Blog Off
I’m pretty new to blogging and I used to be pretty pessimistic in terms of what a blog could achieve for me, more to the point, who would care what I had to say anyway.
It wasn’t until I finished my degree and started looking for a job in the industry that I realised I had a lot to say and a blog would be the perfect place for me to aggregate all my ideas.
There has been a lot of blogging about the changing face of the blogosphere paying close attention to the business model now apparent in blogging, lifestreaming replacing blogging and new media becoming like old media. My main qualms with all of these criticisms are that this changing landscape should indicate a positive change.
More people are blogging, which means more people are contributing. Isn’t this what we want online? Isn’t that what all the Web 2.0 marketing jargon we constantly hear about is striving to achieve?
It was just over a year and a half ago I wrote a 10,000 word dissertation analysing the effectiveness of blogging and how it would affect ‘digital natives’ and I must confess that although I was optimistic I personally came out of that research with a fairly bleak view. However, the more I read about the failure of blogs the more I blog, read blogs and learn the rosier my view becomes!
I love Swurl and Twitter but the primary purpose of these tools seem so different to blogging that I find it hard to believe it will ever replace it. Livestreaming is more about exciting ways to interact and communicate. It gives users the ability to publicise all or just particular aspects of their life (some may even deem it over sharing) Blogging on the other hand (to me anyway) is a way for people to express their opinion, discover new things and discuss topics with likeminded people. Isn’t it?
There will always be people who want to learn and therefore there will always be people writing and reading about new topics. Despite blogging becoming a more business type model doesn’t this indicates the exact opposite of failing? Isn’t this illustrating a larger amount of contributors than lurkers and isn’t that a good thing?
Pro-bloggers are a great source of information and learning for other bloggers, like myself (and non-bloggers) to learn more from people who are paid to do this for a living. The same way we pay a lot of money to advertisers for their expertise we look to these pro-bloggers in a similar light. However, the best thing about blogging and what will always set it apart from old media; the possibility it offers anybody to disagree publicly, And it be okay.
