <gilbert@gadl a w . com> on Tuesday June 14, 2005 @03:23PM (#12816351) Homepage Journal
          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:Rise and FALL? (Score:3, Insightful)

          by Thangodin ( 177516 )
          I have to agree with this. And frankly, the complaints about the mainstream media from bloggers is the pot calling the kettle black. Even the best political blogs out there probably post more outright lies and distortions in a day than the mainstream media does in a year. I can spot bias when I see it, thank you very much. I don't need some online pundit to harp on about it.

          I also find that people who spend all their time cruising the web for their information end up rather, shall we say, eccentric. I have

      • Re:Rise and FALL? (Score:4, Insightful)

        by Rei ( 128717 ) on Tuesday June 14, 2005 @02:18PM (#12815530) Homepage
        There can be a nice connection between blogs and the media; blogs aren't always op-eds and indy reporting. For example, Cursor.org [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 [juancole.com] 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? (Score:4, Interesting)

        by MightyMartian ( 840721 ) on Tuesday June 14, 2005 @02:25PM (#12815615) Journal
        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.

      • Re:Rise and FALL? (Score:3, Interesting)

        by ShieldW0lf ( 601553 )
        The problems with traditional media in todays day and age are numerous.

        Traditional media is full of propaganda, not only because the government occasionally directly demands it, but because if journalists print the truth they often get sued, fired or both. Or they lose their sources because they're deemed too dangerous to talk too and thus their career is over, soon to be replaced by another journalist who's willing to "play ball".

        Traditional media also censors huge amounts of newsworthy stories because
    • "The traditional media -- newspapers, TV, radio -- will be the ones to go, if they don't adapt to the new situation"

      I highly doubt that. There are billions of people on the planet that have never read a blog and have absolutely no desire to, but they still get 'traditional media.'
      To say that traditional media will just fold if they don't adapt to blogs is.. well, a rather typical self-serving blogger thing to say. :)

      A somewhat relevant example is that the MPAA/RIAA hasn't gone away yet. They haven't adapt

    • Re:Rise and FALL? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by AKAImBatman ( 238306 ) * <akaimbatman@gmaYEATSil.com minus poet> on Tuesday June 14, 2005 @01:23PM (#12814848) Homepage Journal
      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? (Score:4, Insightful)

        by davide101 ( 847486 ) on Tuesday June 14, 2005 @01:32PM (#12814952) Homepage
        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? (Score:3, Insightful)

        by daniil ( 775990 ) *
        What your cat did today is not news for the entire world to hear. Nor is your diary-online.

        Your friends (both of them!) might be quite interested in reading it, though...

        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.

        Just because everyone can read it, it doesn't mean that everyone will read it. One of dot-bomb-boom's little lessons :7

        What we do want to hear about are [..] etc. You know, i'm not really sure that's what we

      • Re:Rise and FALL? (Score:5, Funny)

        by soft_guy ( 534437 ) on Tuesday June 14, 2005 @01:52PM (#12815179)
        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.

      • Is variety so bad? (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Infonaut ( 96956 ) <infonaut@gmail.com> on Tuesday June 14, 2005 @01:53PM (#12815180) Homepage Journal
        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.

        • The problem with so many blogs like this is that they lead to a low signal to noise ratio. i.e. How does one go about finding useful blogs when the blog listings are full of garbage? Not to mention, how do you keep Ms. Kitty Owner from spilling her junk over to useful blogs via the community features?

          That's why it's a problem. If those blogs could somehow be removed from searches for useful blogs (topical index, maybe?), then everyone could be happy. :-)

      • Re:Rise and FALL? (Score:4, Insightful)

        by InfiniteWisdom ( 530090 ) on Tuesday June 14, 2005 @01:54PM (#12815197) Homepage
        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? (Score:3, Insightful)

        by chphilli ( 885315 )
        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

      • Re:Rise and FALL? (Score:3, Insightful)

        by jdray ( 645332 )
        I think it's a little more disconnected than that. There are thousands (millions, maybe) blogs out there. Some are well written and insightful, others are the blatherings of pre-teen social climbers. Some blogs get traffic, others don't, but you can bet that traffic levels are not directly correlated with the quality of material in the blog. But, just as the talentless boors with nothing to say are constantly surrounded by people listening to their every word, and many of our society's most insightful t

    • Re:Rise and FALL? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by anagama ( 611277 ) <obamaisaneocon@nothingchanged.org> on Tuesday June 14, 2005 @01:26PM (#12814887) Homepage
      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.

