Archive for May, 2005

A month ago I spoke at Educause – I was impressed and delighted at how forward thinking the education profession was with regards to blogs, wikis and the like. I sat and listened to keynote after keynote of educators doing remarkable things with technology – many of them recognizing the dramatic shift participatory communications is going to bring to education.

Reinforcing the rule that for every revolutionary there is a reactionary, along comes Blaise:

"One wonders for whom these hapless souls blog. Why do they choose to expose their unremarkable opinions, sententious drivel and unedifying private lives to the potential gaze of total strangers? What prompts this particular kind of digital exhibitionism? The present generation of bloggers seems to imagine that such crassly egotistical behavior is socially acceptable and that time-honored editorial and filtering functions have no place in cyberspace. Undoubtedly, these are the same individuals who believe that the free-for-all, communitarian approach of Wikipedia is the way forward. Librarians, of course, know better. – Indiana University Dean and Rudy Professor of Information Science Blaise Cronin

I’ve been thinking about how we can determine how much of the blogosphere is simply pointing vs. creating content. This is the difference between journaling and scrapbooking. And both happen on the same blog frequently – especially this one. And sometimes in the same post – where the scrapbooking is complimented with heavy editorial.

Seems Blogpulse has now identified 10 million blogs, ranking Yahoo as the most cited news source. Those are interesting words. News source. That’s all the are – like Google. They merely package – using people. Google uses machines. I wonder how much of this is a result of utility vs. popularity – Yahoo’s persistent archives mean articles are around for a long time… But as this piece points out, that can’t be all it is as the dreaded NY Times came in second.

What this would suggest is that the originators are as important as the pointers.

The complete top-ten list:

• Yahoo! News (40,145 citations)
• New York Times (37,825 citations)
• CNN (27,099 citations)
• Washington Post (22,729 citations)
• MSNBC (20,116 citations)
• BBC (10,993 citations)
• The Guardian (UK) (9,788 citations)
• San Francisco Chronicle (9,706 citations)
• News.com (9,129 citations)
• Los Angeles Times (8,579 citations)

So where is Google News!

You can also read the most popular articles.

Most of us have answers to this question down pat…  What is hard is getting at the depth, richness and warmth of the blogosphere. Now I’m not getting all soft here but two things got me thinking about this.

First, I posted on the arrival last week of Sophia, our gorgeous little daughter. To date we’ve had a couple of hundred emails from folks including friends and family… through people we’ve worked with… to long-lost acquaintances.. through to folks I’ve never met in person but regularly exchange news and views with… through to folks I’ve never met but read my blog and are kind enough to post comments. In fact, the warm messages reaching us through the blogosphere and email are far exceeding traditional cards arriving in the mail.

Reflecting on this it really throws light on the blogosphere being a place for community and conversation. And that this is a pretty warm place (too often I’ve associated it with debate and expressions of point of view) – a place where people are genuinely interested in others and express that. Maybe it attracts that kind of person – not everyone is up for such open expression in public forums.

And this is what makes the blogosphere very different. Steve Rubel and I have never met in person but we exchange views via our blogs and trackbacks. The utility of the technology enables him to post a comment and for hundreds of others to send an email saying congrats – and for others to click and email (not everyone is into the comments thing).

It’s as if though the blog becomes the center point of your own little opt-in community. You get to fuel it with dialog and if folks like it, they come back and not only share in your views but participate in your little walk through life. And maybe this is what will separate the corporate blog from the rich professional and personal blogs? I’m not interested in being exclusive in what gets to be a blog and what doesn’t. But different blog types are here and definitions are useful.

So, in a much broader context, maybe we end-up with definitions that look something like this:

Web = Cold                     Blogosphere = Warmth
Web = Transmission       Blogosphere = Conversation
Web = Place                    Blogosphere = Community
Web = Anonymous          Blogosphere = Personal
Web = Company              Blogosphere = People
Web = Content                Blogosphere = Expression
Web = Cookie Cutter      Blogosphere = Individual
Web = Closed                  Blogosphere = Participatory
Web = Unresponsive       Blogosphere = Gives thanks….

More than anything, this is the notion of conversation that was bought so vividly to life by David Weinberger and others in The ClueTrain Manifesto. While the writing was electric I couldn’t help feel that it all was a little academic – a place in the future. My experience over the past few days is quite the opposite. This is very warm and personal. It’s something very different. And it’s here. Thank you!