Interview: Rich Levin

And now for an opposing view.

Rich Levin has extensive experience as an editor, writer, journalist, broadcaster, and programmer. He’s producer and host of the PC Talk Radio computer talk radio show, which debuted on CBS Radio in 1994, and was among the first talk radio shows to air over the Internet. He’s former editor-in-chief of Booktech, PrintMedia, and Graphic & Design Business, national business trade magazines that cover printing, publishing, and graphic design technology. He’s author of five computer books published by McGraw-Hill and Dorling-Kindersley. Levin is a former senior editor with InformationWeek, and a former technology reporter for KYW NewsRadio 1060 AM, CBS Radio, and Greater Media Radio. He is also the developer of the popular Space Ace automatic hard disk cleaning utility, and dozens of other Windows applications.

At one time, Levin, Scoble and Steve Rubel were friends and co-workers at CMP publishing.  When Scoble was bitten by the “blog bug,” Levin was among the few that tried to talk him down off the ledge, warning him that blogging was yet another passing fad. At Robert’s request, I circled back to see if his views had changed much, particularly since Levin now blogs.

The short answer: apparently not. His interview comments:

1. Five years ago, you warned Robert Scoble not to waste his time getting into blogging.  You were convinced it was just a fad.  Now  you're blogging yourself. What changed your mind about blogging?

(A) I didn't warn Robert not to get into blogging.

(B) My mind isn't changed.

(C) I think it was 2001, so it would be four years ago.  I'll defer to Robert's recollection on this.

Let's get the story straight.  Robert called me and was very excited by his new discovery—weblogs.  The purpose of his call, as I remember it, was to turn me onto blogging.  He was very excited by it, more so than I had seen him be in the past.  Robert was always onto the next big thing, but I don't recall anything working him up as much as blogging did back then.

I had already caught the early buzz on blogs and blogging, but Robert was the first person I knew who had jumped on the bandwagon with both feet.  He was clearly working his Rolodex to get as many influential people on board as he could, and probably targeted me in the hopes I would cover blogs on my CBS talk radio show, or in the pages of one of the magazines I was freelancing for at the time.

I expressed that I didn't understand why anyone would waste valuable time posting personal thoughts in an online journal.  When I pressed Robert on this, he admitted posting to his blog continuously throughout the day, every day. I recall him saying there were days where he was posting blogs every 5 to 15 minutes (he might have said 5 to 15 times a day).

That struck me as obsessive/compulsive, and a huge waste of time better spent on productive pursuits.  When I asked Robert for a reason why I and others should be blogging, he gave me nothing better than the classic "because it's the next big thing; because it is cool beyond belief" type of response.

I pressed him to give me practical reasons for blogging, but he didn't (indeed, couldn't) articulate any business agenda for promoting blogs.  It was pure passion for the medium.  In the end, I didn't see why anyone would spend time keeping an online diary, which is how I recall Robert describing it, nor could I see why anyone would want to spend time reading them.

When I considered the notion of changing gears every 15 minutes to jump on a blog and post my latest thought, I came to the conclusion that I was too busy to feed a hungry blog -- and so were most people I knew.  I had seen this passion in the industry before, most recently (at the time) with "push", "content channels", Internet appliances, smart "connected" homes, etc., all of which were hyped to the hilt by early adopters, and went nowhere.

That's where and why I came to the conclusion that blogs were a fad.  I still believe they are.  I'm not sure they have peaked yet, but I think they are inching close to the top of the bell curve.  Ultimately, blogs will be Yet Another Communications Channel (what I call a yackety YACC), sharing space and time with online forums, e-mail and e-mail lists, instant messaging, chat rooms, VoIP, Web cams and conference rooms, Webcasts and Podcasts, and who knows what gets invented next.

As far as blogs becoming permanent centers of influence, as with any publishing medium, the laws of natural selection will winnow the field and allow the best to rise to national prominence, just as Robert's and a handful of other blogs have.  Then there will be the "top tier" blogs, with small but influential vertical audiences.  And then there will be the remaining 80% of blogs, which will be like 80% of Web sites, e-mail lists, photo sites, forums, 80% Webcasts, and 80% e-commerce sites: they'll suck.