    • I see your double negative and raise an objection! (Score:5, Funny)

      by Mille Mots ( 865955 ) on Tuesday June 14, 2005 @01:31PM (#12814938)
      ...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?

      • But every other language besides English allows and encourages the use of the double negative. I know it's hard for a programming-hardened brain to understand, but Boolean logic is not really a big part of the normal human's thinking. Let's allow a little imprecision, get off of our high horse, and allpw people to say what they intend to say without busting their ass because they don't feel the need to conform to the rules of some arbitrary seventeenth-century prescriptive grammarian. You understood what th
      • ...*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.'

        The is obviously false, through observation I can see a blog *here*, yet also one *over there*. Thus blogs in fact are staying and going somewhere simultaneously.

        I think your problem is that you have not cought up on the latest in Quantum Blog Theory which states that blogs exist simultaneously as

    • Re:Rise and FALL? (Score:3, Insightful)

      by jfengel ( 409917 )
      Blogs are going nowhere. They hype surrounding them will certainly die down. The question is, where will they settle?

      Occasionally, a blog will truly break news. Will that news continue to get extra airtime in traditional media because it came from the relatively novel source of a blog?

      For the mass of purely opinion blogs, will they become like op-ed pages, or be marginalized as the opinions of nobodies?

      So they're not going anywhere. There will be more and more of them. They'll get less and less play in

    • Re:Rise and FALL? (Score:3, Insightful)

      by dsplat ( 73054 )
      Individual blogs do rise and fall. I've watched several blogs I've enjoyed die as the people who wrote them merged their work into group blogs. I watched one group blog fragment as several writers were overwhelmed with real world obligations. I don't think blogs, wikis, or even Usenet are going to die any time soon.

  • Burnout eh? (Score:4, Funny)

    by jb.hl.com ( 782137 ) <joe.joe-baldwin@net> on Tuesday June 14, 2005 @01:13PM (#12814730) Homepage Journal
    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
  • I've never read a blog.

  • My comments (Score:5, Funny)

    by beforewisdom ( 729725 ) on Tuesday June 14, 2005 @01:13PM (#12814733)
    My comments can be found on my blog

  • Next Slashdot headline (Score:5, Funny)

    by savagedome ( 742194 ) on Tuesday June 14, 2005 @01:13PM (#12814737)
    How the blogs about saturation of blogs have reached a saturation.

  • Blogs aren't going anywhere. (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Scoria ( 264473 ) <`slashmail' `at' `initialized.org'> on Tuesday June 14, 2005 @01:14PM (#12814743) Homepage
    The term might be. Eventually, we'll once again refer to them as "journals."
    • My wife is an author and has a web site, but she doesn't want a blog--she wants to be anti-hip. So one day she is telling me that she wants to have a journal kind of thing, where she can share seasonal things like gardening and cooking tips with her readers and open a dialog. Of course my response was, "Soooo, you want a blog then?" "No," she says, "I don't want a blog, I want an on-line journal." "But that is a blog," I responded. "I don't want a blog. I want a journal", she repeated.

      So I set her up with

    • Journals and blogs (Score:3, Interesting)

      by jfengel ( 409917 )
      At least to my mind, a "journal" is an online diary, intended primarily for yourself and your friends. A "blog" is a soapbox or editorial page directed at the outside world. The difference is the size of the target audience.

      Sometimes there's news in a blog, too. When news happens to a journal-keeper (e.g. you suddenly find yourself living in a war zone), your journal may well become a blog. A blog could also have news if it's for something other than world news. When a sourceforge developer posts daily ne

  • The Real Question is: (Score:5, Interesting)

    by BWJones ( 18351 ) * on Tuesday June 14, 2005 @01:14PM (#12814746) Homepage Journal
    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" [utah.edu] 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 [typepad.com] of Chris Anderson.

