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The Internet

Blog Binging Gorges the Net 214

Posted by CmdrTaco from the so-many-words-so-little-content dept.
Site Pixie writes "Most blogs are created by someone you don’t know, often about something you don’t care about, but that hasn’t stopped ‘blogging’ from becoming a remarkably ubiquitous phenomenon. There are even blogs about blogs such as The Blog Herald. It looks like everyone wants their fifteen minutes of fame online. Estimates put the number of blogs to be in the tens of millions, with several factors influencing the count, such as whether a blog is available for public or private consumption. Carl Bialik investigates the intricacies of counting blogs, and shows how blog indexing sites like BlogPulse and Technorati are bursting at the seams with thousands of new blog entries everyday."
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Blog Binging Gorges the Net More

Blog Binging Gorges the Net

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  • how about calling them... (Score:4, Funny)

    by yagu ( 721525 ) * <{yayagu} {at} {gmail.com}> on Tuesday September 27, 2005 @01:39PM (#13659802) Journal

    Just another internet fad (though useful to some degree, if they're good).

    But may I suggest rather than blog, we could call them blahgs, or even blah-blah-blahgs.

    • Or at least mix it up a little.
      Hearing the word 'blog' 12 times in one summary is enough to make one's head explode.
    • Personally, I don't think "blogs" per say will go away, but the "blogging phenomena" certainly will go in much the same way as the "Personal Home Pages" of the late 90's. The *idea* of tools that allow you to quickly publish articles is sound enough, and is something I and many others have used quite a bit in lieu of proper publishing tools. This is a good thing because it speeds the time and reduces the overhead between writing an article and making it available on the 'net. The "blogging phenomena" OTOH, is people who use the tools to talk about their cat or the guy who flipped them off in traffic today. My feeling is that these blogs provide no long-term value and will likely experience decline as more professionally done blogs take over.
      • Isn't the "blogging phenomena" just the personal home page of today. I'd say that the personal home page didn't so much disappear as evolve, not that it really matters.

        Blogs will evolve, and eventually they too will not longer be a fad, at which point most properly run news and information blogs will cease to be called by that name and just become "old fashioned" news sites.
      • "these blogs provide no long-term value[...]more professionally done blogs [will] take over."? Neither do the conversations I have with people all day. Should I ignore everyone that I don't think will provide long-term value? Should I let professionals take over my personal conversations? Someone who blogs about the guy who flipped them off in traffic today, is blowing off steam talking to some friends, and doesn't have to justify that to anyone.
    • Blogs are the modern day replacements for the "My Homepages" of the 1995-1998 era...

      ...except for the looping MIDI file, the obligatory "Page Under Construction" hard hat image, and the animated paper-folding,sliding-into-stamped-envelope,landin g-in-mailbox "e-mail me" GIF.

  • Google Blogsearch (Score:4, Informative)

    by garcia ( 6573 ) on Tuesday September 27, 2005 @01:41PM (#13659822)
    Carl Bialik investigates the intricacies of counting blogs, and shows how blog indexing sites like BlogPulse and Technorati are bursting at the seams with thousands of new blog entries everyday.

    Technorati has always been slow for me and somewhat outdated. Google's Blogsearch [google.com], OTOH, seems fairly current and loads much faster.

    I have only seen a few hits from Technorati (ending up at my site) but quite a few more coming from Google, starting only in the last 10 days or so.
    • While Google's Blogsearch is more comprehensive, it does a terrible job of filtering out spam blogs.
      Many spam blogs are hosted on Google's own Blogspot, which they seem to mine exhaustively, sadly.

      I find that both Technorati and Blogpulse produce fewer, but more relevant results.

  • Second Spam (Score:2, Insightful)

    by JFitzsimmons ( 764599 )
    Blogs are turning into the second spam of the internet. Some of them are legitimate and interesting, but a vast majority are not.

    • Re:Second Spam (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Peaker ( 72084 ) <gnupeaker@nOSPAM.yahoo.com> on Tuesday September 27, 2005 @01:48PM (#13659886) Homepage
      I could say the same about some Slashdot comments.
      But I won't, because I chose to read your comment, it was not shoved down my throat.
      • I think the analogy is apt. Spam clogs inboxes, worthless blogs clog search engine results. Reading is not the point. You don't have to actually _read_ either one for it to interfere with your productivity, the sheer volume losing other content in the noise is the problem.

