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Avalanche to come. Backlash to

3 comments on Avalanche to come. Backlash to

Avalanche to come. Backlash to follow.
: It’s being reported again that AOL is getting ready to hand out blogging tools. I’ve seen rumblings that Yahoo at least should do likewise. Lots of new tools are popping up in Europe. Blogging will explode. And that will be a good thing: more power to more people. But then everyone will have a blog and no one will have one. What makes a blogs special — nay, better — is the quality; somebody cares about it; somebody (Atrios excepted) puts his name behind it; the best ones get the links; the cream rises. But when everyone blogs, no one will feel special. Then the old-timers will complain (as the original tech bloggers did) about the invasion. Then blogging will get on all the “out” lists. The backlash will take hold. Heavens to Mergatroid, is this the death of blogging?

No.

That quality thing will take hold. Only the good blogs — whether from the loin of Blogger or MT or AOL or old-fashioned hand-cranked code — will get the links; only the cream will rise; only the best survive. (And blogs can’t be ruined the way Usenet was because they can’t be spammed… well, except by lone certain bozo pestering certain sites’ comments).

You see, I’m a populist and a snob at the same time in the same brain. I have faith in the taste of the audience.

3 responses to “Avalanche to come. Backlash to”

  1. Anil Avatar
    Anil

    Eh, this whole AOL blogging thing is un-news. AOL hasn’t announced anything in the pipe, or anything coming up. They just said that the stuff they have now is pretty much the same as weblogs, which is true in a general sense, and completely false in the specifics.
    More to the point, saying that “the original tech bloggers” decried new people coming into blogging isn’t just false, it’s disingenuous. They (we?) built these tools for people to use. The biggest threat to blogging isn’t the inevitable rise of easy-to-use, popular tools, the threat is that everybody wants to shoehorn every idea they have into a “revolution in blogging”. Not every personal website is, or ought to be, a weblog.
    My new idea is to create a paper weblog, a “plog”. It’s going to be private, though, so the notebook that it’s bound into is going to have a lock on the outside of it. Viva Plogging!

  2. Jeff Jarvis Avatar
    Jeff Jarvis

    Anil:
    I’ll stand on my populist stand here: More is better. And the best of the better will rise.
    And, yes, original tech bloggers were snobs about the next influx. I’m warning that the second wave should not be snobbish about the third wave. We will survive it, even if there are cries of backlash and overdose.
    I’m sorry that AOL is “un news,” but as I said in my post, it is being reported “again.” A drumbeat is growing.

  3. Bill Peschel Avatar
    Bill Peschel

    “Plog” *snicker* Good one, dude.
    What, half a million blogs not big enough for you? I’ve been hitting weblogs.org recently, picking the top ten, and the range and variety of stuff is amazing.
    What’s also unique about blogs is that they’re self-forming communities, linked by interests. I like news, politics, weird stuff, so my links are to the Usual Suspects plus the odd stuff, including blogs from Mozambique and Anarctica and Afghanistan. If they link to me, fine; that’s not the criteria.
    Also, one you have the software on your system, blogging depends solely on your desire to keep writing. Even if 499,999 other blogs suddenly closed up shop, it wouldn’t have much effect on me, except I’d have a lot more free time on my hands. I’d still keep going. It’s decentralized.