81 The elusive blogosphere

1. Introduction

Blogging. It’s everywhere. What are you going to do about it?

Back in September, Răzvan Varabiescu initiated a project consisting of a Romanian online advertising network using exclusively blogs as publishing grounds. Looking back, it seems to have brought awareness of the blogging phenomenon to a new level, for everybody involved: bloggers, advertisers, the public and the traditional media.

I’m not saying that Varabiescu’s project made this happen. It simply took place at the right time, at a moment when awareness was already on the rise. As it already happened in other parts of the Internet, blogs in Romania are finally starting to capture the interest of business, media, and advertising people.

Furthermore, it seems to have made certain bloggers ask themselves some questions [Romanian]. It made them want to know where they stand and where do they want to go next.

So it seems like a very good time to debunk some of the myths surrounding the ever elusive “blogosphere”.

2. There’s nothing special about the blogosphere

Blogging doesn’t define who or what you are. It’s just a tool. You’re still you. You’re just communicating using a new method.

One of the first things that strike you about the blogosphere, if you stop to examine the facts, is that you can’t put your finger down on anything.

You can if you use statistics, you’ll say. But then you seem to forget the old saying: “there’s lies, damn lies and statistics.” Polls and statistics are one of the most dangerous kinds of self-delusion (or of manipulation) there are. Even when done right, they only manage to paint a thin line over the center of the entire picture, a picture taken at a particular moment in time, in certain conditions.

Ultimately, you can’t say anything for sure about bloggers as a whole, other than (1) they blog; and (2) they have good traffic. Translate that to common-sense English. You end up with (1) people like to share their thoughts with the world; and (2) this is interesting for the other people. Not exactly breaking news.

No two bloggers like the exact same things. They don’t cover the same topics. Some publish regularly, some don’t, and the schedules vary wildly. They don’t use the same blogging software. There aren’t two bloggers who go about blogging the exact same way.

Why? Because they’re not bloggers first and foremost. They’re people. Blogging has become a commodity, like owning a mobile phone. It doesn’t define who or what you are, it’s just a tool.

There’s no “bloggers”, there’s just more and more people who use blogs, for all kinds of things. Eventually, the blogosphere will spread everywhere, it will have spread so thin that you’ll even forget it’s there, like it happened with so many technologies before.

3. Blogging: end or means?

Bloggers make the news because they blog. More people take up blogging because it’s cool. Advertisers want to target blogs specifically. But it’s just a technological and cultural shockwave. Ride it while you can, it will be accepted and absorbed eventually.

All the hype has made many people get the wrong ideas about blogs. I won’t even insist on the media people. Most often than not, they flock wherever they spot something shining, regardless of whether they understand it or not. The mirage of “you heard it first here” often renders them insensitive to the very world they describe.

Advertising is not a good role-model either. It is one of the few businesses that’s willing to take chances on such vaporware. They live and die by exploiting trends and fads where and when they find them, no matter how short-lived or marginal.

Where does that leave you, the person with a blog? You’re being told you can become a celebrity, that your blog can make you a lot of money. You too can have all this if you scribble down a few words every day.

Sounds too good to be true? It probably is. It was never about blogging in itself. Good blogs, that want to keep on being good blogs a few years from now, follow strict rules and they mean hard work.

What will remain when all the hysteria will have passed? Interesting content. People don’t read blogs just because they’re blogs. They read useful and interesting sites. If there’s nothing good there they don’t come back, blog or no blog.

4. Should blogs be regulated?

Should bloggers have ethics? Should bloggers follow a professional deontology of sorts? Perhaps they should be forced or persuaded to adopt them?

And there are more questions like the above. Should bloggers be polite? Should they be held accountable for what they write? Should they verify their information sources? Should they protect their sources? Should they observe copyright and give credit where it’s due when writing their posts? Should they follow rules [Romanian], and if so, what rules?

Even more important: is blogging personal expression or journalism [Romanian]? And what is blogging, anyway? Are bloggers champions of freedom or just one more gossip vector?

If there doesn’t seem to be a clear answer for this mess it’s because you’ve started off on the wrong foot. You’ve backed yourself into a corner because of a wrong assumption: that blogs are something special. And I think I’ve already covered that, above: they’re not.

