Brainshrub's Morning Link Scan for June 8, 2006

This weekend at a yard sale I found a hoola-hoop, a stack of disco albums, a Members Only jacket and a Rubics Cube all together on an old blue tarp.

Seeing the bones of past fads in one pile got me to thinking: Is blogging just a temporary thing like all those other items?

Personally, I don't think so. In the early days of widespread literacy, people used to publish "broadsheets". These evolved into what we now call "Daily Papers".

Similarly, I suspect that once the economics works itself out, blogging will evolve into something we don't have a word for yet.

Today's theme: Are blogs just a fad?

(Notes: It feels like it was another age, but the general public only learned about "blogs" a little over 18 months ago with the Gannon/Guckert controversy. This is a good place to start when discussing if blogs are a fad because we can compare how much has changed since then. Be sure to watch the end of the clip where Jon Stewart interviews Colbert.)

By all appearances, the blog boom is the most democratized revolution in media ever. Starting a blog is ridiculously cheap; indeed, blogging software and hosting can be had for free online. There are also easy-to-use ad services that, for a small fee, will place advertisements from major corporations on blogs, then mail the blogger his profits. Blogging, therefore, should be the purest meritocracy there is. It doesn’t matter if you’re a nobody from the sticks or a well-connected Harvard grad. If you launch a witty blog in a sexy niche, if you’re good at scrounging for news nuggets, and if you’re dedicated enough to post around the clock—well, there’s nothing separating you from the big successful bloggers, right? I can do that.

In theory, sure. But if you talk to many of today’s bloggers, they’ll complain that the game seems fixed. They’ve targeted one of the more lucrative niches—gossip or politics or gadgets (or sex, of course)—yet they cannot reach anywhere close to the size of the existing big blogs. It’s as if there were an A-list of a few extremely lucky, well-trafficked blogs—then hordes of people stuck on the B-list or C-list, also-rans who can’t figure out why their audiences stay so comparatively puny no matter how hard they work. “It just seems like it’s a big in-party,” one blogger complained to me. (Indeed, a couple of pranksters last spring started a joke site called Blogebrity and posted actual lists of the blogs they figured were A-, B-, and C-level famous.)

That’s a lot of inequality for a supposedly democratic medium. Not long ago, Clay Shirky, an instructor at New York University, became interested in this phenomenon—and argued that there is a scientific explanation. Shirky specializes in the social dynamics of the Internet, including “network theory”: a mathematical model of how information travels inside groups of loosely connected people, such as users of the Web.

(Notes: This is a must-read for all writers who want to make a living from blogging. Like I mentioned earlier, the economics of blogs still has to work itself out.

The difference between a fad and a trend is the amount of wealth it can generate for those who enter late in the game. If the first group of people who entered blogging are the only ones who can make a living from it, the medium is doomed to mediocrity.

A quality blog takes a tremendous amount of time and work to build and maintain. Without a source of income, even the best bloggers will have to drop out eventualy. Fame without money does not pay the bills.)

Six Apart is currently working on a new product, codenamed Comet, that will start beta testing this quarter. "It's meant for the next generation of blogs," says Mena Trott, without revealing details. Just before setting off for Monterey, Calif., to speak at the annual TED conference -- that's technology, education, and design -- Trott spoke with BusinessWeek Online reporter Reena Jana about challenges in blog design -- which, she hints, Comet will attempt to address. Here are edited excerpts from their conversation:

Do you think that blogging will supplant mainstream news Web sites and other established media?
There will be similarities. But blogging and traditional journalism play by different rules and will remain distinct. They're meant to complement each other, play off of each other in terms of the readers' attention.

What do I read when I wake up? I go to news sites. But I'm more excited right now about personal users. The 10 blogs I really care about are written by my friends. I'm interested in the community of a blog network.

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