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18th February 2005

First there is a blogstorm then there is no blogstorm then there is…

posted in Blogging and Flogging- the Zeitgeist of Social Software |

When I shuffled downstairs this morning in my jammies, ever alert to being tripped on the stairs by the cat or the dog, I turned on a PC with every intention of doing some online personal publishing but I was sidetracked by Jon Garfunkel’s essay on Blogger Archetypes.

I was reminded that I’m a socially engaged writer who can’t really keep up with the conversation, a slow two finger typist, ruminative, easily distracted by quotidian obligations, I can’t run with the pack.

By the time I get around to commenting on that which is of the moment, the rest of you have moved on to the next big thing.

(By the way, do you think Negroponte’s "work" in Honduras through ‘85 will inform his administration of the US combined  intelligence services?) …

I’ve long maintained there are no blogs. From Lovelady to Locke, there are insightful writers and a growing population of multimedia mavens using the web to share their work. BoingBoing and Dr. Menlo trump Jay Rosen every day. Michael Wolff, wherever we find him, whether he’s writing in New York Metro or Vanity Fair, simply lays waste to the self absorbtion at Scripting News. Nothing against Jay Rosen or Dave Winer, really… their work is valuable, but is it blogging? Of course it isn’t. There is no such thing as blogging. Blogging is an exercise in marketing, branding, and labeling, like podcasting. I suppose these things provide convenient labels… I know that Ann Althouse thinks she is a blogger and she has a wonderfully large readership. And I know that Chan Stroman is a blogger even if there are no blogs. Derek Powazek, Heather Champ, Jonathon Delacour… I access these people’s work on my obsolete CRT all the time. I seldom access Glenn Reynolds, although I do return to the Instawife photo from time to time, so soft-core, so inspirational. And who is this guy "Harry?"

I look at the categories on my typepad powered personal publishing site and I despair. Where is "Telecommunications?" Where is "Progressive Politics?" Where is "Environmental Concern?" If I can’t classify and categorize my own work properly, what right do I have to criticize others. In the seventies mag card typewriters were hot. In the early 80’s Norm Rosenblatt forced me into learning IBM’s GML. I balked and took a rapid left turn into word processing. The world of WYSIWYG lay before me and I haven’t looked back.

Online personal publishing is about empowerment and freeedom of expression. In America we used to have freedom of the press for anyone who could afford to own one. That may still be true, but as has been observed elsewhere, the barriers to entry have been lowered a lot.

While there are plenty of fishermen fishing fish, I continue to maintain that there are no bloggers blogging blogs. There are only people connecting and communicating, behaving well and behaving poorly, creating and copying, encouraging and frustrating each other.

Thank you Jon Garfunkel for your interesting taxonomy of online personal publishers. I’m not sure whether I’m a "flinger" or a "slinger," but enough about me. I’m off to read a few good blogs.  Including JOHO, of course, where this blog post started off as a lowly comment.

This entry was posted on Friday, February 18th, 2024 at 12:48 and is filed under Blogging and Flogging- the Zeitgeist of Social Software. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

There are currently 6 responses to “First there is a blogstorm then there is no blogstorm then there is…”

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  1. 1 On February 18th, 2024, Jon Garfunkel said:

    Only your pinger knows for sure.

    btw, at the BloJoCred conference, Winer claimed that each blogger derived from an earlier blogger, and seemed to suggest that, by extension, there was one common ancestor. (him?) Anyone know any more about this? That’s pretty scary, from an evolutionary point of view. I was at least trying to build a different model using the five archetypes.

  2. 2 On February 18th, 2024, Dean Landsman said:

    Some bloggers (yes, I am a blogger) (no, I am not a journalist, nor have I ever claimed to be one during the entire period in which I’ve been a blogger) not only don’t write –OR GIVE A SHIT– about the next big thing, but actually write about that which is of interest to them.

    Most of those bloggers also could not give a hoot if they are written about, linked to, or covered whatsoever by the intellectuals who choose to dissect the blogs and the blogosphere.

    As I said in an earlier comment, FUCK ‘EM!

    Note: the “‘EM!”, above, refers to the intellectual assholes, not to the majority of bloggers who are normal human beings.

    And about that concept of all bloggers emanating from one root blogger . . . what is this, the Adam and Eve complex taken to the nth degree? Feh! This is ego beyond imagination. Does this mean that the original PITa blogs (which preceded a certain egotist’s entry into the enterprise) are the ancestral ma/patriarch (oh, I am just SO correct!) to each and every extant blog of the moment? And that, of course, would include all the LiveJournal, Xanga, Dairyland blogs, as well as the MT, Type Pad, WordPress, Bloxsom, Grey Matter, Radio, Manila (long live Buzzword!), Bryght, B2Evolution, Expression Engine (and PMachine, rest in peace), Blogger, Nucleus, Tinderbox, wBlogger (to name but a few), and various other blog-software clients out there.

    What a crock of self-satisfying self-important shit. Narcissism to a degree beyond that already known to the human race.

    Here’s the bottom line, according to me. And if you wonder what makes me have a bottom line worthy of consideration (a very good question, btw), here’s the answer: just because, that’s why. Okay, getting back to the bottom line –> Bloggers blog. Blogs contain items written by bloggers.

    All else is comentary.

    As a self-proclaimed B-minus list blogger, I find it very healthy to sometimes opine on the itme formerly known as the NEXT BIG THING, usually on a three-items-ago basis.

  3. 3 On February 18th, 2024, fp said:

    Jon, near as I can tell Dave Winer is a programmer who was pretty successful in the 80’s shrink wrapping some utilities for the Macintosh consumer market. He was an early eZine kind of guy… not the earliest and no where near the best, but assiduous in his devotion to being first with good tech dish. I read him often. The few times he’s linked to me, I’ve experienced a nice bounce in traffic. There are a couple of server products that he was responsible for - Manila and/or Frontier, and then the Radio blog tool. The real reason he’s important is because of his collaboration working on some important interoperability tools from Userland’s XML-RPC and Microsoft’s SOAP to RSS. He was a good programming resource plugged into the market where he was needed. His enthusiasm is boundless, his self absorbtion is legendary. We who enjoy content exchange and syndication should acknowledge his work.

    Weblogs are trivial: reverse chron lists of links and notes. Jorn Barger coined the word in 1997. Derek Powazek says: “If the question is how many blogs there were in 1997, the answer is none. The word ‘blog’ was coined by Peter Merholz in 1999. Lots of us have been publishing on the web since there was a web, but ‘blogging’ is something that’s been happening since 1999. Before that it was simply called a ‘personal website’ or even, dare I say it, a ‘homepage.’”

    Webloggers are not trivial. There is so much human interest, so much talent, so much diversity of expression going on in the so-called blogosphere… it makes me so happy I could wet my pants.

    ***

    Dean, I’m glad to see you assuming a rightful position in the democratic party. Now that Dean’s in charge, I sez to myself, I may up my contribution!

  4. 4 On February 19th, 2024, Dean Landsman said:

    Make sure to send those contributions to my Rockland County, NY office. Contribute early and often.

  5. 5 On February 19th, 2024, Harry said:

    And who is this guy “Harry?”

    Now that’s a tough one.

    Harry is a slacker Candide who got lost one day roaming the web looking for Professor Pangloss.

  6. 6 On February 19th, 2024, I Speak of Dreams said:

    I Stand With Frank

    While there are plenty of fishermen fishing fish, I continue to maintain that there are no bloggers blogging blogs. There are only people connecting and communicating, behaving well and behaving poorly, creating and copying, encouraging and frustrating…

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