Online Media Cultist

Web producer, writer, online media cultist. That's how I roll.

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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Date
July 28th, 2008

Author
Eric Berlin

Category
OMC

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  • Interesting - thought I'd chime in to be sure it's not lost that blogging is also impacting and being impacted by the evolution of "print" journalism (quotes because, uh...what is print?). It's not all social, it's also information sharing and will continuously mesh those two goals.
  • I agree, but am curious to hear how you think that blogging is impacting / being impacted by print/traditional journalism.

    I really like Scott Karp's notion that a new breed of "link journalists" is needed in the online realm, for example.
  • Not to sound too dramatic, but we're witnessing the dawn of conversant journalism (right: too dramatic).

    For the most part, print publications can't survive without an online presence anymore and as demographics shift, characteristics of blogging are becoming more a part of everyday, high quality reporting. That is to say, the more the online-savvy generation starts picking up BusinessWeek, Wall Street Journal, etc., the more the writers need to open up the conversation. This goes to Scott Karp's point, and I agree with him but also believe that the shift is already heavily in progress. WSJ has a forum where readers can post in response to stories, although I give them a B- overall on their social efforts, and BusinessWeek is right on the money in the way it integrates comments with content. A lot of major dailies also feature straight-up blogs by their staff.

    I guess when you set it all back to zero, blogs are in a sense just the rebirth of journalism, aren’t they? Opinionated writers who consider themselves connected to certain subjects find a way to convey their points of view in an effort to enlighten the masses...not much different than the epiphany that a printing press can change the world.

    The medium has evolved - journalism is just taking a few beats to catch up to it.
  • Very interesting thoughts, and I'm much agreed. Traditional media companies that get hip to this way of thinking are going to find ways to survive in this brave new climate. There's a major generational shift going on, and you see journalists like Mathew Ingram reaping the benefits.
  • Absolutely - a few years ago most of the professional world was saying that there was too much senseless junk being written for blogs to ever be "real." The truth is it just needed time to shake out. Search capabilities, categorization, and the potential for major circulation numbers tell us that the game has officially changed...AP aside, most of the major media outlets are evolving.

    I keep an eye on this ongoing shift for my work, so I might as well shamelessly encourage you to check in on http://thinktelos.blogspot.com/. You might see some OMC references on there...
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