We often talk around the office about all the bloggers that
blog about blogging. Now I’m one of
them. One of the things we ponder is if blogging didn’t exist, what would
bloggers that blog about blogging blog about? That’s a rhetorical question
because, logically speaking, the answer is nothing. This entry that you’re
reading wouldn’t exist.
For another example, if blogging didn’t exist Judith
Meskill wouldn’t have written that she wasn't enamoured of another site's
‘simple-mentation of the blog’”.
Huh? Isn’t blogging
the epitome of a ‘simple-mentation’?
Blogging has become such a surprisingly popular phenomena
because it’s pretty much the simplest way to publish on the web. Sure, I’m a
geek, so back in 1995 I didn’t find composing HTML in Notepad and ftp’ing files
to a server too complex. Then in 1996 I tried some of the simpler WYSIWYG
editors, which made composing even easier. By 1997 I knew enough Perl to
display an empty text form field, save the text entered in that form, and spit
out an HTML page. This is the core of a simple message board, which is all a
blog is…a simple message board where only one person can start threads. Then
came sites like GeoCities, which made it even simpler to publish on the web.
Bill Machrone recently wrote in PC Magazine that
“a surprising
number of people don’t realize that blogging software is a content management
system”. Exactly- a ridiculously simple one.
The ‘simple-mentation’ comment brings to light perhaps my
biggest pet peeve of journalists' coverage of blogging - and that’s the lack of
recognition that there are two distinct types of bloggers: professional, and
personal.
By
professional I do not mean written by a professional writer. Far from
that. I simply mean there is some professional motivation
behind the blogging. Perhaps the writer is an aspiring journalist and
wants to
get noticed, or the blogger is a celebrity looking to improve their
image or
increase their visibility, a la Ariana
Huffington's Huffington Post. Or maybe the blog is sponsored by a
company in an effort to
increase its awareness. My favorite of these is RepriseMedia’s
Searchviews. Not only is Erin
Bradley, the blog’s primary contributor, extremely prolific, but her writing
style is entertaining and down-to-earth and lacks even the slightest trace of
self-absorption prevalent on most non-personal blogs.
Then there are, what I believe to be the overwhelming
majority, the personal bloggers. These are people just blogging about their
daily lives and their random thoughts. The millions of people blogging on sites
like LiveJournal and Blogger and Multiply aren’t doing so with some
professional agenda in mind. Yet despite the majority of blogging falling into
this personal realm, just about all media coverage centers on professional
blogging.
The needs of these two types of bloggers are completely
distinct. The professional blog is generally limited to a specific topic: politics, a type of software, a specific
industry, etc. The target audience, hence, is anybody interested in the topic.
Increasing the size of this target audience is a goal of the blogger. This led
to features like Scratchback…err…Trackback - the blogging equivalent of
bartering banner ads - and RSS. Also included in this list, as Machrone pointed
out, are features to manage advertising.
Personal blogs aren’t really about a specific topic unless
you consider the random thoughts and activities of the author of the blog a topic. The
target audience, similar to the professional blogs, includes people who care about
the topic – but in this case it generally means people who care about the
blogger him/herself. When some kid is complaining about her parents in a blog,
or when parents are writing about their kids, Trackback isn’t needed. The
author isn’t hoping somebody else quotes them. Multiply has close to 1 million
users and I don’t recall a single request for Trackback. Likewise RSS, which
most internet users
are
unfamiliar with according to Pew Internet. (Note, Multiply does provide RSS feeds.)
I assume it’s the lack of these features - needed for professional blogging but
not personal blogging - that Meskill refers to as
‘simple-mentation’. It would be great,
though, if bloggers that blog about blogging recognized that excluding
superfluous features isn’t
simple-mentation… it’s better design. Additional features can lead to complexity,
bloat, more trouble-shooting and quality assurance efforts, and ultimately slow
user-growth. AOL prospered in the late 1990s by simplifying the Internet.
Apple’s iPod is tremendously successful because it simplified the MP3 player.
A user writes that keeping things simple
"means that Multiply is easier to use for everyone, which aids to the accessibility for everyone". Most people want ‘simple-mentation’.
Back to the two types of bloggers, another way to look at
the difference is that professional blogging is more akin to publishing, while
personal blogging is more about communicating. If you think that sounds like a
segue into discussing why Multiply’s social communications tools are ideal for
personal blogging, you are correct. I’ll
elaborate though in a future post since that’s another topic.
The ‘simple-mentation’ comment brings to light perhaps my biggest pet peeve of journalists' coverage of blogging - and that’s the lack of recognition that there are two distinct types of bloggers: professional, and personal. 
