Blogging dummies

Stop the blogging.  They need to get off. The Early Adopters are leaving the building. 

Dave Winer says he'll stop posting before the end of the year. "I want some privacy, I want to matter less, so I can retool," he wrote.

Robert Scoble went on vacation, his blog was written by a stand in while he was gone.  Scoble says time off taught him he needs "balance." He's begun to think about "things that aren't blogs or news feeds."

Russell Beattie, an analyst on the mobile and wireless industries,  says he's quitting his blog  after 4 years. "This is a continuation of the full-reset I started back in January," he explained.

Slate.com ran a piece by Sarah Hepol in which she announced that, after five years, she's quitting blogging, too.  "Blogging wasn't helping me write (a book); it was keeping me from it.  It (has) become a major distraction," she said.  NPR interviewed her.

Sense a theme here? Retool, balance, reset.

Technorati says it's adding 50,000 Web logs daily to the tracking universe.  It now totals 36.5 million sites, the blogosphere is changing.  The new bloggers aren't like the old bloggers.  The old bloggers used blogging for conversations about tech and politics,  Many of the new bloggers are interested only in monologues.

There's been a rush by mainstream media to get on the blogging bandwagon, too.  Some bloggers have already fallen off.  There will be more.

Jake Tapper, the correspondent for ABC News, shut his blog.  ABC bosses clamping down on "too free" expression?

The Los Angeles Times suspended Michael Hiltzik's Golden State blog after he confessed he'd made up his own comments.  It also looks like Hiltzik was suspended from the paper, too, because his Monday print column isn't online today.

The Washington Post canceled its deal with Ben Domenech for plagiarism.
Is there something different about the new boys?  Has "Blogging for Dummies" changed the playing field.

Rui Carmo thinks so. "Fast posts will do for the term 'food for thought' mostly the same that fast food did for restaurants - i.e., starve our minds of decent, nutritious concepts."

Om Malik put his finger on it. "Fast blogs equal fast food."

Comments

[Geoff Gilson]

I am an English-American wishing to do precisely what you bemoan is on the decrease - using my new blog to converse with the blogosphere.

Problem is, I am a "blogging dummy." I don't want to inspect my navel. I want people to read my blog and respond. I want to get out there and be heard. But, to be honest, I can barely spell Technorati, let alone know how to use it, and Permalink, and RSS, and Feeding this, and delicious that.

HELP!! Where do I get the basic "Bogging for Dummies who want to Converse not Monologue"?

[tampafilmfan]

Thanks for an interesting post. For me, it's all about time....time to think of blog topics, time to post on my blog, time to research links, time to read what's being said about me (if anything) in the blogosphere, time to read other blogs. I've only been blogging for one year, but I can certainly understand how blogging for a few years can burn a person out.

[Lee Tucker]

Even as someone who has never been a particularly popular blogger, I find that the blogosphere can be a major drain. For those blogs that aren't explicity focused on "current events," sometimes one just runs out of relevant material. I blog about college; I can only write so many posts about laundry day.

Current events blogs don't have the same material issues, but they run into other problems. It can be really disheartening to feel as if you're shouting yourself hoarse about the same themes on a blog day after day--even if many people are listening.

To use an analogy, American history is full of authors that wrote a great American novel, then faded into obscurity. Would J.D. Salinger be considered so important if he continued to write novels about adolescence today? Why should we expect that just because a given blogger made her mark at one time, that she should always be able or willing to continue doing so?

[Derek Doran-Wood]

To paraphrase a funnier man than I: rumors of blogging's demise are greatly exaggerated. It's not a stretch to think that *early adopters* are feeling blogged out - they've been at it for a good four or five years. Show me someone who doesn't feel the need to shake up their routine every half decade or so, and I'll show you... well, a very dull person.

Sure, blogs are popping up like weeds. The key distinction (as Frank indicates) is between pithy, informative, provocative blogs and blahblah navel-gazing blogs. The challenge as I see it is to establish yourself in the former group and then not lose your edge, or your passion for keeping the blog. There are plenty of eyeballs for good blogs, and there will continue to be more.

[John Dowdell]

Yes, but let's wait a moment... stay calm... until we see if Oprah picks up on it.... ;-)

[alan macleese]

Speaking of bloggers,where are the ones with noses for news? For more than two weeks a post written by this poster --- AL MacLeese -- that rips a hole in the MySpace myth and reveals the true powers behind its rise,a pair of disgraced West Coast business and there wives, but read the post and find out that most chit-chat about MySpace of late has lafcked a fatal element, some basic truth. al macleese, lving in Maine where life is like it ought to be.

[Nari Kannan]

With millions of blogs already there and millions more coming online, who has time to read our blather?

How many blogs do you read in a day seriously? Two, three?

So save yourself all the agony - This is the Dot.com madness all over again - just because you have a web site up and running, doesn't mean that people take the time to come visit. Same thing with blogs. Nobody has the time and the more blogs there are, the probability that any single blog gets the attention of anyone goes down even as we speak, even as more people start their own blogs.

So save yourself the trouble. No one really has the time even if they care about what you have to say!