Ross Mayfield writes in his blog about the value of informality in writing for weblogs. Weblogs may be a form of micropublishing, but they are not journalism. Weblogs most frequently provide a navigation guide to a diverse set of content. Authors acquire authority by providing good navigational advice to a community, pointing out the most important postings and sites. At their best, weblogs can provide a forum for a thoughtful discourse about a subject and it is the richness of this unedited conversation that makes weblogs endlessly interesting. I find weblogs most engaging when people are courageous enough to assert a position and provide a logical argument for that position. I can follow the thread and see how the argument has developed. I find the conversation in weblogs much more accessible then the disjointed conversations in newsgroups. So, I am all for the informality, for thinking while writing, for the sequential presentation of ideas in weblogs. It is the accretion of postings, the spontaneity, and the diversity of thinking that creates understanding.
Gautam Ghosh wrote: > hi folks, > >Is the world of blogs destined to remain a very tall pyramid, with a handful of blogs that are visited by most and the majority of blogs in the bottom of the pyramid...being visited by none other than the author and a couple of friends? > >How does a blog create a buzz around it and get linked to 1000s of other blogs and eventually get picked by non-bloggers too? > >Does the nature of the content disproportionately affect traffic? >
Interesting question, there is statistical evidence see: an important post on the topic from Clay Shirky, that suggests that only a handful of weblogs will get the majority of attention. But one must ask themselves why do they blog. Is it for the recognition and the ego satisfaction of the hits and subsequent email, or is it because one likes to document their investigations of the web, the flow of their thinking, and their increasing understanding of a topic. I find the buzz boring. For example, Ray Ozzie's site got thousands of hits even when he neglects it for months. So, the number of hits says nothing about the importance of the thinking. I find following the thread of an argument through a number of blogs fun and it is, most fun, when the writing is personal, informal, and small.
