My post last week on What’s Wrong with Blogging has proved to be the hottest post on ProBlogger this week. 45 people have left comments and trackbacks (so far) so its obviously hit a nerve. The discussion is ‘negative’ in nature as I’d asked for (although one or two couldn’t resist being positive) and I think its one of the more worthwhile discussions to have taken place on this blog this year.
I hope its stimulated some thinking that will help bloggers to improve their craft and perhaps given some blog tool developers some ideas about what people are looking for.
In the interest of balance and optimism its time for a discussion on ‘What’s Right with Blogging?’ I’d like to open up this post to all readers to share what they love about blogging. What makes it something that you invest time into? What distinguishes it positively from other forms of websites? What about it makes you purrrrrrr?
No negative comments will be tolerated (leave them on this one) – this should be a real blogging love fest!
What makes a conversation great? The people, the emotion, the connection, the ideas, the arguements…I could go on forever. And that is what makes blogging great. Blogging facilitates conversation.
What I like best is the interactive nature of blogs. Before blogs I had published many articles on my sites, and the feedback I received via email was much lower in quantity and quality. The ability to comment and reply to comments pushes blogs a step beyond. Public comments also help reduce redundant feedback.
FREEDOM!
Blogging is the most public expression attainable to most of us. Blogging gives us the ability to act as the perfect example of free press. Not only uninhibited by oppressive governments but also free from the economic restrictions of standard publishing. The blogging of the last five and the next fifteen years will be marked in the future as a huge turning point in the study of history. Before now there seemed to be states and organizations. After now it’ll be clear that there’s a whole lotta people in this world with something to say and a unique perspective on everything.
Blogs are a great distribution mechanism. We’ve all been able to publish on the web on web pages for ten years now, but people had to explicitly “visit” your web pages, even if they knew where to find them. But now with web feeds and subscription feed aggregators, your latest creative works are delivered directly to their screens without them needing to hardly lift a finger.
Combined with web feeds and aggregators, blogs enable more voices to be heard.
— Jack Krupansky
It’s the newest evolution of websites – it’s changing the status quo for all sites. It used to be that I’d have to make websites for my clients by hand with expensive software like Dreamweaver. Now I just install a CMS for them (usually a modified WordPress), customize a theme for them and they’re writing content all by themselves after less than a whole day’s work on my part.
Speed. When a large number of people have all been following the same news story a blogger will be much faster to report it than any other medium. Blogs get the facts out fastest.
Blogs offer the small business owner a window into his/her market. With open ears, and a stream of creative posts, a small business owner can really tap into his/her buyers’ thought processes.
Being part of a community, discovering people’s opinions, weighing in with your own, these are some of the great things about blogs.
There is tremendous freedom in being able to speak your mind and pass on information.
Freedom.
Blogs have created what the web promised in 1996 but didn’t deliver, the freedom of anybody with internet access to particpate and have their say to a global audience. It has truly forfilled the promise of free speech in giving the ability to all to practice what legally they have always held rights to but have not had the means to easily partake in
Level playing field
Blogging is essenitally a level playing field that can deliver success to anybody irrelevant of their social status, race or ethnicity. Sure, big media still gets the jump on traffic, but hard work and determination in the blogosphere can and is rewarded. It’s utopian capitalism without (much) Government restriction.
Cost
links back into the other two, but blogging is cheap, and that means more people can be involved, and more numbers is always a good thing in the sense of the greater good, and creates a more diverse and rich blogosphere.
[…] g? May 12th, 2005 by Administrator Darren Rowse has flipped the coin! He asks What’s Right With Blogging? He says “In the […]
I’m going to be obtuse and post links to about 10,000 words I’ve written that, for me, just about touch on what’s so good about blogging:
Centred communication: http://incsub.org/blogtalk/?page_id=54
Communication dynamics: http://incsub.org/blog/?p=3
And then say that the best thing about them is that we don’t really need to write 10,000 words on it… it’s obvious in this (and the last) conversation.
I posted about this very topic on my blog yesterday. I hope you don’t mind my leaving link rather than repeating all of it : http://synastry.blogspot.com/2005/05/joys-of-hobby-blogging.html
I think blogging brings out the truth of what some people are all about, selective facts. I wouldn’t go so far as to call them verbal liers but that’s what it adds up to being.
I am a blogger myself, and sinc ei havefound that many many people read it, it’s a forum for me to ventilate things that are real in my world,I don’t expect my readers to be interested in my life, but the fact remains, people do read alot, and I contribute to the growing mass of internet addicts.
I am an independent consultant and I can’t really remember how I got on before blogging. It’s like an advert, a business card and a networking tool rolled into one, at almost no cost!
Blogs have opened up the world for people in lots of different hobby groups to build international links to share information, news and techniques and to buy and sell their own products in a small way. Many crafts, for example, have benefited from the growth of the blogosphere.
[…] “>
Andy Wibbels
Darren posed two provocative questions: What is right about blogging? […]
Hi,
Here your are giving relay good articles for Blogging