Interesting article.
I must admit, when I started a blog it was basically one of those 'this is a cool idea, let's try it' type of things. A personal blog fits perfectly with those of us who have those PAY ATTENTION TO ME personalities
What I didn't quite get at the time was the whole 'dynamic' aspect of blogging. It IS really hard to keep it updated, it takes a lot of time, and I don't know anywhere near enough about the whole thing yet. Technorati, permalinks, trackbacks, RSS - I knew nothing and am still on a very steep learning curve that I'm trying to cram in between everything else I'm doing. For someone who is used to 'build, submit and forget' this is a real challenge, and the community aspect of blogging is an area where I am sorely lacking.
'If it were merely an amplifier, blogging would be uninteresting. But like Wikipedia, blogging harnesses collective intelligence as a kind of filter. What James Suriowecki calls "the wisdom of crowds" comes into play, and much as PageRank produces better results than analysis of any individual document, the collective attention of the blogosphere selects for value.'
I read the linked blurb about Suriowecki's theory and find this very interesting. It's funny because I was just having a conversation with hubby about how things like Youtube & blogging are going to affect the future, giving 'regular' people as a whole more power and influence than ever before. Big business and government cannot stop the information from flowing, and I think their control over society is going to decline as the collective group becomes more adept at sharing ideas and opinions in a more global way. I love this line:
'large groups of people are smarter than an elite few, no matter how brilliant—better at solving problems, fostering innovation, coming to wise decisions, even predicting the future.'
Which fits perfectly with my thoughts that one person (or political party, or corporation) controlling the masses is just not working and has to change.
So Walrus, when you talk about the community aspect of blogging, especially in 'adult' blogging, how do you suggest we incorporate that into our own blogs and business models? For myself, I want my blog to be personal, while at the same time to be a way to drive some traffic to my other sites, rather than a sales-generating machine. I have found a few good ones out there that are similar, but wading through a ton of splogs and babelogs (and what I call deadblogs - ones that haven't been updated in 6 months) to find the 'real' blogs is tough. Then when I do find them, I'm really at a loss as to what to do other than trading links. I guess I need to work on my blog social skills lol.
I have way too much to learn, I'm really glad there's some good teachers here