        I wish there was a meta tag or something that all blogs used indicating that it is in fact a blog, so that search engines could easily filter the results. If I could filter the crap blogs from my search results, I would agree with you that
        • I totally disagree. I think it is a bad analogy. You have a right to speak, but I have no obligation to listen. Blogs exercise the former but do not violate the later. Spam violates the later. If search engines are being clogged with uninteresting results, then the engines should be improved.

          What you are arguing is like saying the library should only have comic books because that's all you want to read.
        • You're missing a critical point, which is that not all blogs are worthless, and that worth depends entirely on what you're searching for.

          For instance, someone looking for information about red pandas is going to have trouble if they search for "firefox." Not blog related at all, but for that person, all this junk about some web browser is worthless crap clogging their search results.

          Sure, there are a bunch of blogs that probably aren't going to help you much... but what about the guy who spends 8 hours try

    • Re:Second Spam (Score:2, Informative)

      by mysqlrocks ( 783488 )
      That is the idea behind BlogPulse, Technorati and Google Blog Search. They're supposed to help us sort out the good stuff from the crap just like search engines help us sort out relevant web sites from crappy ones. How successful they are at this is up for debate.

    • Re:Second Spam (Score:5, Insightful)

      by nine-times ( 778537 ) <nine.times@gmail.com> on Tuesday September 27, 2005 @01:50PM (#13659910) Homepage
      Well, the great power of a "weblog" (I hate the word "blog") is that it allows a normal, lowly, everyday human being to share his ideas and voice his opinions. The great failing of weblogs is that they allow normal, lowly, everyday human beings to share their ideas and voice their opinions.

      Actually, that's been the power and failing of the internet all along. Anything which gives power to the common man, letting us hear his good ideas, unfortunately also gives power to the common man, giving us access to his incessant prattle. Really, what do you want? Do you want some large media company sifting through and deciding what's good?

      I'd rather have access to weblogs, at least so long as they are distinguished from spam in one factor: they aren't showing up in my inbox uninvited. Say as much as you want for however long as you want in your own weblog, and as long as I have to actively choose to read it, fine by me.

      If you don't like my weblog, there's a simple solution. Don't visit it.

    • Re:Second Spam (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Homology ( 639438 )
      Blogs are turning into the second spam of the internet. Some of them are legitimate and interesting, but a vast majority are not.

      In what way are the majority of blogs not legitimate? Oh wait, I'm sure there are positions available in some American company helping the Chinese government to stiffle free speech. Of course, this is entirely legitimate. But hey, Cash is King, and we won't let small things like common decency stop us for making a killing

      • Re:Second Spam (Score:3, Insightful)

        by Seumas ( 6865 )
        Just because you have thoughts doesn't mean they need to be shared. The average blogger reminds me of the average loudmouthed kid who has to make every single thing that goes through his mind every second of the day known to the world.

        Okay, you hate George Bush. Wow. That's unique. Great, you hate pinko commie liberal hippies. Good for you. What a unique perspective. You're said about Brad and Jennifer breaking up. Oh, dear - I'm so glad you took the time to communicate that with the world. Your head hurts

        • Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)

          by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) * on Tuesday September 27, 2005 @03:36PM (#13660835)
          Comment removed based on user account deletion
        • For the most part I agree...

          But dayum, man. Are you having a bad day? We usually pad the truth a least a little bit. You might have hurt someone's feelings.

          I'm going to read your post again just to chuckle. :)
        • THE PROBLEM WITH BLOGGING IS THE SELF DELUSION THAT YOU BELIEVE YOU MATTER OR THAT PEOPLE GIVE A FUCK WHAT YOU SAY.

          And what is the difference between someone posting a message on Slashdot and running their own blog? A blog is about me me me with frequent updates about me me me in some way. Posting to slashdot is offering a one-time statement in a community of voices regarding the current subject.

