That said, I think that if you look at it objectively and dispassionately from a blog publisher's *business* perspective you say: how many page views can I get, and how much can I sell the ad space at? And that's it, pretty simple numbers.

I do think that participation in the greater social media aspects will help to move that bottom line. But of course, you have to do it with heart and passion. You can't fake this stuff, people are way too smart for that.

So the game is changing — it's both easier and more difficult than ever to move ahead…. or something!

Totally agree that the issue of control over one's brand and intellectual property is critical. Now, I understand that many are calling for a “let the conversation go, that's what users want” kind of take — which I can understand to an extent, but really there must be a balance, which I've tried to explain on at least a surface level in this piece.

Lets remember too that ALL forms of publishing are extremely competitive. Web publishing at the least is egalitarian — anyone can do it, which may of course lead some to have unrealistic expectations.

Well, in the time I've been blogging (somewhat longer that Lous, although not as long as, say, Mary Hodder) there have been some serious changes, esp. in linking strategies and “link love.” Technorait (which is very broken these days) used to give more weight to permalinks (as in blogroll links) over post links. People used to hound A-listers for links so much so that the term “link whoring” was born. Links were everything to bloggers. But now, chances are that in order to find who's linking to you, you have to consult a number of sources as well as a crystal ball….

So, you are quite correct about the subjective nature of the term “serious blogger.” Folks that you mention, such as Andrew Sullivan, might be great “bloggers” if they started today because they bring their previous print journalism and scholarly reputations to the table. There are women who stake a blogging claim with nothing more than the term “mommyblogger” and have instant community–something that wasn't there 4 years ago. We've also seen innovations like Twitter drive traffic while adding nothing to countable links leading to rise in rank. Same thing with RSS subscriptions–great to have readers but those readers don't necessarily count towards links and rank, nor do they generate new traffic (that is, unless someone twitters a link to your blog.)

So, I'd have to agree with Duncan: nowadays, blogging's more about the user–or, shall we say “lurker” or “reader” vs. the blogger who will provide linklove to you. Hence, it can be said that it's about the reputation you build via an aggregate of blogging, tweeting, having your comments searched via Disqus, and your social networking profiles. Maybe that's 2.0–then again, maybe that's just the diffusion of the blogger identity into that of “social networker.” Just a thought.

of course, we don't have much choice about whether we agree to have our conversations move to other platforms do we? The ex-Googlers will see to that!

For me, the issue is really about who owns your brand and how can you control it in a fractured media environment. That's not a trivial matter and it's also undetermined at this point.

but what do you think?

but what do you think?