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Blog Epitaphs? Get Me Rewrite!

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Mon Feb 27, 2006 03:01 PM
from the narcissism-at-its-best dept.
The Internet Editorial
Carl Bialik writes "'Reports of blogging's demise are bosh, but if we're lucky, something else really is going away: the by-turns overheated and uninformed obsession with blogging,' Jason Fry writes on WSJ.com, responding to a recent wave of blog-doubting that includes a Gallup poll and a Chicago Tribune editorial entitled, 'Bloggy, we hardly knew ye.' Fry says blogging might not fly as a business, but 'the failure of blogging to launch a huge number of well-heeled companies or keep attracting VC money won't mean the end of blogs -- instant messaging, for one, hasn't foundered despite the difficulty of turning its popularity into profits.'"
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  • I've learned this first hand: When my friend John Parsons and I started our baseball blog, Fear and Faith in Flushing, our moods used to soar and crash based on the "referrer summary" of sites that had linked to us. After a while, we noticed something odd:

  • One-To-Many the wrong way (Score:3, Insightful)

    by biocute (936687) on Monday February 27 2006, @03:04PM (#14811154) Homepage
    While some blogs are entertaining to read, the whole exercise requires readers to visit several blogs to get their daily required intake.

    RSS-and-friends is not the answer because the burden is on the readers to seek out interesting logs, what if a blog is interesting one day and crap the other? What if there's another insightful blog pops out of nowhere today?

    I wouldn't bother if I had to read 10 newspapers to get "good" national news in one, international news in another, sports in yet another so on and so forth.

    This is where sites like Slashdot comes in handy, it's essentially a collection of interesting articles.

    So some people have to get together to be the "blogeditors" and actively search for good blog articles every day, and readers have a place to go. It's like a selective RSS service.

    • This is where sites like Slashdot comes in handy, it's essentially a collection of interesting articles.
      Honestly, if you really want to get the "full" news story on any event, I suggest you go to Google News and skim several articles. Blogs and newspapers
    • So some people have to get together to be the "blogeditors" and actively search for good blog articles every day, and readers have a place to go. It's like a selective RSS service.

      There are Livejournal communities that do exactly that. I didn't see much

    • RSS-and-friends is not the answer because the burden is on the readers to seek out interesting logs, what if a blog is interesting one day and crap the other? What if there's another insightful blog pops out of nowhere today?

      The solution to this is simp
  • If the ONLY Instant Messaging was among bloggers:

    *ping*
    Hi. what u doin?
    *ping*
    workin on my blog
    *ping*
    me 2
    *ping*
    i was jus gonna IM maurice
    *ping*
    maurice sez he's workin on his blog tooo
    *ping*
    kewl
    *ping*
    whaddya wanna do later???
    *ping*
    gonna download the new Wor

  • Blogs aren't dead? (Score:5, Funny)

    by Shadow Wrought (586631) * on Monday February 27 2006, @03:12PM (#14811208) Homepage Journal
    Guess we need some more stakes. And garlic. Lots of garlic.
  • Every time a new Internet technology comes out that is a "killer app", industry tries to monetize it (it makes sense). See what I think's happening is that they looked at the Web and wanted to be able to do the same with every other technology, like IM an

  • Only The Hype Will Die (Score:3, Insightful)

    by blueZhift (652272) on Monday February 27 2006, @03:14PM (#14811218) Homepage Journal
    Blogs aren't likely to go away anytime soon, only the hype will die down. All of the talk about blogging replacing traditional (ie commercial) journalism and people trying to make money doing it will thankfully go away. Indeed, I would guess that many people will continue to blog and then the next big thing will come along and the hype machines will glom onto that.

    • Re:Only The Hype Will Die (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Lispy (136512)
      Call me ignorant. Back in 2002 I was called to a meeting with some pretty important guys in the company I was working on back then as they wanted to have one of the "tech guys" in that meeting too.

      So I sat there and they were talking about that hip new thi
      • Am I still missing the point or is this just as fundamental trivial as it seems?

        The difference between a web page and a blog is that a blog generally has a built-in temporal component. In other words, a web page is typically an "about" page, whereas a bl

        • If I really have something to say to a larger audience I might want to learn to write.
          If I want to talk to an even larger audience on the web I might consider learning HTML wich isn't THAT hard for a moderately intelligent person.

          I you are too dumb to lear
          • Wake up and get a clue - not everyone needs to be proficient with computers. This doesn't even begin to deal with the issue of just wanting things to be easier. Do you understand how to use, maintain and make everything that you deal with in your life? Eve

  • Should be no surprise. (Score:4, Insightful)

    by davburns (49244) <davburns+slashdot AT cat DOT pdx DOT edu> on Monday February 27 2006, @03:18PM (#14811254) Homepage Journal
    Lots of people seem to assume that if something is popular, then they (or someone) ought to be making money on it. But it's the exception when that happens, not the rule. Humans have been hanging out and talking with friends for thousands of years. It's wildly popular, yet money needn't change hands for it to happen. Most blogs and IMs are extentions of this. Sometimes someone makes a buck on a banner ad, like a cafe owner makes a buck when friends catch up over coffee, but the bulk of the value is in the social exchange, and the buck is just rent on the venue.
    • Blogs are like anything else; if it's someone who's insight is particularly good, you might pay to read it - or, I dunno, click on ads or something. If it's just some guy, then the blog probably isn't worth that much as a commercial tool.