They’re just the voices of a lot of people, reaching a whole lot of people easier and faster than previously possible. Replace “blogging” with “shouting in the town square” and “blogger” with “person” and all the questions will start finding answers very fast. Some things you can do in the town square and some you cannot. Society has rules for its members and there are consequences for not respecting them, ranging from simple slaps on the wrist to legal liability.

Can someone force blogs into submission? Probably. Many governments, organizations and corporations are certainly trying. But are you sure that’s what you want? Blogs are the voices of the people, albeit electronic. Should we really censor or silence these voices or is freedom more precious than anything? And as you think you may realize that it all comes down to the same old problems which have troubled us more and more over the last hundred of years or so: freedom (of expression) — where does it begin, and where does it end?

5. Can we trust blogs?

In other words, are blogs a more reliable source of information than other, more traditional, forms of media?

First of all, you cannot put all the blogs in the same equation and hope to find an answer that’s valid for all of them. There’s no such thing as trusting or not trusting all the blogs, as a whole.

Consider the person behind the blog, not the blog itself (which is just a communication device, remember?) When someone shares a piece of information with you over the phone, you don’t ask yourself “is this phone trustworthy?” You ask yourself whether that person is.

Using a blog doesn’t make a Web writer more or less believable than usual. Publishing on the Web doesn’t do that either. If you want to be 100% sure, there’s no substitute for finding out the facts for yourself. As long as you’re not willing to do that you should always have the proverbial grain of salt ready. Even more so when you choose to lend your ear to a bunch of people who aren’t even professional journalists.

The problem is compounded by you, dear reader. Blog readers are no more particularly trustworthy than blog writers. They’re both parts of the same thing, the great masses, and we all know that the unwashed masses simply love to propagate rumors. Most people will happily pass on something they’ve overheard without stopping for a second to think if it makes any sense. And bloggers are people too. Just because words are written on computer screens instead of spoken doesn’t change this. Actually, it fuels the trouble, since the shroud of anonimity encourages people to be even more irresponsible than usual, readers and writers alike.

Are blogs more trustworthy than classical media? Not necessarily. Classical media is often bought and sold and biased. But it also has professionals working for it. Even though a blogger may be free from immediate personal interest in a matter, that doesn’t make him or her smart, well informed or competenent. And while blogs seem to propagate information faster, be careful of how reliable that information is and how it degrades when jumping from blog to blog.

It is said that a million monkeys on a million typewriters for a million years will eventually produce the complete works of Shakespeare at some point. But I pity the poor soul who has to swift through all the mumbo-jumbo to find them. There are certainly gems to be found in the completely unrestricted blogosphere, but you’ll have a hard time finding them, have no doubt about that. The noise to signal ratio or quite high, and will be so for some time to come.

6. So, what should bloggers do?

Treat blogs like a communication tool. Use them, don’t let them use you.

Don’t let the hype overtake you. When you hear all of those things that seem to nice to believe, stop, cool down, and think about them. They probably are too nice to be real. At the very least, take them with a grain of salt.

Whenever something says “us, bloggers”, think about it. What’s tying you to all the other bloggers? At the end of the day, is there really a solid group with common interests, or just casual encounters? And are those ties related to the fact that all of you blog, or are there other reasons?

Whenever someone offers you a great scheme to make money off your blog, stop and think about it. People who ought to know what they’re saying have expressed certain doubts [Romanian] about it. That’s because when you start considering technology you can no longer ignore the facts and run on make believe. “It will work because they’re blogs” doesn’t fly in the real world. If you want to make money from your blog, just traffic doesn’t necessarily cut it, and it doesn’t work for everybody. Look into alternative means [Romanian] of advertising: contextual ads, text ads, exclusive contracts, highly specialized and targeted advertising, if you have the content and the right circumstances for it.

If you want people to trust and respect your blog, then be polite, double check your information and respect other people’s work. Respect and trust are gained, not demanded.

And if you just want to write what you think and not worry about all these things, do that. After all the ruckus will have ended, you will come out as more of a winner than anybody else can claim: somebody who blogs because it’s fun.