          And how does posting to slashdot make people give a fuck what you say? Posting on Slashdot is worse than posting

    • Re:Second Spam (Score:4, Insightful)

      by interiot ( 50685 ) on Tuesday September 27, 2005 @01:53PM (#13659937) Homepage
      Confusing post.

      If you mean intentional spam, then it's not the second by far (usenet spam or instant-message spam came first).

      If you mean unintentional spam, then you're misusing the word. You can more or less avoid bloggers you dislike, because unlike real spammers, they aren't single-mindedly trying to insert themselves into as many inboxes and search results as they possibly can.

      • they aren't single-mindedly trying to insert themselves into as many inboxes and search results as they possibly can

        You would be incorrect - spamming (in regards to search engines) means to artificially and/or unethicaly inflate the ranking of a site.

        The major search engine algorithms rank based on some combination of keyword relevance, user rating, and link quality/count, (possibly other criteria, who knows?). How they weigh each factor, how (and who) they blacklist, and how they detect spam is of co
        • I guarentee that you would be suprised to learn the percentage of blogs out there that are just spammers

          Umm, read your parent post a couple more times. You're talking about "intentional spamming", and it's not the second wave of internet spam. More like the third through twentieth, depending on how you count all the other cracks and crevices the spam vermin have crawled into before they settled down in the bowels of the blogosphere.

    • I can't decide what's more childish: the analogy you made, or the attitude behind it. Try considering that maybe the whole world need not revolve around you and what you consider interesting.

    • Re:Second Spam (Score:3, Insightful)

      by cowscows ( 103644 )
      Ok, so the vast majority are not interesting to you. The vast majority are not interesting to me. But that doesn't make them valueless. Just about every blog out there has value for at least one person, the author, and most likely at least a few others. My blog should be of little interest to you, yet for my family and friends it's a useful source of information about me and what I'm up to.

      The only way that blogs can really be compared to spam is perhaps in search engine rankings, where they can muddy the r
    • Most science fiction and fantasy fiction sucks goat balls. But I still occasionally find a book that transcends genre and blows my mind.

      TV is a vast wasteland of crap, with a few great exceptions like Galactica and Six Feet Under.

      The blogosphere is full of nonsense, self-referential mental masturbation, and useless blogrolls. Then there are blogs like Daring Fireball [daringfireball.net], The Long Tail [thelongtail.com], and WWDNK [wilwheaton.net] which are each compelling in their own way.

      Spam, though, is 100% crap. In that 10% lies the difference.

  • ugh... (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Blogs are glorified web pages are they not?

    Just like podcasting used to be called --- audio files, duh!
    • No...
      It's mostly a capture of people having a seizure on their keyboard.
    • Blogs are glorified web pages are they not?

      Sure, but they have a standard form. and a fairly standardized language, even a standard tone. It is no longer funny and ironic, for instance, to describe your writing as "rants" or "ramblings", etc. (even though they are).

    • Blogs are glorified web pages are they not?

      They are systems of web pages. But yes, underlying it all are the same old Web standards we're familiar with.

      Eric
      How to masquerade your browser [ericgiguere.com]

    • Re:ugh... (Score:3, Insightful)

      by FLEB ( 312391 )
      And web pages are glorified HTTP responses.

      Blogs' improvement over webpages is that it's amazingly simple to build and maintain the page, meaning that nearly anyone with half a brain can get a "write-mode" Internet presence that looks good. Today's blogs would have just been yesterday's seizure-inducing, flashing, malformed Geocities page (if it existed at all).

      Podcasting isn't all that revolutionary in its parts, but it was more of a chemical reaction among the technologies of web audio (and the bandwidth

      • Blogs' improvement over webpages is that it's amazingly simple to build and maintain the page

        Which is to say that we suddenly have blogs now because someone finally figured out a good way to get an idiot-proof web-page package to the general population without making them learn anything about the technology they're using... again...

        meaning that nearly anyone with half a brain can get a "write-mode" Internet presence that looks good.

        You say this like it's a good thing. No wonder blogs are becoming a s

  • Oh... BINGEing (Score:5, Informative)

    by jfengel ( 409917 ) on Tuesday September 27, 2005 @01:42PM (#13659841) Homepage Journal
    My dictionary lists "binging" as an acceptable spelling, but it took me a couple of extra parses on this (not least because "gorges" can be a noun as well as a verb.)

