The SynEARTH.network takes advantage of the web publishing tools developed for Web Logging–Weblog–Blog. We make use of ManilaSites hosted by Weblogger developed by Userland. Weblogs are becoming a phenomena of interest on the Internet even to the traditional press.
Digital Renaissance
Henry JenkinsMIT Technology Review
Online diarists rule an Internet strewn with failed dot coms.
A few months ago, I was at the Camden Pop!Tech conference, and the guy sitting next to me was typing incessantly into his wireless laptop, making notes on the speakers, finding relevant links and then hitting the send key–instantly updating his Web site. No sooner did he do so than he would get responses back from readers around the country. He was a blogger.
Bloggers are turning the hunting and gathering, sampling and critiquing the rest of us do online into an extreme sport. We surf the Web; these guys snowboard it. Bloggers are the minutemen of the digital revolution.
ìBlog” is short for ìWeb log.” Several years ago, heavy Web surfers began creating logs–compendia of curious information and interesting links they encountered in their travels through cyberspace. Improvements in Web design tools have made it easier for beginners to create their own Web logs and update them as often as they wish–even every five minutes, as this guy was doing. Blogs are thus more dynamic than older-style home pages, more permanent than posts to a Net discussion list. They are more private and personal than traditional journalism, more public than diaries.
Blogger.com, one of several sites at the heart of this phenomenon, now lists more than 375,000 registered users, adding 1,300 more each day. Users range broadly–from churches that have found blogging an effective tool for tending to their congregations´ spiritual needs to activists who see blogging as a means of fostering political awareness, and fans who use blogs to interact with other enthusiasts. Most often, bloggers recount everyday experiences, flag interesting stories from online publications and exchange advice on familiar problems. Their sites go by colorful names like Objectionable Content, the Adventures of the AccordionGuy in the 21st Century, or Eurotrash, which might leave you thinking that these are simply a bunch of obsessed adolescents with too much time and bandwidth.
Yet something more important may be afoot. At a time when many dot coms have failed, blogging is on the rise. We´re in a lull between waves of commercialization in digital media, and bloggers are seizing the moment, potentially increasing cultural diversity and lowering barriers to cultural participation.
Observations From a Weblogger
I’ve learned that there is more to understand about the world of blogging than is obvious to those watching from the outside. This shouldn’t be surprising, since many human endeavors may appear less than they are from the outside: Why would you want to risk life and limb sliding down a hill in the cold on snow? (Ask any avid skier.) Running hurts…what’s this about a “runner’s high”? This list goes on and on.
To help those of you who haven’t participated, let me tell you what it feels like in my position since I don’t think it’s that unusual, even if my background as an inventor is unusual.
About me: At this point, I’ve been maintaining a weblog for about 2 1/4 years, and just helped some friends start another one that appears to already be pretty popular. Prior to that, I had been putting up thoughts about various topics on somewhat less chronologically-oriented web sites for another year and a half, though many of those posts were listed chronologically and had repeat readers. In addition, I’ve been reading many weblogs for years, as well corresponding with some of the authors. I’ve also spoken with many web site creators as part of my work with Trellix. Finally, I have kept careful watch of the server logs for all of my web sites over the years, and have a good idea of how readership works, who links to my work and what it says on the linking page, etc.
First, let’s talk about web sites in general and their readership.
When I write something and post it on the web on a new web site, I immediately go and tell people I know about the web site. They give me feedback. Let’s say it’s a web site with pictures of a wedding. I usually let the parents of the bride and groom know first. (The couple is probably away for a while so I hear from them later…) They tell me how wonderful it is and thank me very much, which encourages me to do it again at another wedding (with usually a different family). In addition, they email many of their friends and relatives, people who were both present and absent from the event. Readership of the web site blossoms, peaking over the first week or so. Within a few weeks only an occasional person reads it. Total of about 50-100 readers.
The next source of readers comes from the search engines and directories. If others link to my web site, or if I tell the search engines about it, there is a good chance it will eventually show up as a search result. If my pages are deemed “relevant” enough, I might even get a high ranking in searches or placed in a popular category in a directory. Here again, such listings bring in a constant flow of additional readers, who might then link to the web site, etc.
So, readership comes from personal relationships, personal referrals, or active searching. The person reading has some external reason why they want to read my stuff, but no prior relationship to my writing. Readership of my static web sites ranges from 5-10 visitors for a pictures from a very private event, to a few hundred readers a day years after the last change to the web site for GoodDocuments.
A weblog is different. It starts out the same. I create a web site, write a few things, and then tell some friends. They send me feedback. Some link to it. Perhaps a search engine finds it. Nothing much different.
Then I do a second posting, and then a third. Unlike with my more static web sites, some of the readers come back. Since I know some of my friends might be interested in a new posting (it may be about them) I tell them and find out which are reading it and which didn’t know about it. I get more feedback. Suddenly, I get feedback from someone I didn’t expect. From out of the blue I get a thoughtful comment from a stranger. An email conversation then follows, and now this stranger is an online acquaintance. I read another weblog and see comments about what I wrote. I write comments back on mine.
Blogging is Here to Stay
I’ve been avoiding the whither-the-Weblog discussion, which has been racing along for months, mainly because it seemed so, well, self-referential. My mistake. It’s an important discussion, because so many of the commentators from outside the blogging world keep missing the point.
A case in point is this story in today’s New York Times, which absurdly asks if blogging is “here to stay?” Is this just a stupid headline, or a mindset in the established media?
I think it’s the latter. And it’s beyond foolish.
Andrew Sullivan, one of the more established bloggers these days, gets close to the mark in his Blogger’s Manifesto. He says, with great precision, that blogs are “one future for journalism.” Not the future. One future.
I’ve been doing a weblog for more than two years now. It continues to astonish me how few other BigPub journalists, as Dave Winer calls us, do weblogs.
Dave overstates it only a little when he says: “People want more info, not less. But the BigPubs are laying off reporters as their business model erodes. Weblogs fill the void. DIY. From that premise, interview some analysts and some technology vendors. Have the guts to tell the readers your jobs are truly in jeopardy.”
Weblogs certainly are helping to fill the void in one arena—technology journalism. It’s an economic depression, not a recession, in that field.