Monday, January 15, 2007
To blog or not to blog, that is the question.
Hi. I'm a new contributor to Bytelife. I've also just started my own blog at The Ultimate Answer. What follows is a sample topic apropos to Carbondale Bytelife and The Ultimate Answer blogs.
I've been interested in computing technology since I first visited a Control Data Corporation factory in Minneapolis in about 1967. I can't remember if the experience was a field trip for the Explorer Scouts or Junior Achievement . Either way, at the time, computers were basically "big iron" occupying large rooms and whole floors of buildings. I was introduced to the marvels of punched chadless tape storage (There is a lesson somewhere in there regarding Florida voting machines), punch cards, and the power of 0's and 1's. Yes, "we've come a long way, baby!
Most older adults were raised with broadcast technologies such as radio and TV and have yet to fully embrace new digital technologies unless they are iterative forms of radio and TV (e.g. XM Radio, plasma/LCD displays), satellite delivery, etc. Despite there being over sixty million blogs now in existence, if you are reading this blog, then you are probably the exception to the rule.
Most older adults also missed the advent of digital communities that began evolving in earnest with Usenet newsgroups, e-mail distribution lists and bulletin board systems (BBS). I cut my digital in 1989 teeth starting a BBS in Carbondale, IL called The Preservation BBS. It was devoted to information sharing on historic preservation issues and sustainable community development. It had an international scope serving up FidoNet and RIME Network discussion forums and shareware resources.
All global technologies tend to start in urban areas and migrate to rural environs. Southern Illinois is no exception. High speed internet was quite slow in coming to Carbondale and is still unavailable to most homes outside the city limits of large towns in the region.
The earliest blog was probably a stone tablet chronicle passed around the village. After Gutenberg made his first impression, print journals and later electronic diaries filled the need for personal publishing. Those technologies and today's blogs empower the common person with an uncensored voice. The result can be a free community of ideas as exemplified in the Memphis Manifesto.
Like all technologies most blogs have a typical life cycle characteristic of the Internet (short, furious growth, followed by anguished decline). Someday, blogs will be supplanted by something different, though not necessarily better. Wikipedia quotes Gartner research that says "blogging will peak in 2007, levelling off when the number of writers who maintain a personal website reaches 100 million. Gartner analysts expect that the novelty value of the medium will wear off as most people who are interested in the phenomenon have checked it out, and new bloggers will offset the number of writers who abandon their creation out of boredom. The firm estimates that there are more than 200 million former bloggers who have ceased posting to their online diaries, creating an exponential rise in the amount of dotsam and netsam (i.e. unwanted objects) on the Web."
Carbondale (IL) is already developing its own pile of digital dotsam and netsam. There is a lot of evidence to indicate local blogging does not attract bloggers with staying power. That is everyone's loss. A quick survey of the latest posting dates of 17 Carbondale area blogs indicates that only five are less than a week old. The average age of the most recent post is 52 days. Throw out the four most stale blogs and the last update age is still a whopping 26 days.
I believe that a blog will have a greater chance of being successful when it can maintain a certain degree of freshness. Isn't that just common sense? Readers won't revisit a blog if it is not updated between visits. Daily updating is certainly a achievable. Lots of bloggers do it and have something interesting to say, share, or announce every day. Weekly updates should be a minimum expectation. Bloggers could do us all a favor by deleting their dead blogs or contributing to group blogs like Bytelife.
Even getting authors to share a blogspace is difficult. As probably the one blogger in southern Illinois who has tried the most to live and advocate the blogging discipline, Dave More, recently indicated here in Bytelife that group blogging has yet to really succeed.
I could be wrong about the perceived value of blogs that are seldom updated. Greg Linden in Geeking with Greg offers an interesting take on blog staleness. He says "It seems that old news is news after all." Then again, Greg's blog's last post whan this commentary was written was six months old.
Time will tell.
Till then, blog on...