    I still don't, ya know, CARE, but at least I understand the headline.

  • Crabby Old Guy -- no blog (Score:5, Funny)

    by putko ( 753330 ) on Tuesday September 27, 2005 @01:44PM (#13659858) Homepage Journal
    I'm a crabby old guy resistant to jargon.

    The word "blogs", esp. blogger (and all derived words) have rubbed me the wrong way from the beginning -- especially when we have words like "write" and "writer."

    Thankfully, I've found this guy who really says it all better than I can [thebestpag...iverse.net].

  • It's the same with websites, but do I complain? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Elad Alon ( 835764 ) on Tuesday September 27, 2005 @01:47PM (#13659877)
    Most blogs are created by someone you don't know, often about something you don't care about, but that hasn't stopped 'blogging' from becoming a remarkably ubiquitous phenomenon.
    It's the same with websites. What's the problem? The freedom of speech can't be the sole domain of those with something interesting to say.

  • A blog is a webpage with management tools (Score:5, Interesting)

    by popo ( 107611 ) on Tuesday September 27, 2005 @01:48PM (#13659888) Homepage
    Can we stop calling them "blogs" now?


    Apparently if I create a web page and upload some text to it, that's not a blog. But if I use an idiot proof content-management system to "type" my web page instead of "coding" it, I'm then creating a blog.


    Once you start putting pictures and links on your blog, you're making a webpage...

    • Personally, I hate the word "blog", I think it just sounds silly, especially when it's inserted into compound words.

      But really, I don't think the definition of a weblog really hinges on what sort of technologies you use to make it.

      I code my homepage completely by hand. There is a section of it that I consider a weblog, and yes, sometimes it includes pictures. I call it a weblog because it is continually updated with new content, which is displayed in a chronological fashion. It's really that simple. The org
    • A webpage with management tools? That's taking the lowest common denominator.

      You might as well call forums, chat, galleries, content management systems, and everything else on the web "webpages with management tools."

      All of these differ in how the content is presented, the nature of that content, and how it's consumed. Forums are meant for a broad arrange of topics. Threads are meant for easy online conversation but not really meant for real time.

      Chat is for real time, but not easy to go back and
      • Comment removed based on user account deletion
        • I wouldn't really classify Slashdot as a blog. While you have a single-threaded story/blog entry type of publishing, the commenting system is an order of magnitude more complex than what you would find on a typical blog. A typical blog only allows single-threaded responses to the original story. Slashdot allows comments as responses to other comments. It adds a whole other dimension of interactivity.

          Even with this additional dimension I would humbly say that it's not really the optimal form of interacti
    • Can we stop calling them "blogs" now?

      Oh, because saying "website-running-a-CMS" is /so/ much easier than saying "blog".

      I don't like blogs, but they're a distinct type of site, and it's easier to give them their own term. It's not like the word was being used for anything else.

    • I think there's a difference between blogs and other webpages: a blog is basically a web journal, it's updated more or less regularly. For example my personal website has a journal section, but one could well exist without the other. Back when I started the journal, people didn't use the word blog, they just had web diaries etc.

      The blogging craze seems to involve sites that consists of nothing but the journal. People are using the blog as their personal website, with little or no static content. I think t

  • Blog measurements hard in general. (Score:3, Informative)

    by burtonator ( 70115 ) on Tuesday September 27, 2005 @01:52PM (#13659925)
    It's really hard to measure blogs from a number of angles. Everyone always claims that your data is biased and there's still debate over what a 'blog' actually is... Feedburner [feedburner.com] is in a good place to measure blogs. I blogged about their stats last week [feedblog.org].

    There's also a lot of debate on the quality of various Blog search engines such as Technorati, Feedster, and IceRocket. I'm thinking of creating a meta indexer [feedblog.org] which simply monitors 100 real blogs at 1-5 minute intervals and then determines how quickly the blog search engines index them.

    I'd love help if anyone's interested. I just don't have much time......

