35. More blog talk ...

Tuesday, May 10, 2005

Mood: tired

Music: Boulevard of Broken Dreams - Green Day

It seems once a week, I end up seeing something about blogging pop up on someone else's blog. I also read a blog all about blogging and its trends. They talk about how blogs are really booming right now. Advertisers are ever starting to look to expanding their ads to more blogs and even into RSS feeds. More blogs pop up almost daily. The latest one drawing all the attention being the celebrity blog being put out by Ariana Huffington, The Huffington Post. It went live this week, and I heard about it on another another's blog, Paperback Writer. When I saw her post about it, I went and checked it out for myself. Added the blog's feed to my RSS feedreader to see what was up after seeing some of the names blogging in this blog. The list was impressive, and I thought it would be cool to check it out.

I have quite a few things added to my RSS reader, blogs of author's, personal sources of news from different places. I usually go through all my author blog posts every morning, and my feed reader updates throughout the day and pops up when their is an update. With the personal things, I usually decide whether or not to read the article by the headline. Well, I watched the headlines pop up for The Huffington Post, and not one headline grabbed my attention in the full day I had it added. It was updated hourly with three to four posts an hour almost, and not one caught my eye. i decided quite quickly to remove it because it was a good chance if not one post in a 24 hour period got my eye then not many would. I did take a look at a few of them just to see, and I'm not all that impressed.

Over at Blogcritics where I post some of my articles, I've seen three or four posts also come in just since I came on discussing this one blog. It certainly is gaining a lot of attention. One article came to the conclusion I had already. This blog is mostly of a lot of articles with iffy quality at best. It seems a process of flooding the site with content now to get it off the ground, but if it is going to stick around maybe some more quality is needed.

Blogs are gaining more and more popularity, but they really aren't a new thing. People have been using online journals for years. I think they are gaining more popularity in certain areas. One being the writing industry. Authors and others are writing more and more blogs. Blogs are usually included in authors websites. As I mentioned before, I've had an online journal for years, and writing in that became a daily occurrence for me over the years. Just as this is becoming a daily thing for me. It is a way to get things in my head out and meet others as well.

Today over at RTB, Sylvia talked about blogs and mailing lists and other ways for others to communicate with the author and if the readers are finding it easier to know the author better. I think the blogs and mailing lists end up being more for the author. Yes, their are readers out there, and the do read along as well. The blog is the place for the writer to write about them though. Their life, writing, or their views on things in life in general. Mailing lists are there for the writer as well. Yes, there are separate readers list. Although, I'm not currently a member of any. I am a member of a few mailing lists, where the focus is on the writer, and I do learn from them. I'm also a member at a few message boards. Again another wonderful resource for the writer.

I know things were drastically different only years ago. The Internet has opened up so many doors for people, not only writers. For writers though, it has made communication and submission so much easier. I've been on line the last eight years now, and I can see the changes that have occurred in the last few years. instead of mailing in a manuscript to an editor, only to wait weeks to hear back. You can email them your manuscript, and sometimes get an immediate response. Sometimes within hours. It makes things easier I think.

Some worry that blogs are just a trend or a flash in the pan. They will be huge for a bit, and then fade out. Yes, some blogging authors might fade, but there will be others that take their place. I think that blogs are here to stay.

I wrote this post a couple hours ago, and it really amused me the ironic twist that came about when I tried to post this. The site went down for scheduled downtime. It was to go til 5pm PST. At 5:10, I came back and the site was totally gone. My own blog didn't open, and none of the others did either. It's back now, but how is that for irony? I type that last sentence and the blog service decides to go down on everyone.