Web/Tech 26 May 2005 11:21 am
Professional Bloggers?!
I happened across this site, called "View from the Isle" which landed in my RSS feed from iPodder.org. At some point, I’ll post about Podcasting, since I know a lot of folks don’t know a lot about it. But back to "View from the Isle" - it is a blog by a professional blogger, who does things like blog consulting. He is a founder and board member of the Pro-Bloggers Association. I had been hearing inklings of this, in various places, and I find it both fascinating, worrysome, but also maybe not so bad. I’m not sure.
In surfing through Tris Hussey’s site (that’s the guy who does View from the Isle), I’m intrigued, and a bit startled. One thing that comes clear, is that some of the idea of this is that if a blogger, seen, I guess, as an independent sort, mentions a company or product on their blog, they should get paid for it. Also, in looking at his blog, it’s chock full of advertising. Now maybe I’m getting it - advertisers realize that they are losing eyeballs from TV, because people are surfing the web reading blogs - so let’s advertise on the blogs! Yick. OK, y’all know I’d make a terrible capitalist.
That said, I did come across an interesting blog some of you might be interested in, one by Amy Garhan, called Contentious. Interesting to read. She has one post which is a very nice definition of what a blog is, and what it can do. (The geeky coder in me, however, bristles at the notion that only non-technical users use Typepad.) It is very focused on the professionalization of blogging, but it’s got some good ideas.
In general, as you might imagine, I think blogging is a very cool thing. I think given the state of the media empire, and the lack of decent news, and real investigative reporting, that bloggers are filling an important gap. Also, it’s just really nice to be able to read what other people are thinking and saying on the same topics that you are.
The technology (primarily blogging software and RSS/Atom - the syndication system) has made blogging possible, and until the next new kind of technology that brings things even more together, this is pretty amazing stuff, compared to what we were doing, say, 10 years ago. And, just like banner ads made their way onto websites a fraction of a second after the web became broadly read, blogs with ads is, I guess a reasonable next step. I’m not against making money, we all need it, and I think it’s great if blogging becomes a venue for writers to be able to get their stuff out there, and make a living at it. I’m just not going to be especially interested in reading blogs whose main purpose is to try and sell me stuff, or those with a whole lot of ads. Never fear, you won’t see any here.