You do?
We're reaching the thousandth post here, soon - not now, but soon. So it was refreshing this evening to hear from a treasured relative of mine, a woman about my age, who said, “You have a blog? Why?” Seemed like a moment to reflect. (Hi, Linda!)
“Blog” is one of the most disliked words these days. It's up there with “netiquette” and “wiki”. Something about
those words makes people wince.
Bad news
first: Technorati says there are 175,000 new blogs each day. Over 18 updates a second — 1.6 million posts per day.
Good news for
those of you who really don't want to hear about this: Hugh McLeod says blogs have peaked. They’re on the downswing because it's hard to have a blog. And who wants to be a little broadcaster? What people really want to do is get together with their friends. So look at this list: QQ in China has 160 million subscribers, 183 million people are on MySpace. More than 96% of 20-somethings in Korea spend
time in Cyworld.
I'm new to Facebook, and I'm feeling “old media” for remaining fond of blogs. I run through many blogs on most days, seeing what people are writing about.
Recently, I caught a glimpse of a candidate for public office, on television, posing with his ballot half-in, half-out of the box. Fifty cameras flashed as part of that televised image, clattering fiercely. What a waste! I thought. Why do all those physical pictures have to be taken, all of the same scene? All that equipment! Couldn't that be done better online with a single shared digital file?
But then, of course, that's the great thing about these much-maligned blogs - they give a thousand word-pictures of the same event. Are shards worthwhile? Maybe so - maybe if that candidate, viewed from another direction, was doing something quite different, we'd want to know. And if we only had one image we wouldn't have had the full story.
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Blogging is a way of having different voices about a subject. And this is the idea,not for reaching a consensus, but for increasing the value of diversity. So, Susan, your words are very important.
Congratulations