  • Ten years ago, people called blogs homepages.

    "Blogs" are in reality just easy-to-setup homepages. Without the geeks/nerds making it easy for people to set things up with sites like Blogger.com, blogs wouldn't be as popular as it is today. Many bloggers today can't even write a line of HTML.

  • Not a blog (Score:5, Interesting)

    by adamwright ( 536224 ) on Tuesday September 27, 2005 @01:57PM (#13659965) Homepage
    I maintain a site run via WordPress, that publishes an RSS feed. However, I don't use it to write about my (uninteresting to most of the universe) day to day life. Rather, I write semi-technical articles about subjects people might be interested in.

    No doubt this is lumped in with the "blogs". However, it's just an extension of what I've done for years, but now I don't have to write static HTML pages and FTP them around. I using weblog software as a content management system and RSS to let people know when I've "published" something. Comments on the system allow me to get feedback and questions that everyone can see, rather than have me privately answer the same thing 10 times from my Inbox.

    I would state that this categorically isn't a "blog", just a more useful incarnation of what people have been putting on the web for years. I'm pretty sure many other "blogs" are like mine (heck, looking at my RSS list, 99% will be better).

    The internet has always been full of garbage (or, more PC'ly, "stuff I'm not interested in"). Just ignore it if you don't like it, and focus on the stuff you do like.
      • hmmm brings back a rather vivid memory of a recreational walk in the Falklands that went slightly wrong (was stationed there in 1983 at RAF Stanley). We were enjoying our walk when we came upon this fence... and facing away from us on this fence was a rusty sign "Perigas Minas"..."Danger Mines"... the next few hours were rather tricky getting the rest of the group out of that minefield...
    • I would state that this categorically isn't a "blog", just a more useful incarnation of what people have been putting on the web for years. I'm pretty sure many other "blogs" are like mine (heck, looking at my RSS list, 99% will be better).

      You just described almost all the "blogs" that I read. Except for my (real life) friends, I don't read blogs about people's personal lives or even political opinions. I read dozens of blogs about programming, security, etc, and I call them blogs because there's no other w
    • I would contend that it is a blog. It's a log that's put on the web right?

      I don't think blog's are necessarily journals or online diaries, like many people use them for. It's also a way of distributing information that's temporal in nature and which is typically subscribed by other people. I think this differs from other content in that it is structurally meant to be consumed as a single stream on a daily/weekly basis. It has snippets of content easy for consumption.

    • I would state that this categorically isn't a "blog"

      Sorry, it is. Your site shows all the hallmarks of being a weblog - periodic publishing of original articles on a personal homepage, allowing comments, using weblog software, providing feeds, using timestamps, permalinks, categories... by any reasonable definition you have a weblog. Just because you did it manually before weblogging became popular, it doesn't mean you haven't been weblogging all along. It just means the rest of the world caught up

  • Details of my blog (Score:4, Funny)

    by digitaldc ( 879047 ) on Tuesday September 27, 2005 @01:58PM (#13659974)
    I agree it is hard to count blogs....please see my blog for more information.

  • Sweeping generalizations (Score:5, Insightful)

    by dr.badass ( 25287 ) on Tuesday September 27, 2005 @01:59PM (#13659980) Homepage
    "Most blogs are created by someone you don't know, often about something you don't care about, but that hasn't stopped 'blogging' from becoming a remarkably ubiquitous phenomenon.

    Most web pages, emails, usenet posts, instant messages, SMSes, books, magazines, newspapers, pamphlets, and indeed, spoken words are created by people I don't know, often about things I don't care about, and that hasn't stopped any of them from becoming remarkably ubiquitous.

    I don't understand why people think blogging is different from any of the above.

    It looks like everyone wants their fifteen minutes of fame online.

    That's a crass assumption. Most do it because they enjoy doing it. Some do it because they want to make money. Some do it because all of their friends are doing it. People have a lot of different reasons. I seriously doubt that "fame", even fifteen minutes of it on the web, is a real motivator for all but a tiny but vocal minority.