I have long said that, while the public will occasionally turn to a media phenomenon such as Drudge or some blog, in the end, the people prefer conventional journalism, with its editorial standards and processes that vet the reporting (ideally). I took a lot of heat for this view, but I now see that same line of thinking being evangelized by blogging's best and brightest, Robert among them.

That said, bloggers talk about becoming more like journalists, but they will never be journalists until they conduct their reporting using the same unvarnished methods as the greats (Murrow, Woodward & Bernstein, etc.).  As long as they're interviewing via e-mail or IM, the final product is compromised [NOTE: I interviewed Levin by e-mail after he offered to do it by phone].  As long as they remain mired in the pool of opinion, the final product is compromised.

Like Drudge with “Lewinskygate,” blogs will have their day in the spotlight with the few scoops they've managed (Rathergate*, etc.), but in the end, people want reporting that is well-sourced and vetted, however flawed that process might be (and given recent scandals, vetting is intensifying).

It's that aspect that will prevent blogs, in general, from going horizontal in readership.  Most blogs are nothing more than utterly boring personal diaries (bloggers hate to hear this, but it's true).  People wouldn't want to read them if they found them in a desk drawer, and they're no more interesting online.  Those which aren't poorly written, wholly unedited cures for insomnia are, increasingly, driven by public relations and marketing teams.

Indeed, the initial beauty of blogging -- the notion of truly personal publishing -- is now becoming corrupted, thanks to legions of marketers discovering blogs (thanks to legions of bloggers warning marketers not to ignore blogs).  This is going to become a huge challenge for legitimate bloggers to overcome, as the grass roots, pure nature of blogging is Balkanized by marketers.  PR gurus everywhere are evangelizing the importance of blogging and, as a result, disingenuous corporate blogs are growing like kudzu.

Corporate executives at all levels of organizations, especially technology companies who ride the Cluetrain, are now feverishly blogging or feverishly planning blogs. Does anyone in their right mind think these corporate wonks are (A) actually writing stuff off the top of their heads, and (B) that their copy doesn't have a PR team ghost-writing and aligning the content with the company's agenda?

I also believe research would reveal that the people who read blogs are largely the same people who write them, and that few "Mom and Pop" casual users hang on blogs the way they hang on MSNBC -- unless we're talking about a non-marketing-driven blog of someone of note (such as a leading journalist, author, or celebrity).

I have previously characterized blogging is a closed loop society, much like BBSes before them, and online forums (communities) today. Closed loop societies are ultimately self limiting. Whether blogs can break out of the closed loop remains an open question.  My guess is no.

(*On the topic of Rathergate, had blogs not existed, the result would have been the same.  Techies who discovered the fraud would have spread the word through Web sites, mass mailings, and forums.  Blogs don't get the credit.
Disintermediation does [old buzzword, still relevant].)

2.  You are a multiple media kind of guy.  You have talk radio, you've authored several books, been a technology reporter, etc.  Now you're a blogger.  How is blogging different from these other media?

Actually, I have worked hard to enlist for tours of duty in as many forms of media as I can.  As a result, I am not aware of any communications medium, other than billboards and answering machine messages, that I haven't worked professionally in.

I have done desktop and software development; software documentation; BBSes (including writing my own, BBSX); books published by McGraw-Hill and Dorling-Kindersley (and soon, another as yet-unnamed publisher); Web publishing; news radio and talk radio for CBS; staff reporting/editing for CMP's InformationWeek; newspapers, magazines, and TV; e-mail lists, forums, and blogs; and mountains of freelance and staff writing for top marketing and PR organizations, including Microsoft, Sun, Oracle, Compuware, IBM, WaggEd, etc.

While I am technically a blogger, I characterize myself as a writer.  That's what I do, whether it's words on paper on words on electrons.  Blogs are just another medium which any serious communicator should leverage to reach people.

