This is a moved post. I'm including the comments from the old site at the bottom.
At work, we just entered Phase 2 of Operation Blogosphere.
Phase 1 was a blog for our workgroup (e-business); a team of 8 fairly-savvy e-biz, e-marketing internet types. Very successful pilot. We averaged 4.5 posts a week and got progressively better at categorization, writing for the blog/web, offering commentary on what we discovered in our Internet trendspotting (instead of just summarizing an article, we wrote about why it mattered and how it would impact our group in the short, mid and long terms).
Onto Phase 2.
There is an internal workflow and communications initiative that is comprised of a national team and 10 functional sub-teams. A total of about 100-110 individuals across Canada. They needed a way to share best pratices both amongst a team and between teams. Several of them started publishing a newsletter once a quarter, but they found this timeconsuming and not very "sticky"; best practices weren't necessarily being adopted or easily communicated.
Enter, the blog.
I did a demo of the e-biz blog (running on Movable Type) and the RSS reader we're all using (NewsGator). It went over like wildfire. So now we're building blogs for each team and an Uberblog [tm] for the entire initiative.
I believe Operation Blogosphere will ultimately be successful. Teams are about to be given a level of publishing control that hasn't been given before. And the ability to reach a much larger audience then they have had before. A microcosm of what blogs have done on the Internet.
But this whole project has tweaked my interest in actively blogging again, but I do find myself asking about the nature of blogging. Why do I blog? What am I trying to accomplish?
Fundamentally, I think it's an exercise in vanity. I'm not providing any sustained effort into creating a resource for the online community. I'm not providing any regular updates for my family and friends. And I only occasionally write magazine-style anecdotes (e.g. my infamous Organic Vegetable Delivery Saga).
My good friend Deuce has taken his blog down. He felt he couldn't sustain it, and didn't really know what to write about anyway.
My girlfriend's blog is going like gangbusters. She's running text ads for it. She's had a comments flame war. She's even won an award.
One of the keys to her success (aside from being a strong writer) is that she knows what she wants to blog about. She has a vision for what she's trying to accomplish on her little plot in cyberspace (side note: remember when all metaphors about the Internet either revolved around homesteading or the Wild West?)
So, what's the takeaway? I don't know. I kinda like writing about my organic vegetable mishaps one day and then posting about a cool piece of technology I found the next. I am in love with the idea of blogging possibly more than the act of blogging itself. And I love the idea of having my own litle plot staked out.
Is that enough? Does it matter?
I've been thinking about your comments on blogging. I'm reminded of the honored (honoured) role of columnists in newspapers. They have loyal readers who are interested in 1) being entertained, 2) being informed, 3) being challenged to new ideas or viewpoints. A blog can do much the same for its readership. A blog gives everyone an opportunity to become an essayist or a columnist whose readers can be entertained, informed and challenged.
Posted by: Lydia Lindsay at June 8, 2005 07:15 AMWhile I am no longer known as 'Deuce" (what was I thinking?!?), I, nevertheless, feel an obligation to chime in on this posting, since my former self has been cited.
One of the early discussions Kate and I had around blogging had to do with the utility of blogging---i.e. was it *really* anything more than vanity publishing. She convinced me blogging was an evolution beyond the 'vanity pages' of the '80's since blogs were being used to a vastly different collection of ends (within business to effect change, etc.). Neverthess, I also recognised, in the case of my blog, I was not contributing, despite the patronising and "Oh! So superior! " comments of The Crow (davidcrow.ca) [seriously, though, this guy kicks!], to much of anything, so I yanked it, replacing it with an online version of my portfolio (eventually).
I would dearly love to be able to track how many blogs have gone the path of my own. I wonder if, in the end, we will end up with a handful of influencial blogs of people who have the time and energy to keep their content current and relevant. If such is actually is the case, then an interesting issue rises in my insominatic mind....
What if it *really* is the techology that is making the difference. I don't ask that in wide-eyed naivet鬠but in critical inquiry. Blogging software makes personal publishing much easier than straightforward HTML in the same way HTML made personal publishing much easier than 'zines. I'd like to suggest blogging is just a small step in the evolution of the re-presentation of the self in the public sphere. If that is the case, which I have always suspect it is, blogging is more about ease of delivery than the social transformation it can accomplish.
Naturally, the easier communication can be accomplished, the easier social transformation can be achieved. So, consequently, what I'm suggesting here is that blogging is part of an ongoing evolution of interactive communication that slowly and progressively builds on the foundations of the previous developments. Put another way, perhaps blogging isn't a revolution-on-top-of-a-revolution, the way agencies and eMarkeing hype would have us believe. Maybe it's not as sexy as that. Maybe it's more pedantic. Maybe there are those who need for us to believe the age in which we live is marked by more and better developments than any other time in human history. They need for us to believe all that so we'll keep consuming and attend to things other than what might be genuinely important.
When people asked "What is 'blogging'" in the most recent U.S. presential campaign, (record numbers sent the query to search engiines), those of use who knew the essential technical answer were dismissive. Perhaps, however, we should be asking "What is 'blogging'" in a more teleological and fundamental sense. That is to say, asking if:
i. the technology is really all that radical a change from what came before
ii. the content is really all that more valuable from what came before.
Maybe I'm wrong, I often am, but what Ms. Lindsay suggests in her comment may end up being more true than we would like insofar that blogging will end up being only one more step removed from traditional media and about as influencial. That is to say, bloggers who can 'stick with it' will become columinists, of a sort, but their influence will be limited to a narrow band of readers who want the perspective of the author to reenforce their own outlook (unless they are one of those people who would have read columns from opposing points of view in 'traditional' media anyway).
Anyway, I go try sleep now.
Posted by: Daniel (fka Deuce) at June 13, 2005 02:31 AMThis is what Slashdot has to say about it, for whatever that's worth (made slightly more aligned with proper English by me)....
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| The Rise and Fall of Blogs |
| from the please-fall-faster dept. |
| posted by CmdrTaco on Tuesday June 14, @13:11 (It's funny. Laugh|
| http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/06/14/1651215 |
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i-Love-to-blog writes "[0]Blogs have revolutionized information delivery.
They not only made the world much more smaller, but a lot more personal, united and un-afraid as well. Events like the September 11 attacks and the Iraq invasion made news channels take a back seat. _Wired_ claimed [1]blogs to be what Napster was to music. They even have [2]a wager on
Weblogs outranking the_ New York Times_ Web site by 2007. People got paid to blog. Then they got fired for that. Some lost money for blogging their ideas. Most just hand out links these days. When was the last time your favourite blogger talked sense? Have blogs reached a saturation point? [3]Blogging burnout is a humorous look at the rise and fall of weblogs."
Discuss this story at:
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=05/06/14/1651215
Links:
0. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weblogs
1. http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/10.05/mustread.html?pg=2
2. http://wired-vig.wired.com/wired/archive/10.05/longbets?pg=8
3. http://geekybodhi.net/articles/blogging_burnout.htm
Yes!
Thank you.
Posted by: Roro at June 6, 2005 04:35 PM