  • People connect computers to the internet (Score:5, Funny)

    by g0at ( 135364 ) <[ac.taogyz] [ta] [neb]> on Tuesday September 27, 2005 @02:01PM (#13660003) Homepage Journal
    Also, water is wet. Food satisfies hunger.

    Can we have more of these content-free statements of the blindingly obvious, please?

    Slashdot subscribers, please stand up so that I can laugh at you.

    -b
  • Sheesh, you could play a drinking game with that summary. One swig per mention of the word 'blog'. Lets see who passes out first shall we?

  • Someone coined the term - Blogorrhea (Score:3, Funny)

    by melted ( 227442 ) on Tuesday September 27, 2005 @02:04PM (#13660033) Homepage
    And I, for one, would like to wholeheartedly agree with the underlying meaning of it. :-)

  • Not everyone is looking for fame (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Rick Genter ( 315800 ) <rick DOT genter AT gmail DOT com> on Tuesday September 27, 2005 @02:05PM (#13660040) Homepage Journal
    I have a weblog [blogspot.com]. I don't use it to look for fame; I use it to communicate experiences with friends and family, with the added feature that others who want information about what it's like to have these experiences may read my weblog to do so.

    I find it a lot more effective than getting on the phone with various family members and friends in different time zones and repeating the same stories over and over again. It allows those who are interested to find out what's going on when they want to, and allows me to communicate any updates when I want to.

    And I agree, the word "blog" is annoying, and, as far as I can tell, purely a media construct. Back in the day, when I was doing game development, I used to post a monthly development log on progress on the game. (Unforutnately, it's been lost to the mists of time - even the Wayback Machine can't get to it :-(.) We called it "a development log." Why do new words have to be invented for something, especially when they are just the lazy contraction of existing words that work perfectly well?
    • Why do new words have to be invented for something, especially when they are just the lazy contraction of existing words that work perfectly well?

      So they can be made into verbs. Try these:

      "I'm going to post something on my development log"

      vs

      "I'm going to blog"

      Same meaning, but catchier.
    • Studies of LiveJournal [livejournal.com] find that most of these sites are used for personal communications, to share stuff with a small circle of friends and family. Sure, it's easy to poke fun at the stereotype of here's-what-my-cat-did-today blogs penned by teenage girls, but major blog tools are adapting to reflect the priorities of this style of blogging/journaling.

      Look at Six Apart's next-generation blogging tool, Project Comet [sixapart.com]. It emphasizes not only sharing, but also ways to limit access to a small group.

  • But that's the point (Score:3, Insightful)

    by slapout ( 93640 ) on Tuesday September 27, 2005 @02:09PM (#13660082)
    often about something you don't care about

    But that's the point. You ignore those, I read the ones that talk about things you are interested in.

  • No need to be so cynical! (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Junks Jerzey ( 54586 ) on Tuesday September 27, 2005 @02:16PM (#13660148)
    Wow, the submitter seems to think that blogs are worthless, yet it's a huge phenomenon, and seems puzzled as to why. I've seen this attitude before--it's common on Slashdot--but it's misguided. A weblog is simply someone posting their thoughts on a topic that interests them. It could be links to other sites, it could be software development, it could be graphic arts, it could be TV commercials, it could simply be what appear to be mundane details about daily life. The key is that you ignore what you don't care about. The mundane detail blogs are intended for family and friends (but could still be read by anyone who might want to). The graphic arts blogs are likely only of interest to other graphic artists. Slashdot-types might like software development blogs, Linux advocacy blogs, OS X blogs, and so on. There's no need to be cynical just because other people are writing about topics you have no interest in.

    • There's no need to be cynical just because other people are writing about topics you have no interest in.

      I think the reason many people are cynical is because so many bloggers seem to write about either A.) topics that nobody (save, perhaps, the blogger) should have any interest in; or B.) topics the blogger doesn't actually seem to know anything about.

