Category: Weblogs/Blogging (Page 21 of 22)

If you’re new to my blog, you won’t notice, of course — but a few days ago, I changed the name from “Graeme Blogs Here,” which was at best a placeholder. Naming a blog is hard, because blogging forces things into micro-niches. And I have waay too many interests to pick only one thing to blog about. So, initially, I could come up with only a generic name. Now, I’ve decided to focus on my two greatest interests, technology (work) and surfing (personal), including surf photography, and to try to come up with some sort of blog-blend that will work and keep things interesting. What do I mean by “tech”? Well, innovation, computing trends, entrepreneurship, productivity, venture capital, and the world of startups — where I’ve been focused now for decades.

Blogs are all about passion. And that’s one of the reasons I wrote in my now famous (infamous?) piece on DarwinMag.com several months ago that business and blogging don’t mix: businesses don’t do passion; people do. When I really thought about my own personal blog, I couldn’t come up with two better things to try blogging about than these lifelong passions. So, off we go with the new moniker…granted, an experiment, but one I expect to have fun with.

Over the weekend, I read the latest issue of one of my many trade publications, PR Week, which is the only one I get related to communications. Lots of blog coverage in this issue (November 7, 2005). One article is about the founding of a think tank focused on the new “media tools” – blogs, wikis, RSS, and podcasts. It’s called the Society for New Communications Research, and it has an impressive advisory board. It was founded by Jennifer McClure, who also runs the New Communications Blogzine. The former PR manager for Ziff Davis Events, Jennifer co-founded an event of her own earlier this year: the New Communications Forum, which has its second annual conference in March in Palo Alto.

In her blogzine, which I just subscribed to, look for Jennifer’s November 8 post on Walt Mossberg’s talk at the recent Dow Jones VentureWire Consumer Technology Ventures conference in Silicon Valley. Walt is perennially voted among the most respected technology journalists by PR and media folk, and is certainly the reigning king of consumer technology reporters.

It will be interesting to watch this new society and see what research they come up with – and, they promise, best practices and standards.

Okay, I think we’ve all had enough of the hubbub about the recent Forbes cover story, “Attack of the Blogs.” More than a thousand blog stories have appeared by now, I’m sure. I just wanted to pass along what I think is a very thoughtful commentary on the subject. It’s from The Intuitive Life Business Blog by Dave Taylor.

Here’s a key excerpt:

“There are so, so many positive articles and books being published about blogging, some of which are just as one-sided in the other direction, entreating even the most illiterate of business owners to quickly jump into the blogging world lest their competitors get there first, that blogging itself ‘reinvents business’ and so on, that perhaps articles like ‘Attack of the Blogs’ are needed just to achieve some sort of balance.”

The point exactly, Dave, and one that I’ve touched on in my writings. The blogosphere comes off as being much too one-sided and self-adoring about blogging, certainly to the mainstream business person. It’s a tortuous circle. (And even the traditional media — so needing to look hip — gleefully joins in. Witness the glowing cover story in Business Week earlier this year.) Blogging is not a panacea in and of itself. Balance is sorely needed, or many in the mainstream just shut it out.

Michael Malone must be breathing some kind of vapors at these blog conferences he’s attending.

Because he sure got feisty about Forbes, his former employer, taking certain blogs and blogging practices to task in their recent cover story. See Malone’s piece here.

My first reaction to his diatribe was, “Well, I guess you showed them for never being invited back to Forbes on Fox!”

But I see two things wrong with it. First, the Forbes story cited legitimate instances of unfair practices by certain blogs (I know one of the firms cited that were wronged by this ilk), and it sends a needed warning signal about a dangerous lack of accountability; it does not put down the entire blogopshere.

Secondly, how can Malone equate his estimate of 200,000 “serious” blogs out there to dot-com startups, in his comparison to the last boom? How many of them even have a business plan — or, hello, a business model? Maybe 200? (20?) To say that blogs are somehow now the next economic boom is a real stretch. Sure, they’re setting the media business, where he lives, all a-flutter.

But the next big boom? Michael, you need to get outside and take in a big…breath…of…fresh…air.

I read an interesting quote the other day. It’s from Lockhart Steele, managing editor of Gawker.com, which recently was listed as the 13th most popular blog by Technorati.com, drawing more than a million visitors a month:

“The whole idea of blogs being the future of media — I think frankly that’s a total joke. Blogs exist, in large part, because people have jobs that they are bored with.”

Well, what about people that don’t have a boring job? For me, there isn’t enough time in the day as it is to do all the fun, challenging things my job calls for. So, I sure hope I’ll have the time to do justice to this blog. My online life already includes managing three web sites (no, four — no, wait…), not to speak of reading and sending hundreds of emails a day. Oh, and then there’s my offline life.

In fact, as someone who writes thousands of words a day, I’d have to say this is the single biggest reason I haven’t launched a blog since first considering one in ’98 or ’99, back when I began doing a lot of sideline reporting on Internet conferences. I’ve held off all this time simply because I didn’t think I could do a blog justice; essentially, the time factor. My life was exciting enough.

Don’t get me wrong. I know some people for whom blogging is an integral part of their job — because it fits so well with their individual or organizational mission. In fact, for some folks I know, their whole professional life revolves around their blog. That’s great — more power to them.

But that’s not everybody.

What some would call the ugly side of all the blog hype is the fact that millions of people start blogs that go nowhere. If you look far enough into published blog research, you’ll see a big percentage of the 20 million blogs out there (or whatever the latest Technorati number) are “dead air.” That was the term the Wall Steet Journal’s “Numbers Guy” used to describe them a while back in his piece that examined blog statistics. That is, they’re either abandoned or haven’t been updated in months. Yet, this reality is hardly ever mentioned in the media.

Whatever, I just hope my blog won’t share the same fate. If it does, I promise to at least take it down.

But I’m getting away from my original intent in posting the quote above. What do you think about this notion? Do you have a boring job? Are blogs so popular because the bored-and-unchallenged sector of the populace is growing?