Comments on: Greatly exaggerated

By: Justin B.

Justin B. — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 22:10:18 +0000

No worries. It doesn’t matter to me where we have the conversation, it only matters that we have it. But, like Ron said earlier, it is a limitation of blogging that conversations develop and end sporadically in different places without any one person consciously causing it. I think that is no different from the analog world, but I think we assume that somehow digitally we would always be able to link our conversations, which clearly isn’t happening (it could be my fault, for instance, because I am not twittering so I might not be connected enough?). Blogging clearly has its limitations as well as its benefits and if we don’t resolve some of those limitations blogging is going to suffer. If we can’t figure out a sensible way to place a value on blogging in a non-monetary way, for instance, few academic professionals will have an incentive to participate in a meaningful way. I am thinking there might be more of a distinction between digital writing and blogging than I first assumed. I think digital writing might be more adaptable than blogging and blogging may be but a single form of digital writing that developed at the turn of the century. One question we will surely have to resolve in the relatively near future is whether we are going to come up with different names for different kinds of digital writing. My argument is that we should because I am tired of being lumped in with some of the junk that exists in blogging now.

By: Jon Becker

Jon Becker — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 16:59:52 +0000

So, there I go writing a blog post that’s partly about conversations getting away from us and I didn’t even realize that Justin had written a similar and probably more meaningful post on the topic. I subscribe to Justin’s blog and read it regularly, but part of the seasonality aspect of the blogosphere for me is that I’ve had less and less time to read other blogs. So, my feed reader gets backed up regularly. Had I read Justin’s post, I probably would have commented there and maybe pointed my 7 readers to his “conversation.”

I get annoyed at people who respond to an e-mail before reading the whole chain of e-mails. I should start making sure the like-minded bloggers whose blogs I read haven’t already started a particular conversation before I start one.

By: Justin B.

Justin B. — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 15:26:11 +0000

My point as this whole thing over the death of blogging has erupted is that blogs are maturing into adolescence (http://www.edjurist.com/blog/is-the-blogoshpere-dead.html). Even 538, a blog which I loved and read every day, has become something akin to mainstream media. The author there is making a lot of money off advertising and I am sure he was paid for his appearances on all the TV networks. Those TV network appearances subtly control him. I think blogs are moving or have moved past a lot of the personal writing/conversations into more professional writing and conversation. I don’t share all my thoughts because I protect my professional web identity, however small that is. As blogs have gone mainstream, all the old professional rules have begun to apply and my contention is that a lot of that more personal conversation has been pushed or voluntarily moved out of blogging into other domains like Twitter. Just like in e-mailing there is still going to be space for personal conversations and sharing, but a large chunk of blogging, like e-mailing, is going to be professional in nature going forward and more and more of the blogs we read on a daily basis are going to be professional in nature.

I don’t know. I think we are just at the beginning of this transition, but given that corporate and organizational powers have now taken wholeheartedly to blogging seems a pretty clear sign that something has substantially changed.

By: Matthew K. Tabor

Matthew K. Tabor — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 07:01:42 +0000

To put it simply, as long as Google continues to index blogs and people search for/read blog content, they aren’t dead.

Sure, a ‘blog’ is a certain format that facilitates interaction and discussion, but the ‘End is Nigh’ folks need to remember that a blog is still a website.

Looks like Britannica’s on the bandwagon as well:

http://www.britannica.com/blogs/2008/11/blogging-rip/

By: Blogging Instructionally | Learning In a Flat World

Blogging Instructionally | Learning In a Flat World — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 02:41:32 +0000

[...] else, the majority backfill the void and pick up the practice. As Jon Becker noted in “Greatly Exaggerated,” he was not buying that blogging is dead…and the interest I saw today demonstrated to [...]

By: Ron Amundson

Ron Amundson — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 20:59:02 +0000

A couple things, first I think one needs to separate out the get away from, vs derail thing. Generally if I can whip out a paragraph or maybe 2, I do it as a comment. If its more than that, I use trackbacks, otherwise its all too easy to derail the original authors idea. Perhaps thats just something in the tech world though, education may well be different, but its how I and a bunch of other techies view the whole comment vs permalink thing.

Another idea might be a comment tracker, like discuss, commentluv, or others similar in nature. The idea being to carry on convos over a wide range of the blogosphere.

By: Tyler Reed

Tyler Reed — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 20:25:04 +0000

I think this could be a symptom of blogging becoming more mainstream — or rather, the fact that it’s not the flashy, new, cool thing on the Internet anymore. Twitter and Qik and other super-cool new tools are grabbing people’s attention right now, but I don’t see these replacing blogs as sources of information and discussion.

“Blogs” I think are becoming a standard publishing platform now. Perhaps tools like Twitter are taking the conversation (ie. comments?) elsewhere, but I think the popularity and influence of blogs will continue to grow.

Nice post, Jon.

By: Ed Jones

Ed Jones — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 19:38:15 +0000

Your reflection 2 seems the main reason for blogs to go down. Having maintained an education blog for 5+ years, I’m very well versed in the “conversations get away” issue. From the comments on my blog, I must be the worlds most uninteresting writer.

Yet when I write at Fireside ( a community forum) it rarely fails to generate some response, and if I take my time, a good bit.

Twitter I still don’t get. I use it with a couple friends, mostly when traveling. Can’t understand how/why anyone would let their remaining attention span be more reduced.