  • Really? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by AKAImBatman ( 238306 ) * <akaimbatman@gmaYEATSil.com minus poet> on Tuesday June 14, 2005 @01:15PM (#12814755) Homepage Journal
    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.

    • Re:Really? (Score:3, Insightful)

      by cgreuter ( 82182 )

      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.

      This is why one of the great things about blogs is that you don't have to read them.

      I don't mean to pick on you specifically here, but I really don't get why people complain about blogs. Sure, the majority of them are self-indulgent, pointless and relevant to no more than six people worldwide. So what?

      I could see the complainers' point if it was

  • All the blogs on the web could go away tomorrow and
    a) very few people would notice
    b) even fewer would care
  • As long as we have a free (as in speech) and open Internet.
  • I would have submitted this as "FREE SHIRT" to the first 5000 people.

    Get them while you can.

  • Over-time (Score:5, Interesting)

    by TrippTDF ( 513419 ) <{moc.liamg} {ta} {dnalih}> on Tuesday June 14, 2005 @01:16PM (#12814767)
    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 (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Xiaran ( 836924 )
      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
  • I realize some people love them.

    I am luke warm.

    I never had a problem with putting up a web page if I had something to express.

    I never found people's personal blogs to be interesting.

    I find it annoying when blogs are used for interactive exchange instead of web board software.

  • Blogs will come, and blogs will go. But as an overall media, they will always be with us as long as the Internet is around.

  • Bet URLs (Score:2, Informative)

    by dubl-u ( 51156 ) *
    The bet is part of the Long Bets [longbets.org] project, which is run by the Long Now [longnow.org] foundation. The permanent URL for the bet is http://www.longbets.org/2 [longbets.org].

  • Honestly. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Tuxedo Jack ( 648130 ) on Tuesday June 14, 2005 @01:16PM (#12814776) Homepage
    There are good blogs, but those are few and far between - most of them are just "OMG I WUNDER IF HE LIKEZ ME HEART HEART" and such. It's nauseating.

    I honestly don't see the point of an online diary. A diary's something you write in a lock up, not post online for the world to see - and if these kids can funnel this kind of energy into writing shitty blog entries, why the HELL can't they at least learn to write with proper grammar and spelling?
  • All we have is this crummy journal. Which is totally not the same thing.

    really.

    it's accurately named

  • Blog = Personal webpage (Score:5, Insightful)

    by GillBates0 ( 664202 ) on Tuesday June 14, 2005 @01:18PM (#12814791) Homepage Journal
    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).

  • A blog bubble? (Score:5, Funny)

    by appleLaserWriter ( 91994 ) on Tuesday June 14, 2005 @01:20PM (#12814805)
    Sounds like we've got a blubble.
  • When I first heard the term "blog", I thought it stood for brain log, which was kind of cool and represented what they seemed to be. Random thoughts and links elsewhere for reference. "Like, I saw this thing. Here's why it caught my interest, and you can look at it too."

    When I found out blog was short for "web log", I was quite disappointed at the sheer lack of originality.
  • Blogs are to the internet as reality shows are to television. They're far from gone, but far from worthwhile.

  • Blog (un)Accountability (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Kainaw ( 676073 ) on Tuesday June 14, 2005 @01:21PM (#12814821) Homepage Journal
    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.
    • I pay little attention to blogs because there is no accountability.

      Indeed, even when the link from a story on Slashdot is to an attributed story from a "real" news source, the article summaries don't appear to have even the slightest fact checking done. How many "news" items have been posted here with summaries that are twisted virtually 180 degrees from the conclusions of the article?

      Because of its popularity, Slashdot ought to be held up as the poster child of bad news blogging...Matt Drudge might ha
    • It's no different from my grandfather spouting things he learned frm Rush Limbaugh as if they were facts.
  • We have just registered ourselves as unhip?

    Just checking...

