Blogging 2.0: The end of the beginning?
Duncan Riley makes interesting points over at The Inquisitr, pointing out that blogging 2.0 is “the blogosphere’s first counterculture movement.”
To back up a few steps though, the definition of blogging 2.0 is still evolving, and like the strange and nebulous term web 2.0 can and likely will mean different things to different people. When I started looking into this brave new world of blogging 2.0 back in May, I came in with the assumption that blogging 1.0 was a relatively more ordered world where blog publishers:
• Published stories (and the more the better)
• Created value around a topic or topics
• Attracted readers, and hopefully actively participated in comments
• Built a destination presence that brought back readers regularly
• Made money through the page views and ad impressions generated
Riley however goes back a little bit further than my point of origin, hearkening back to a time where there was a “collective sense of community” in which bloggers linked out and shared information out of love for the community and medium as opposed to a more bottom line-driven contemporary environment.
My personal ethos is that “serious bloggers” should have a great passion for what they’re doing and should enjoy adding value to the online conversation and web community. And a healthy desire to accrue traffic, build a web presence, and eventually make money probably will help to keep things rolling after the initial excitement wears off. In 2008, bloggers can be self-serving but also should aggressively pursue social media platforms like Disqus, Twitter, and FriendFeed. The thing is though that you can’t fake your participation. If it’s brazenly self-serving or anemic, it will not reap any great benefits.
In any event, Riley goes on to taking a position that I agree with, which is that actively embracing the social media side of blogging 2.0 can also help to drive traffic back to the “home site.” Which then hopefully become regular readers and go through the same list posted above.
Meanwhile, blogging 2.0 is just at the beginning of its evolution. Louis Gray has a very cool post up over the weekend in which he created a leaderboard based around the top bloggers that he has “shared” via Google Reader over the course of July (full disclosure: Online Media Cultist is on the board, yessir!).
This represents the leading edge of how new tools and community sites can empower bloggers to use their sites in new and innovative ways. So while it’s very natural for old school bloggers in particular to be frightened by a chaotic blogging 2.0 environment –where conversations are taking place all over the web, and attribution/credit/link love can sometimes be hard to come by – there’s a great deal to embrace and even take advantage of.
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