Although it is a bit gloomy (maybe the overcast of the past week in the Bay Area has dampened Robert's sunny nature), I have to agree with some -- definitely not all -- of the complaints that Scoble has leveled at blogs. In particular:
[from Has/How/Why tech blogging has failed you]More ways we’ve failed you?
Our commenting systems really suck. I didn’t realize just how badly they sucked until I started using FriendFeed. My comments here are gummed up with moderation, with spam filters that only sorta work, that don’t have threading, and have many other problems ranging from needing to be signed into, to not working on mobile devices very well, to requiring you to enter weird numbers or do math just to be able to post a comment.
What does this mean? Only the most motivated will leave comments.
/Message has always been about the deep structure of social tools: not at a software or hardware architectural level, but at the human cognition and the societal level. /Message will remain focused on that.
Robert is all gaga over Friendfeed, which I think has a lot of interesting features, but his initial statement is correct, although wrongly directed. It is not us, we the bloggers, who have piss poor commenting systems: it's the blogging platforms. [I will be giving a talk in Berlin in a few months, at the Web 2.0 Expo, called "Better Media Plumbing For The Social Web", a deep dive into the architecture of discourse on the web, and it's most egregious problems.]
The weaknesses of blog comments systems are exacerbated by the migration of commentary from blogs to the faster paced flow apps, like Twitter, Friendfeed, Feedly, Facebook, etc. (a topic I have discussed extensively, here, here, and here). The result is a fragmented and jumbled world where we basically never can see the whole body of conversation going on about some post.
Note that trackbacks seem to be dying (just like voicemail?) because a solution that is partial and unreliable is worse than nothing.
But Robert enumerates other reasons why blogging has failed that are, really, personal misgivings about his own situation as a blogger or the outcome of blogging's maturation. As blogging has destabilized conventional media, those media have begun to adopt the trappings -- and to some extent the real DNA -- of writing from the edge. So we can put to one side the concern that blogging has become too mainstream. Likewise, if Scoble wants to get back to being helpful and focused on what he really personally likes, great.
Robert has done me a service by teeing up this reflective reexamination of his personal motivations for blogging. In my case, I can't imagine a life without writing. I write 'man of letters' as my occupation on government forms these days.
/Message is going through changes as I rejigger the orientation of my work life. I am getting more involved in the media side of things, after a long hiatus. I was president of Corante, a blogging pioneer, and left the company in late 2005, but now I intend to push ahead with The /Messengers in that direction.
/Message has always been about the deep structure of social tools: not at a software or hardware architectural level, but at the human cognition and the societal level. /Message will remain focused on that.
As a result, I have managed to mostly dodge the PR folks that Robert gripes about, since /Message is not a 'breaking news' blog, but a hair more contemplative, more interested in the emerging web culture than what start-up has raised a million bucks. I am only half kidding when I use the category 'Webthropology' here.
So, while I don't join Robert's implicit mea culpa, I am happy to rededicate myself to being helpful and writing about things that I think genuinely matter, not just Apple's newest gizmo or the peccadillos of tech personalities.
Well said Stowe, well said.
I think a lot of the "blogosphere" is feeling reactionary recently. A big part of it might be the time of year (summer oft breeds reflection), another might just be that the raw edges of change are finally being felt. Robert's post is one of many that have popped up recently with similar themes and similar conclusions. It might not be that blogging has failed us, but that many of us have simply lost track of why we do what we do. We've gotten so caught up in the treadmill of "news" that we've lost the point.
Then again, I think it ignores the fact that if you look ten degrees off-center from "mainstream tech blogging" you'll see a rich world of bloggers who are still as passionate and as driven as they ever were.
I guess it's all just a part of the evolving media. I'll just be interested in seeing how all this plays out in 6 months.
Posted by: Steve Spalding | July 22, 2008 at 01:41 PM
I have read several blog posts today about what it means to be a blogger. Some - like yours - mentioned Scoble's writing while others were seemingly unrelated.
Your post states well why you write. I write because I cannot keep from writing.
I find it important to understand why I write or do just about anything. State that reason to people who want to know why. Be happy with the reason for myself, and go on.
I can also be disappointed in "all those other people out there and why they are blogging." I shouldn't expect my disappointment to change them.
The blogosphere is - for now at least - a place where freedom exists. I like that, and am willing to live with other persons' freedoms and expressions.
Posted by: Dwayne Phillips | July 23, 2008 at 09:13 AM
Yeah, it's true, the usual way blog comments work is crap. I've been looking around for ways to get more out of comments, such as Disqus, and I stumbled onto Intense Debate, which seems to be like Disqus, but it can also suck in FriendFeed comments on the post and display them on your blog.
Comments are fraying in a way, getting spread all over the place, whether it's FF or Twitter, the discussion (if you can truly call comments discussion) isn't happening where the content is.
The idea of Intense Debate sounds interesting: bringing the dispersed commentary back to the content. Anyone have any experience with it? Whaddaya think?
Posted by: Matt Balara | July 23, 2008 at 11:13 AM
Blogs were so much better before there were so may alternatives. It once seemed that everyone would have a blog, and in the small bubble of techie circles it seemed like everyone did. But competition for social communication has killed blogging and is killing itself as well.
blogging has a lot of shortcomings. But sometimes (often) the value of a common standard can outweigh a lot flaws of whatever standard it is that is picked. Fragmentation rapidly watering down social media.
I think it's facebook (or myspace depending where you live) that originally killed blogging.
facebook and twitter and others (even flickr) sapped the personal, autobiographical flavour out of blogs. People now post the more human, more immediate stuff somewhere else rather than to a blog.
filtering out the truly social bits has permanently altered the flavour of the blogosphere. The color sapped out with it's humanness. No more ambient intimacy. The professionals have moved in. blogs are dried out, now they are just PR at worst, just a flow of amateur op-editorializing at best.
even /message is less about stowe now, it's grown up and become a new animal. Not worse necessarily, but different.
From July of last year, on blogging as a deadmedia:
http://www.thomaspurves.com/2007/07/31/has-facebook-killed-blogging/
Posted by: Thomas Purves | July 23, 2008 at 01:32 PM