      It's the same cynicism that causes us to ask exactly why someone would want to go on Jerry Springer and tell the world about his relationship with his si

  • Why are people so worried about blogs corrupting the Internet, anyway? I don't understand the problem. If Google happens to turn up my blog in a search for something, and my listing is distracting people from finding "reputable sources", then how reputable could said sources really be? I mean, if someone's silly blog like mine has a higher pagerank than someone's site, then I feel like the problem is theirs, not mine. Seriously. You probably need to work on your site content, if a lowly personal blog can ge

  • Until It Reaches 6.45 Billion Blogs (Score:3, Informative)

    by Sundroid ( 777083 ) on Tuesday September 27, 2005 @02:25PM (#13660210) Homepage
    According to Wikipedia, the world population as of 6/2005 is 6.45 billion. The democratic nature of blogging indicates that it is possible some day every single person on earth will have at least one blog, so the blog counting is unlikely to stop until it reaches 6.45 billion, that is, if some day all nations become democratic.

    The "relevance" and "importance" issues mentioned by the Wall Street Journal article miss the point -- blogging is all about democracy and free speech. The human desire to self-express is unstoppable.
    • thanks to blogspot and its ilk, anybody and his 3-year-old sister can put up a weblog. consequence is that I have about 6 of them, each for a different area of interest that I pursue. so your estimated ceiling of the earth's population is potentially an UNDERestimate.
  • yes, there are millions of pages of home made web flatulence...I have a few of my own. This is a transitional condition which the backbones and the ISPs should take as a warning that they need to beef up capacity. Some REAL bandwidth pigs already exist: voip, torrents of movies and audio etc. These are just the beginning of an era when everybody with a connection will have an abiding internet presence which will come to do for them on the internet what their physical presence does for them in their neig

  • How many Private Blogs (Score:3, Interesting)

    by hhr ( 909621 ) on Tuesday September 27, 2005 @02:29PM (#13660244)

    It would be interesting to know how many people don't blog for fame-- blogging for personal or practicle reasons. Quite honestly, a blog is often better than a notebook. You can update your blog from any computer. Blogs are hard to lose. They don't fall apart after months of use. And you can read a blog anywhere on the internet.

    I have four personal blogs just for that reason-- a wine blog because I have problems remember that great wine I had last year, a photo blog because it's easier to blog photos than it is to email them to friends, a house maintenance blog because damned if I can remember the last time I replaced the furnance filters, and a generic personal blog.

    I don't consider this "blog spam" I don't hype or advertise them. Yes they are public, but it's easier to have a public blog, than a private blog for a dozen or so people. And, they are just so damn convienent.

  • Hmm, I hope this isn't too bloggish, but heres the #1 reason blogs piss me off.

    My corporate firewall blocks anything slightly resembling a blog or higher.

    Now that doesn't piss me off because I can't go read a bunch of morons thoughts on things that don't concern me, that pisses me off because normal people, who write articles about things that do concern me (day-to-day programming solutions/concepts) are switching over in droves to "blogging" their articles and ideas. So when I google about a particula

  • Blogs just suck. (Score:4, Funny)

    by DysenteryInTheRanks ( 902824 ) on Tuesday September 27, 2005 @02:37PM (#13660304) Homepage
    I wish everyone who is writing a stupid blog, would stop. If we wanted to hear what you had to say, we would NOT have added the X factor to HTML (XHTML) and the C Secret Sauce (CSS) which is clearly intended for PROFESSIONAL WEB DESIGNErS, not you, stupid person, with your cats.

    Now for the tech diss. The blogger has no idea what he is doing. Tell me stupid blogger, what is a C struk? What is a PERL registered expression? WHO is Linux Torvalds? You do not know. Sadly. All you know is your cats, and maybe what you had for lunch, and how to link to your frends. Well, try getting a girl with THAT. Ha ha I laugh at you.

    Now sad bloggger. If you'll excuse me, I have to go back to better activities than thinking about you, such as reading Slashdot and making some karma that is actually WORTH something, not stupid PageRank for my BLOG. If you see me on the street (I am the one in the pimp ALL YOUR BASE tshirt) go the other way. Do not look. Do not linhger. Go home and write about your FEELings and live the mack programming to the /. crowd and see who wins the girls.

    Dys

  • Shocking (Score:3, Funny)

    by eison ( 56778 ) <pkteison&hotmail,com> on Tuesday September 27, 2005 @02:57PM (#13660475) Homepage
    In other shocking news, millions of people keep diaries!

