This month’s Wired has an article title ‘Kill Your Blog’ – it’s a great article. Great, that is, as an example of poor writing, logic, journalism, etc. It’s written by Paul Boutin for Valleywag, so it may be complete fiction. The basic theme of the article is: blogging has been overwhelmed by corporate content (that, or blogs have become corporations), so little-guy blogging is a waste of time – you will never be heard.
Keeping with the great tradition of blog-o-journalism, Paul uses examples of Jason Calacanis and Robert Scoble as evidence of what is happening in the blogosphere. This is like comparing Larry Ellison’s mega-yachts to a second hand row boat you are thinking of buying on cragslist – i.e. not an exemplar for the population.
Boutin also uses the Technorati 100 list as evidence for something being wrong with the blogosphere, and random, obnoxious comments left on posts as reasons to stop writing. The attitude seems to be – let’s have everything stay the same and wait for bit rot to set in then claim the space to be done with.
Personally, I found the article to be a perfect list of reasons to do something really useful with social media: again, Google’s blogsearch is the thin end of the thin end of the wedge, as is Political Streams.
Sigh, I know Wired’s there to sell copy and one way to do this is to be crazy and controversial – but this is just lame.