Dvorak takes some shots at blogging and once again doesn’t know what the heck he’s talking about. And to think I used to read is column quasi religiously!
What follows answers the column and some of the comments on Joi’s site where I originally found the link.
He doesn’t make valid points, he notices valid statistics. The fact that a lot of people quit blogging just means that “bandwagonners” get off as quick as they get on.
As for small readership for most blogs, so what? No one ever said every blogger would get big, just that it was a chance for some people to find a large audience, not for every blogger. Most are happy with sharing stuff with a few friends and perhaps meeting others, interacting, discussing. The fact they stay at that level doesn’t invalidate the medium.
Concerning big media using the term in vain and calling editorial columns blogs, it just shows they use whatever they can to fool people into reading their content. How does that affect the actual value of blogging?
I think everything he is noticing is true but what he reads into it couldn’t be more wrong. What he is tracking and calling finished is the meme, not the actual “medium” of blogging. Yes the meme was overblown and is coming to an end, the throngs of newcomers will stop, the media coverage will go away. The circles of influence, discussions and interaction are alive, thriving and not going anywhere. The meme was overblown hype and Dvorak overblows the “end” in just the same way.
[Later] A harsh answer from one of his colleagues, using pretty much the same arguments I did.
One Comment
Beyond the niche audience factor, technically, blogging distinguishes itself from online opinion columns via comments, archives and permalinks. More than that, the fact that authors actively comment themselves, and that their commenters can present more information (HTML links, and links to their blogs, for instance). Compare this to the typical Talkback forum at ZDnet, whose one-message-at-a-time threaded view is designed to generate as many ad impressions as possible – further enhanced by the fact that people like Dvorak and Microsoft apologist John Carroll purposely write pseudo-controversial articles designed to invoke flamewars and thus up ad impressions again.
True blogging seems to have a different tone to it – more conversational, more willing to admit that one doesn’t know everything about a topic, eager to share new knowledge, inviting replies without the need (as John Carroll does on Talkbacks to his articles) to berate his commentors or twist what they say to prove his own points.