Blogging Ain't What It Used To Be ...
In
her blog 11D, Laura McKenna wrote about how
the blogosphere has changed since she started blogging six years ago.
The post is from July 2009, but many of her points are still relevant
(and will be for a very long time, I suspect). For example:
3. Norms and practices. Bloggers have undermined the blogosphere. Bloggers do not link to each other as much as they used to. It's a lot of work to look for good posts elsewhere, and most bloggers have become burnt out. Drezner and Farrell had a theory that even small potato bloggers would have their day in the sun, if they wrote something so great that it garnered the attention of the big guys. But the big guys are too burnt out to find the hidden gems. So, good stuff is being written all the time, and it isn't bubbling to the top.
Many have stopped using blogrolls, which means less love spread around the blogosphere. The politics of who should be on a blogroll was too much of a pain, so bloggers just deleted the whole thing.
Neatorama's own John Farrier (where I found out about McKenna's post) wrote:
McKenna notes the decline of linking and blogrolling. I think that this is because of the staggering size of blogosphere. It's no longer a community in any sense, and only very specific niches can maintain a sense of community, where people know each other beyond blog name in the header.
four years ago, when I taught classes on blogging, I said "Blogging is a communitarian activity. Don't just write stuff and expect people to link to you unless you link to them. Don't expect people to read you unless you read them. Don't expect people to blogroll you unless you blogroll them."
To an extent, this is true. And it's especially true for new bloggers who have yet to develop an audience. But eventually, the monkeysphere grows too large and interesting content matters more than relationships. [...]
... there has been a decline in hat tipping. At least, that is my assessment from a very limited perspective. In a more niche communitarian model (such as the Methoblogosphere), not hat tipping will hurt a blogger's reputation. In a commercial model, hat tipping hurts your bottom line by suggesting that readers visit your competitors.
Neatorama did away with blogroll a long time ago. In our early days, we happily blogrolled those who asked, but that quickly turned into more of a linking scheme than a true list of interesting blogs.
I think Neatorama still maintains a healthy habit of "hat tipping" or providing via links (by the way, this is my pet peeve about social networking websites like digg and reddit and image hosting services like imgur which rarely provide them) but I did notice a decrease in diversity of post type as well as via links, especially in my own posts. Back in the days, I used to roam the blogosphere looking for interesting small blogs. I don't do that anymore because of two big reasons: 1) it was very time consuming (Browsing the web after having kids? Forget about it!) and 2) I've developed a list of "go to" blogs that always have great content. Going to these blogs give more bang for the buck when looking for neat things to post on Neatorama.
Nevertheless, I think the lack of diversity can hurt this blog in the long run. For one, it decreases "uniqueness" - if you see the same posts on Neatorama as you did on Boing Boing, Gizmodo, Huffington Post, digg, or reddit, then why visit?
Perhaps it's time for me to hit a reset button and change something in my routine. I'd be most interested to hear your opinion about what we can do to make Neatorama better in this respect.
(Photo: the Internet visualized by the Opte Project)
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Are 2 Million People in America Professional Bloggers?
Leaving aside the Neatorama Civil War, I thought that I’d turn our attention to a controversial article by Mark Penn.
In America today, there are almost as many people making their living as bloggers as there are lawyers. Already more Americans are making their primary income from posting their opinions than Americans working as computer programmers or firefighters [...] For now, bloggers say they are overwhelmingly happy in their work, reporting high job satisfaction. But what happens if they, too, lose work; are they covered by unemployment insurance if tastes change and their sites go under? Are they considered journalists under shield laws? Are they subject to libel suits? Are there any limits to the opinions they churn out, or any standards to rein them in? Is there someone to complain to about false blogs or hidden conflicts? At the recent Consumer Electronics Show, Panasonic outfitted bloggers with free Panasonic equipment; did that affect their opinions about the companies they wrote about? There are more questions than answers about America’s Newest Profession.
I’m incredibly skeptical of the 2 million number, but Penn has provided a follow-up explaining his methodology. Here at the Neatorama corporate HQ compound, we certainly don’t anything approaching that number of pro bloggers. We do have a ridiculously high number of Blackwater contractors, but Alex insists that such security is necessary for “Stage 3″, whatever that is.
Link via Instapundit
Image via flickr user alexanderljung
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A Complete Photo Guide to Newcastle Including Amazing Abandoned Places
ILuvNUFC is prolific blogger on all kinds of odd and interesting things but his crown jewel is his photography site in which he has seemingly documented every last corner of Newcastle Upon Tyne – quite possibly the most any one person has photographed any one place on the web.
Some of his most compelling images are of deserted buildings in the area like St. Mary’s Asylum and the Cherry Knowle Hospital, which he has also catalogued extensively. Best of all, he includes a heckuvalot of juicy historical facts along with the images.
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So You Wanna Blog ...
To kick start the new Neatorama forum, I’ve written a little how-to guide on blogging for those of you who want to know the secret of Neatorama’s success:
So you want to blog. Perhaps you’re worried about your job security, or perhaps you just want an extra source of income in these bad economic times. Blogging is fun – and it can be profitable, if you know what you’re doing.
In the first of what I hope is a series of forum posts about blogging, I’d like to give back to the readers of Neatorama. If you want to blog, you don’t have to buy an eBook that promises to tell you the secret of making money online. I’ll tell you what I’ve learned from three years of blogging – what I think I did right and wrong. In a nutshell, I’ll tell you the secrets of Neatorama’s growth and success.
In this article, I’m going to assume two things: you’ve never blogged before (but you want to try) and you want to blog for fun and profit.
I hope you like it – if it’s popular, I’ll post more: Link
(Chart: Time to Look Busy by Jessica Hagy of Indexed)
(Comments are closed here, but open at the Forum)
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