Almost ten years ago I read librarian.net and the Shifted Librarian on the web. I had no idea there was such a word as "blog", I had no clue about RSS readers.
Three years after that, I could no longer ignore the word "blog", I decided to learn about it and discovered the amazing thing about it - that they weren’t very difficult to make.
Despite the title of this post, I have little use for nostalgia. I don't wish to relive those early years of blogging, but I would like to understand and communicate how it felt back then.
It was extremely liberating. Some of that was the technology, the blogging software combined with the rise of Google. For the first time, self-publishing was inexpensive, easy and viable as a way of reaching an audience. But it wasn't just the technology, there was the notion that the blog was your own platform, use it to express yourself and say whatever the hell you want to say. After all, most people didn’t even know about blogs.
Gradually things changed, more people started blogging and more people started paying attention to bloggers, and things got more serious. But those changes were flowing on from the growth of blogging and were to be expected.
What I’m more interested in is the disruptive change, the changes which I wouldn’t have imagined in 2002.
MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, FriendFeed and similar services. Although I have described blogging as "not difficult", publishing via these new services is extremely easy. Although blogging has become fairly mainstream now, the ease of use factor of Twitter particularly has helped it become way more mainstream.
The difference between an old fashioned blog and somebody's Twitter or Facebook or MySpace page is that a blog is published for the whole world to see, whereas it’s possible to control who can access the newer services. This may sound fairly obvious, but I think it's caused a difference in how people use these newer self-publication services.
The really interesting thing is that most of the time, a blog is external to its author. Even the most personal blog is still a creation of its author, and not an extension of the author - like someone’s Facebook page. There are exceptions, such as the fake Stephen Conroy on Twitter. My own twitter handle is explodedlibrary, which may have been a mistake because my tweets are often quite different from my blog postings, which is one reason why I keep them protected.
I wonder, if more and more people can express themselves via Twitter or Facebook, does that mean that over time less people will be interested in starting or continuing blogging?
Guessing the future is always hazardous, because the things which cause the biggest change can never be predicted.
But even if blogging does go into a gradual decline, in terms of its popularity or influence (it's possible that if the mainstream news media continues in its downward spiral, blog posts may gain even more influence), I'm not worried that all of a sudden blogging will become meaningless.
Three years after that, I could no longer ignore the word "blog", I decided to learn about it and discovered the amazing thing about it - that they weren’t very difficult to make.
Despite the title of this post, I have little use for nostalgia. I don't wish to relive those early years of blogging, but I would like to understand and communicate how it felt back then.
It was extremely liberating. Some of that was the technology, the blogging software combined with the rise of Google. For the first time, self-publishing was inexpensive, easy and viable as a way of reaching an audience. But it wasn't just the technology, there was the notion that the blog was your own platform, use it to express yourself and say whatever the hell you want to say. After all, most people didn’t even know about blogs.
Gradually things changed, more people started blogging and more people started paying attention to bloggers, and things got more serious. But those changes were flowing on from the growth of blogging and were to be expected.
What I’m more interested in is the disruptive change, the changes which I wouldn’t have imagined in 2002.
MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, FriendFeed and similar services. Although I have described blogging as "not difficult", publishing via these new services is extremely easy. Although blogging has become fairly mainstream now, the ease of use factor of Twitter particularly has helped it become way more mainstream.
The difference between an old fashioned blog and somebody's Twitter or Facebook or MySpace page is that a blog is published for the whole world to see, whereas it’s possible to control who can access the newer services. This may sound fairly obvious, but I think it's caused a difference in how people use these newer self-publication services.
The really interesting thing is that most of the time, a blog is external to its author. Even the most personal blog is still a creation of its author, and not an extension of the author - like someone’s Facebook page. There are exceptions, such as the fake Stephen Conroy on Twitter. My own twitter handle is explodedlibrary, which may have been a mistake because my tweets are often quite different from my blog postings, which is one reason why I keep them protected.
I wonder, if more and more people can express themselves via Twitter or Facebook, does that mean that over time less people will be interested in starting or continuing blogging?
Guessing the future is always hazardous, because the things which cause the biggest change can never be predicted.
But even if blogging does go into a gradual decline, in terms of its popularity or influence (it's possible that if the mainstream news media continues in its downward spiral, blog posts may gain even more influence), I'm not worried that all of a sudden blogging will become meaningless.
