Sveip is a television show on NRK 2 that deals with the web and what’s going on online. Siv Helberg, one of the anchors, called me yesterday and asked whether I’d be interested in doing some pieces on blogging with them, sort of based on my book – starting with the elementary sides – what is it, how do you do it, how many people blog, where do you find blogs – and moving on to other issues like blogs in politics and so on. I think it sounds like a lot of fun – especially the idea of doing a short series, which would mean more time to actually delve into things instead of always starting at the beginning.
The journalist asked me what topics I thought would be good, and I thought I’d turn the question to you: what are the most interesting developments in blogging these days? What specifically Norwegian things should we look at?
I’d love to hear your opinions!!
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Thomas
I think the most important issue when discussing blogs would be trust and reliability. How do you determine if a
blog is trustworthy or real? Maybe you could use examples of how journalists have been fooled by blogs into reporting
non-news:-)
Gro
I think that the most interesting development in the blogging
business is that there seems to be less and less personal/private/ diary
blogs and more nisje (?) blogs popping up, treating spesific topics
only. Some kind of specialization is going on, I think.
Jill Walker Rettberg
I think you’re right, Gro, about the specialisation – I wonder whether there are simply more blogs and so we see more of the specialised blogs or whether there really are less diary-style blogs? Thomas, do you have any examples? I bet there have been some, I just can’t think of them right now…
Svenn
1)Making money on your blog. Problems or no problems for the readers?
2)How the traditional media like newspapers and television are blogging too.
William Patrick Wend
Jill, something I have been giving a lot of thought to recently is the use of social networking and other web2.0 tools by authors/bands/politicians/etc and whether their intent is in sincerely using Twitter/Facebook/etc or just an insincere marketing tool to advertise their content or product.
But then part of me wonders how would someone even gauge a sincere use on a web2.0 tool anyway?
Chuck
Like Gro, I’ve been noticing the increased professionalization of blogging. It could be that I’ve specialized a bit more in my blog reading, but that seems to be happening quite a bit. It’s not always about making money from ads, but the film blogging crowd definitely uses it as a networking/conversation tool.
Jill Walker Rettberg
Interestingly, Mark Bernstein also notes that Merlin Mann’s advice in “What Makes a Good Blog?” appears to assume that the bloggers reading it are professionals – or at least that they’re writing for a blog that has some kind of assumptions about a wordcount for posts. So this seems to confirm these ideas about a trend towards professionalisation.
The crafts blogs I’ve been reading lately seem to be professionalising, too – the other day I was reading a post from Gertrude at Sew at Home describing how she’d tried to mimic the most popular crafts blogs, down to trying to sell her wares in an etsy shop (“because all the popular crafts blogs have them”) and being disheartened to find that she sold nothing. She decided to stop trying to be a professional, super-popular crafts blogger and just enjoy her joy in making things for herself.
At the same time I’m pretty sure most blogs are still entirely amateurish and have hardly any readers. But with more and more blogs, the professionalised ones are getting more and more visible.
Gro
I follow some blogs about literature, written by professional and amateurs, in norway, sweden an denmark. And it’s interesting to see the difference in “style of conversation” in the different countries. To make some heavy generalization; Swedes are impressingly velarticulated and polite to each other compared to the more aggressive danes. The danes on the other hand, are using much more academic style and refrences to theory than the norwegians, who is somehow more “anarcistic” in their style/approach to the topic. Maybe the norwegian attitude mirrors that everybody are supposed to be able to engage in the discussion – or else it is “elitistic”:)
Albertine
I think blogging is a genuine tool for reflexion and lifelonglearning, because you are part of a network. People are polite, as well as close, even though they mostly don¥t ‘know’ each other. This is something I both like and find interesting. Its peaceful in a sense, you can hold your own pace. (At least when spam filters works as they should! 🙂
Norman Hanscombe
I’m not against wanting items to be interesting, Jill, but see the more important problem being the increase of readily available material of an intellectually dubious quality, combined with a decline in literacy levels essential for high level analysis. I’m confident we could build up students’ literacy levels again, but am equally confident no one in authority has the courage to tackle the problem.
On a different note, congrats re your family’s addition. At least I can still entertain positive thoughts about something? Best wishes.