    HOLY COW who knew?

    Can we please get some "stuff that matters" now?
  • paul and storm (singing group) have a funny blog. "Because What We Think Is Important Enough To Publish". Its mainly to support there musical efforts with food and tv reviews..

    paul and strom [paulandstorm.com]

    But all parodies aside, blogs should be about something, not just narsicistic ramblings.

    http://auotoblog.com/ [auotoblog.com] is quite good, especially during car shows.
  • s/blog/web page/ in 1994. Now it's just that you have nontechnical people posting useless crap on web pages instead of only those who learned a little bit of HTML and how to ftp a page to their ISP's web server.

  • Blogging (Score:3, Interesting)

    by omarius ( 52253 ) <omar@allwrUMLAUTong.com minus punct> on Tuesday September 27, 2005 @03:29PM (#13660774) Homepage Journal
    You make it sound as if most bloggers are wasting their own and everyone else's time. Sure, that's probably true, but what the hell, man? Don't you make your living off people you don't know providing free content for your blog here? If Bill Gates said something like, "Most OSS programs are created by someone you don't know, and often do something you don't care about, but that hasn't stopped 'coding' from becoming a remarkably ubiquitous phenomenon. There are even programs about coding such as CVS. It looks like everyone wants their fifteen minutes of programming fame," it'd probably make you a little aggrivated, no? Have mercy on the 'upstarts,' o high and mighty Taco.
  • Hmmm....blog....a place where someone (sometimes several people) make entries about subjects that interest them.....and people usually make comments about the entries....I just realized something....Slashdot is a blog!!!

  • It's not a blog (Score:4, Informative)

    by ndogg ( 158021 ) <the@rhorn.gmail@com> on Tuesday September 27, 2005 @03:43PM (#13660900) Homepage Journal
    I hate euphemisms.

    Let's stop calling these things blogs (a word which was probably invented by a corporate whore with too much time on his hands), and start calling them what they have always been called. It's a f*cking journal that's readable by the public.
    • And the newly-created word for an online journal that is readable by the public is blog!

      Reminds me of the time my sister came home from school and started arguing with my dad that weight doesn't exist. That it's really just gravity attracting the mass of an object. She went on about this for 5 minutes explaining it all and concluded by restating that there is no such thing as weight: there is only mass and gravity.

      My dad responded "And that's what we call weight."

      And, like my sister, you're arguing tha
  • Most blogs are created by someone you don't know, often about something you don't care about, but that hasn't stopped 'blogging' from becoming a remarkably ubiquitous phenomenon.

    %s/Most/Nearly all/g
    %s/often/almost always/g

  • This is what we wanted (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Damek ( 515688 ) <adam&damek,org> on Tuesday September 27, 2005 @04:28PM (#13661356) Homepage
    Wow, I remember when I was a teen and the internet was the new big thing (granted, this was the early 90's and the internet wasn't new then, but...)

    Everyone was saying how great it would be when everyone was able to easily create and share information.

    People, this is what we wanted, and it's pretty much here. This is a good thing. All we need now are better and better ways of sorting & indexing the information being created and shared.

  • Print Journalists Invading the Blogosphere (Score:3, Interesting)

    by miller60 ( 554835 ) on Tuesday September 27, 2005 @05:38PM (#13662105) Homepage
    The blog is as good as the author or idea behind it. The hot trend in blogging is the growth of business-related niche blogs written by a trained journalist who has bailed from their job at a daily newspaper of trade journal. Blog software, and the emerging business models based on Google AdSense make it easier than ever to be a stand-alone journalist (a term coined by Chris Nolan [www.chrisnolan]) and earn a decent living.

    The NY Times, Philadelphia Inquirer and San Jose Mercury News all announced staff layoffs last week. Where do you think those folks are going? To the Web, to eat their former employers' collective lunches. Lots of these folks have real expertise, and are bringing their contacts and rolodexes with them.

    I speak from experience. I took the plunge in 2000. I was the computer-assisted reporting director at a daily newspaper that was clueless about the future of the web, and unwilling to invest in the basics (e-mail for repoters ... doh!). So I left to write for technology sites, and have been doing it ever since.

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