Blogorrhea
As law firms have adapted to the web over the last several years, lawyers have been told that "content is king", that the content of web pages must be kept new and fresh to keep visitors and potential clients coming back for more. Some firms have done much better than others in adhering to this concept, but even the most frequently changed firm sites have only a few new items added each month. The pages devoted to the firm's publications -- client advisories, bulletins, and articles -- are typically the only area where changes are made. The rest of the site, for the most part consisting of the brochure pages, remains static, week to week and month to month.
On the other end of the spectrum, news and commentary are constantly replenished commodities, and the words flow like a river over most news sites. Indeed, on some sites it is sometimes difficult to find a news story that is only a few weeks old.
With the weblog phenomenon, we now have sites which are updated many times a day, not by news organizations with many hands on board, but by individuals. And many of these people have an amazing amount to say about substantive things. Weblogs in general comprise a large amount of information and commentary.
Who has had the most success at "blogging"? Typically, those who regularly write for a living and those who tend to have an in-depth knowledge of a specific area of interest -- a description that can cover lawyers, journalists, and pundits. Among these general groups, though, the most productive and the most widely read are those who have a techie's variation of the "gift of gab". If it is necessary for a law firm web site to add content monthly, it seems, it is necessary for a weblog to add content daily, even several times a day. And it is astounding how much verbiage some of the participants have been able to dump into the system. Many weblog authors are adding items which span thousands of words on a daily basis.
So we are treated to a new phenomenon: people who had not previously been involved in publishing a lot of their own writing are suddenly contributing to the debates, and some are doing so in a constructive, creative and even imaginative way. And their comments are having an effect on standard journalists in many ways.
But at the same time, it seems that the level of reader expectations has gone way up. Regular visitors to some of these sites have grown accustomed to daily submissions, even multiple entries during the day, and they feel frustrated when a favorite author takes a vacation or decides that some other activity is more important than adding to his pages. To the readers who need a daily or even hourly fix, the most popular sites are those whose authors display a weblogger's loquacity - which we are of course compelled to christen "blogorrhea". Just as old O'Rourke can entertain the patrons by spinning yarns for hours, one arm on the bar and the other holding his well-refreshed mug, his modern-day counterparts can do the same for their readers across the world by keeping the flow of words coming. But for how long can they continue to do so?
9:48:47 PM 
|
|