  • 1,000,000 Monkeys (Score:5, Insightful)

    by cyngus ( 753668 ) on Tuesday June 14, 2005 @01:21PM (#12814824)
    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 (Score:4, Funny)

      by Ranger ( 1783 ) on Tuesday June 14, 2005 @02:31PM (#12815692) Homepage
      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.
  • Here's my all time favorite blog and the last comment he made "that made sense" was on Saturday, April 10, 2004, where he said that he was taking a hiatus.

    Read it if you haven't already, it will engulf you. It gives a unique perspective on the Iraq war by an Iraqi in Baghdad (who happens to write good English).

    http://dearraed.blogspot.com/ [blogspot.com]

    I think that this is a good example of where someone with an interesting story to tell could reach a wide audience without having great resources. Without the blog ph
  • I think any estimation of their demise is a little unrealistic, at least as far as serious news and policital blogs are concerned. I run a caption contest, on a voluntary basis, on OTB [outsidethebeltway.com]. Even though my role is more frill than substance, the blog itself contains a lot of serious news and commentary. A couple of others that seem to address a serious role in politics, news, and sometimes entertainment are: Wizbang [wizbangblog.com] Poliblog [poliblogger.com] and there are a number of others more popular than these that seem to address politics an
  • Many personal blogs are of little interest to the wider population. However there are some corporate blogs that interest not only it junkies but general news getters as well.
  • I can see the downfall of many political blogs. Soon enough we will see politicians paying for the creation of blogs that support their cause. Of course they will look like a "grassroots" effort, even though they'll be funded by the Big Business connections of said politicians.

    Instead of the citizens of the US lobbying politicians, it will be the politicians lobbying the citizenry through such shammery as the aforementioned types of blogs.

    Now, I predict that many will not fall for such a scam, and will st

  • Point of blogs (Score:3, Insightful)

    by SamMichaels ( 213605 ) on Tuesday June 14, 2005 @01:24PM (#12814863)
    I'm sure someone with a psychology degree can offer more insight into this...but...

    Blogs are just a way for someone to avoid the confrontation of dealing with it in real life. You can talk about that girl you like...and you know she's going to see it because you have the link in all your profiles. You can finally say what you really think of that jackass who picks on you because a friend of a friend will let him know the link. And of course the "OMGLOLBBQ!!!!111ONEHUNDREDELEVEN!!".

    I have had an online dear diary that none of the real-world friends know about. Online friends do because they're removed from the situation and as long as I give an unbiased description they can give unbiased advice. That whole "ohhh I hopehopehope she reads this because it's in all my profiles and I announce to everyone when I update it" is a bunch of creepy, insecure crap.
    • Blogs are just a way for someone to avoid the confrontation of dealing with it in real life.

      Same may be said of other forms of writing and of art. What does it change? If I like what I read that's fine. Author's real life (or lack of thereof) has nothing to do with it.

    • Re:Point of blogs (Score:3, Insightful)

      by vorpal22 ( 114901 )
      Blogs are just a way for someone to avoid the confrontation of dealing with it in real life.

      That may be one very small aspect of blogs for some people, but I think that you've made an unnecessarily large blanket statement based on that fact.

      My LiveJournal serves many purposes for me:
      • It keeps my friends and family informed on the going-ons of my life.
      • It exposes me to a wide variety of new people (I actually met my husband through LJ, who found my journal through a mutual friend).
      • It provides me a centr
  • Blogs have proven to be a very effective tool in the fight against tyranny, not only in America but in many other nations (such as China, Mozambique, Indonesia and Burma). Indeed, it has been said by many economists that had it not been for blogs, then the open-market blitz experienced in China over the past few years would never have occurred. Blogs can unite and coordinate the ordinary citizenry like no other tool, and that is why they have been so helpful at fighting back against tyrannical government st
  • Blogs have revolutionized information delivery

    Oh please. Blogs are just the next step in vanity publishing, an industry that exists because a lot of people think they have something worthwhile to say and are willing to spend their own money to say it. And while a slim few actually do, most of it is pointless blather or just links to other blogs.