      Ask any columnist

  • Blogs are a permanent feature (Score:3, Insightful)

    by RealProgrammer (723725) on Monday February 27 2006, @03:19PM (#14811262) Homepage Journal
    The "blog", or something like it, will be here from now on.

    People for the most part disconnected from their extended family and childhood friends. The Internet makes it possible either to stay connected with them or to find a new set of people with whom to connect, based not on heredity or geography but on common interests. Email and IM don't work for finding new people, only for data exchange with old ones.

    Another feature of the blog is googlability. Say it once, and anyone searching for that thought can stumble into your take on it. That blows away legacy media, as radio and TV blew away whistlestops and soapboxes. Suddenly, it's not the financial power of your boss but the content of your message that's important.

    The ramifications of that are just now being felt.

  • Blogs won't turn into profit directly. But there's indirect revenue in them.

    First of all, the obvious one. Content. Most of all, free content. Whether it's insightful or drivel, some paper will pick it up during slack season and patch together some kind of

  • Two Thoughts: Money and Social (Score:3, Insightful)

    by olddotter (638430) on Monday February 27 2006, @03:19PM (#14811267) Homepage
    Money:
    I think Google's model of owning blogger.com and then making an easy tie in for adsense allows them to fund hardware and sometimes pay bloggers to use the service. So I don't expect blogger.com to go away even if VC's aren't interested in funding competing sites.

    Social:What I like about non-commercial blogs is that it reminds me of the really early days of the world wide web, where almost all pages were a person's personal site talking about their life and interests. Bloggs tend to be personal, and I like and value that aspect of them.

  • Oh, man, I gotta go blog [gadgetswanted.com] about [docforge.com] this [seenonslash.com] right now!!!
  • Nothing overheated and uninformed *EVER* goes away.
  • Like reality TV, blogs are cheap to produce, so they probably won't ever disappear, regardless how low the quality of the average example.

    Personally I'm sick and tired of reading about blogs. I don't read any on a regular basis, as I haven't come across an
  • Gosh, let's be clear - I am ready to read some really clever fellas blogs, I am ready to read how Radiohead records their new LP, I check out Linux/Free desktop devel blogs every day. And NONE of them uses any kind of ads. Because if you want to do bloggin
  • ...the other day that the only blogs I read are meta-blogs about blogging.

    Is there any audience for blogs at all? Or are 99% of all bloggers shouting into the void?
  • Find the real reason here [userfriendly.org]!
  • The article summary was unreadable. Is there an actual thought captured in there?
  • Look at just about* every "killer app" generated by the internet, and they all have the same characteristic: Nobody found a way to make killer money off of it.

    Email, Instant Messaging, Blogging.

    The fact is - if someone figured out a way to make money off

    • Look at just about* every "killer app" generated by the internet, and they all have the same characteristic: Nobody found a way to make killer money off of it...

      *(one exception - porn)

      Sounds like Avenue Q [stlyrics.com] got it right: "In volatile market, only st

  • What do you mean everything isn't about money? Who'da thunk it?
  • I have to speak up here, blogs may be dying but that may be a good thing in that I personally tire of stupid technorati space tags like:
    ("I ate beets for lunch...lolz")
    Uhm no i want information on space people. heh
    I mean blogs were supposed to take

  • Yes (Score:2)

    by cubicledrone (681598)
    Because as we all know, if it doesn't get venture capital, it's not worthwhile.

  • I think what we'll see is what we witnessed after every boy and their dog figured out how to create a HTML page complete with flashing text, awful animated GIFs and background MIDI music. As many have pointed out, nobody cares what Mrs. Rita Boddingworth
    • or how you want to screw that cute new girl at work, or how your boss sucks?

      Depends on the circumstances. If the cute new girl at work happens to be your boss then people will certainly care to read all about your adventure.

      • Re:Blogs? (Score:2)

        by grazzy (56382)
        This might very well be one of the funniest comments on slashdot this.. well week. Read it well. Dont tear.
      • I used to think all the postings I read were fake until this happened to me.

        A cute new girl started working as my boss last week. ...
    • Not many. Which is why most successful blogs are more like mini-magazines on specific topics. There are tons of food, auto, tech, and other topical blogs that are increasing readership.

      The "had a pop quiz today" blogs are still in existence, they're al
    • Blogs have always been overhyped and overrated. Who cares what you had for breakfast, or how someone cut you off in traffic today, or how you want to screw that cute new girl at work, or how your boss sucks?

      Seriously, I hate reality TV more than most peopl
    • Who cares what you had for breakfast, or how someone cut you off in traffic today, or how you want to screw that cute new girl at work, or how your boss sucks?

      This may be true if you're reading a blog that is written by someone you don't know. It gets blo
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