I've been interested in computing technology since I first visited a Control Data Corporation factory in Minneapolis in about 1967. I can't remember if the experience was a field trip for the Explorer Scouts or Junior Achievement . Either way, at the time, computers were basically "big iron" occupying large rooms and whole floors of buildings. I was introduced to the marvels of punched chadless tape storage (There is a lesson somewhere in there regarding Florida voting machines), punch cards, and the power of 0's and 1's. Yes, "we've come a long way, baby!
Most older adults were raised with broadcast technologies such as radio and TV and have yet to fully embrace new digital technologies unless they are iterative forms of radio and TV (e.g. XM Radio, plasma/LCD displays), satellite delivery, etc. Despite there being over sixty million blogs now in existence, if you are reading this blog, then you are probably the exception to the rule.
Most older adults also missed the advent of digital communities that began evolving in earnest with Usenet newsgroups, e-mail distribution lists and bulletin board systems (BBS). I cut my digital in 1989 teeth starting a BBS in Carbondale, IL called The Preservation BBS. It was devoted to information sharing on historic preservation issues and sustainable community development. It had an international scope serving up FidoNet and RIME Network discussion forums and shareware resources.
All global technologies tend to start in urban areas and migrate to rural environs. Southern Illinois is no exception. High speed internet was quite slow in coming to Carbondale and is still unavailable to most homes outside the city limits of large towns in the region.
The earliest blog was probably a stone tablet chronicle passed around the village. After Gutenberg made his first impression, print journals and later electronic diaries filled the need for personal publishing. Those technologies and today's blogs empower the common person with an uncensored voice. The result can be a free community of ideas as exemplified in the Memphis Manifesto.
Like all technologies most blogs have a typical life cycle characteristic of the Internet (short, furious growth, followed by anguished decline). Someday, blogs will be supplanted by something different, though not necessarily better. Wikipedia quotes Gartner research that says "blogging will peak in 2007, levelling off when the number of writers who maintain a personal website reaches 100 million. Gartner analysts expect that the novelty value of the medium will wear off as most people who are interested in the phenomenon have checked it out, and new bloggers will offset the number of writers who abandon their creation out of boredom. The firm estimates that there are more than 200 million former bloggers who have ceased posting to their online diaries, creating an exponential rise in the amount of dotsam and netsam (i.e. unwanted objects) on the Web."
Carbondale (IL) is already developing its own pile of digital dotsam and netsam. There is a lot of evidence to indicate local blogging does not attract bloggers with staying power. That is everyone's loss. A quick survey of the latest posting dates of 17 Carbondale area blogs indicates that only five are less than a week old. The average age of the most recent post is 52 days. Throw out the four most stale blogs and the last update age is still a whopping 26 days.
I believe that a blog will have a greater chance of being successful when it can maintain a certain degree of freshness. Isn't that just common sense? Readers won't revisit a blog if it is not updated between visits. Daily updating is certainly a achievable. Lots of bloggers do it and have something interesting to say, share, or announce every day. Weekly updates should be a minimum expectation. Bloggers could do us all a favor by deleting their dead blogs or contributing to group blogs like Bytelife.
Even getting authors to share a blogspace is difficult. As probably the one blogger in southern Illinois who has tried the most to live and advocate the blogging discipline, Dave More, recently indicated here in Bytelife that group blogging has yet to really succeed.
I could be wrong about the perceived value of blogs that are seldom updated. Greg Linden in Geeking with Greg offers an interesting take on blog staleness. He says "It seems that old news is news after all." Then again, Greg's blog's last post whan this commentary was written was six months old.
Time will tell.
Till then, blog on...
Labels: blogs and blogging
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Survey software provider Perseus Development Corp. estimates that 66 percent of blogs have been abandoned, either temporarily (not updated within two months) or permanently.
- in Entrepreneur Magazine, December 2004
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Survey software provider Perseus Development Corp. estimates that 66 percent of blogs have been abandoned, either temporarily (not updated within two months) or permanently.
- in Entrepreneur Magazine, December 2004
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