    The day that a blog gets more hits than the NYT is the day that the Intarweb is past saving.
  • Events like the September 11 attacks and the Iraq invasion made news channels take a back seat.

    I'm sorry but blogs *are* the back seat. CNN, Fox, and other mainstream media own the coverage of big events like the above. Where blogs are useful is: (1) In fact checking as we say with the 2004 election coverage. Previously people who knew that the reporters did shoddy work or got it completely wrong had no outlet, now they do. (2) Covering small stories that the mainstream media has not interest in.
  • When was the last time your favorite blogger talked sense?

    It's been a while here on Slashdot...
  • What a poor collection of anecdote and bad writing!

    Come on, I'm sure there are more interesting "Netcraft Confirms: Blogs Are Dying!" type articles out there. If you want anecdotes, here's one for you: I read over a dozen blogs daily (not always closely, of course), and all but a couple of my regular reads over the last couple of years are still going strong and putting out generally good and interesting essays. In fact, several have even gone pro or semi-pro, and their output has gotten better and mor


  • no matter what, people still fundamentally want to put their entire cd collection list on their websites (remember that trend?) ...

    people are self-absorbed and think they are interesting.. when in fact, most are not... but it does not stop them from trying..

  • Typical American outllook (Score:3, Insightful)

    by lawpoop ( 604919 ) on Tuesday June 14, 2005 @01:33PM (#12814960) Homepage Journal
    Some new technology failed to change the world and usher in a new utopia, so instead of blogs nestling in and finding their place in everyday life, anyone involved with blogging are tearing their clothes and gnashing their teeth, wailing out loud "Why?! Why oh why did we ever BLOG?!"
  • Really? The FEC is trying to control blogs and poltical speech on them. (So much for the 1st Amaendment, thank you senators McCain and Feingold). In a few years statements like the previous will probably get me fined or jailed!

    Remember, politicians don't try to suppress that which is dying all by itself!

  • Blogs were always tripe, and will always be (Score:3, Insightful)

    by tod_miller ( 792541 ) on Tuesday June 14, 2005 @04:18PM (#12816964) Journal
    Before you mod, my thoughts:

    The bad blogs, were, well bad. The good blogs were, well, good, but bad. How so?

    Well, blogging became a trite and annoying word, and those who could have had sane web content published to their site using automated means, whose instead to label this technology as an action.

    The fact that the verb was the technology is an irkish trait.

    The verb should have been removed from the underlying technology, the whole process of writing has been around, suddenly a technology comes around that does... nothing... one day all these forum / im / chat processes were relabeled with a piece of jargon, and everyone wanted to do it.

    If you trace the ancient entymology of 'blog you will find an antique phrase:

    web log

    web is a protraction of world-wide-web, a name given to the http related protocols that run on the 'net (route: english, from word 'Internet' from older phrase 'interconnected network'). log is the same as the ancient word 'log' meaning a piece of felled tree.

    The act of web logging means you kept a series of diary like thoughts. However, most were not diaries, but link dumps, or a way of changing the front page content of a website. Which makes sense.

    But, althought you write a diary on a diary, and a newspaper on a newspaper, and a tv guide on a tv guide, and a sightseeing book, in, a , erm, sightseeing book, they are not all the same thing.

    You can call it publishing, but blogging has other roots, and the misuse of the term is like garlic salt on an open eye wound.

    My favourite blog was my friends, it was unpretentious, only about 5 people ever read it. I preffer that.

    Basically, write an article if you have something to say, if you want to write a how-to, write a how -to.

    Don't blog a how-to, or blog a hack.

    And weblogs.com can die, as can any other 'auto-content-blog-content-write-for-us-
    content- for-the-sake-of-linkable-content-
    google-friendly -badgerisms' can go and die.

    Making it too easy to publish things that went into the global conscience of the web, just made it easier for the people who saw little value in what they wrote to just write more of it, and make it EASIER (or more difficult for google) for them to infect the mainstream.

    Blogging was one hell of a signal/noise screw over, and for that, they can tongue my sweaty starfish, the bastards.

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