Is lasting value diluted by blogs?

A few days ago Robert Scoble posted an entry to his blog talking about how tech blogging has become ruled by PR agencies, ‘troll commenters’, ‘shiny objects’ and one day conversations. I am not a tech blogger but his thoughts are becoming more and more applicable to the blogosphere as a whole.

What I found most interesting and which has been my reservation since day one of blogging is that it often seems you are writing for the moment and not for a lifetime. However when I often spend an hour in front of a blank screen thinking about what I am going to write, to then take the time to do so, I write to create something that lasts.

When you’re blogging you are doing something different then when you’re writing on a website or writing a book. There times you write for the moment but yet you keep it stored for a lifetime. It seems to be an unspoken blogger’s ethic. I am going to defy this yet I continueìng blogging and not turning to essay writing. I try to write most of my blog posts as mini-essays though; content that can be read now or in ten years. I also encourage everyone to keep the conversation alive. Good writing is timeless. Many of the discussion points I raise deserve to still be discussed in a week from now (also do this on other blogs). I differ from a lot of bloggers by no longer looking at visitor statistics but rather judge my posts on the comments they’ve received.

I also find myself having different behavior when I visit a website than when I visit a blog. If I go to a blog I read the latest post, sometimes two and then I leave. There could be a wealth of great content but because the nature of the site I don’t look further. If I go to a website (they still exist) I often find myself reading far more pages. To conclude, I think for those of us who live the fast paced internet life we have become trained to filter out content. Blogs just make it easy for us by all we have to do is look at the post date.

I am implementing a few changes. I have unpublished a lot of the posts that are no longer relevant and I’ll continue to do this with each “in-the-moment post”. Once I find a good plugin to move these posts to a separate section of the website I’ll do that. Over the next few weeks I hope to be able to redesign this blog so that it encourages every new visitor to go and read all posts.

July 25, 2008 | Filed Under Mini Essays 

Comments

Viewing 5 Comments

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    Interesting post Eiso.

    I think that you have to write differently for websites / blogs / forums than you do for essays / books / magazines.

    Often, writing for the moment is the best way to do it, as it's what the people want to read.
    sure the posts will still be there, but how many people are going to go back in a years time to re-read something that was only relevant for a brief period of time?

    I do agree with you that comments make blogs become more "alive" so to speak.
    It's always interesting, or at least it is to me, to know what people think about something I've posted, whether it be good or bad criticism.

    Still, good writing, as you say is timeless. There's absolutely no need for us to be sloppy about what we write. I often write things down on paper before even touching the keyboard.

    Some good point to take on board
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    Thank you Gareth.

    When you say "how many people are going to go back in a years time to re-read something that was only relevant for a brief period of time?" you touch exactly upon my point. There's content we write that is for the moment but there are also times where we write for a lifetime. Content that is still applicable in a year from now. I am trying to find a way to separate these two and make it easier for readers to find it.
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    I think you're onto something here. I think Scoble is right about techie blogging. And, parenthetically, techie blogging and newsflow is really a special interest ghetto -- a disproportionally large niche, since young, tech-oriented people dominate the fastest-moving traffic on the Internet. There are too many blogs to even start to get around to, and as a result, like in all pop-tech, a few blogs dominate the influence. I'm afraid that with the butterfly-attention-spanned young-tech audience, tiny blog-bursts will continue to dominate this in-the-moment medium. Nobody in this group has time for essays, even mini ones. ("mini-essay" is an oxymoron, anyway.)
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    I think it's a mind-set we consciously need to step away from and start making decisions about what content is actually valuable to us. I recently ordered 8 new books; instead I could spend my time staying up-to-date on the Google-Digg deal. These days I am satisfied reading a summary at the end of the day.
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    p.s. A teenager who reads is also an oxymoron ;-); I seem to like them.
 
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