Consider PR.  Steve Rubel recently wrote "Blogs are the New Press Releases." Like Robert, Steve and I go back a few years (we worked together at CMP). Steve, I love ya', and I read your blog and you have a lot of great ideas, but on this point, you're wrong.  Blogs are just another delivery medium, not "the" medium, and certainly not the content.  Like Robert, Steve has the religion, and he's not seeing things on balance.

PR practitioners need to be masters of multicasting; that is, capable of spinning a story simultaneously as a news release, a query, a blog post, a blog comment, a byline, a phone call, a flyer, a TV or radio interview, a wire feed, a billboard, a text message, an e-mail, a T-shirt, a pen with a slogan, etc.

The people and firms who master multicasting will be the survivors. Anyone who chooses to narrowcast or over emphasize one medium over another or, worse, suggest that the medium IS the message, as Steve is suggesting, will shoot themselves in the head.

The same holds true for ALL communicators:  journalists, marketers, advertisers, producers, filmmakers, talk show hosts, etc.  Any communicator who fails to exploit all popular communications channels is destined for marginalization.  The notion of the "mass media", which really meant the power to communicate was "massed" among handful major communications organizations, is slowly ending.

A new "mass media" is rising; that is, myriad forms of communication, because every person likes to get his or her news and information differently. The guy who likes to get his news via a text message on his mobile device is no less important than the gal who likes to read a blog via a newsreader. If your job is to communicate with the public, the medium is not the message:  it's the message transport, and you had better be capable of disseminating via all available channels.

To answer your question directly, blogs are not much different than e-mail lists, online forums, so-called "talk backs" that appear in Web magazines, or the letters to the editor page in traditional print publications.  The only differences I see are:

(A) They're engineered to emphasize the initial post, as opposed to facilitating a discussion as e-mail and forums do.  In this way, they are closely related to an op-ed piece or a letter to the editor.

(B) The underlying technologies, specifically RSS and its spin offs, and the publishing/consumption tools that leverage them (blog sites and newsreaders), make it easier (notice I didn't say easy) for the average Joe to publish or peruse the headlines of what others have published.

But are blogs more influential than other mediums?  No.  They generate the same type of viral influence as online forums, e-mails, IMs, and chats. Again, it's just another medium, and it will be eclipsed by the next big thing—whatever that is.  I don't buy the "blogosphere" notion, because the "sphere" of influence is much larger than blogs.

At any one time, what blogs are influencing can also be found in forums, e-mail, chat rooms, and so on.  I call this the "infosphere," of which blogs are the newest medium, but certainly not the noisiest.  Frankly, I think blogs are less influential than e-mail and forums at this juncture (despite Swift Boats and Rathergate).

That's not to say they should be poo-poo'd or ignored.  It is to say that people need to regain their sanity and maintain their perspective. Communicators need to step back and take in the big picture to see the true role blogs play.  Doing so, right-sizes the notion of the blogosphere and opens up the notion of the infosphere.

3.  You stated in an earlier conversation that you believe print will be dead in 20 years.  Can you expand on this a bit?  Do you mean news media?

Books, TV Guide?  All print?

What I mean is, we won't be cutting down trees for magazines, newspapers and such.  I believe virtually all communications except book publishing will go digital, and go to the 'net.  RSS and its offspring (blogs and Podcasts) are accelerating this trend, simply because they make it easier (note that I didn't say easy) for people to manage (find/consume) what they read.

The trend is clear. The younger generation is leaving traditional media in droves. Print, as we know it, will be dead in 20 years or less, when the current generation, which doesn't remember a time before computers, becomes the establishment.  Nobody will be reading paper-based newspapers or magazines.  Nobody will need them.  Only books will survive.

The Internet will also consume all other forms of mass communications: voice, video, TV, radio, print, music, billboards, film (while big-screen movies will survive, they too will be digital).  And there's no turning back.  Like 35mm film, Polaroid and smoke signals, print will be relegated to an art form, and will no longer be part of the mass media.

4.  What does a print-less world look like to you?

All electronic and wireless, based on flexible and transparent flat-panel displays.

Flexible and transparent displays are already off the drawing board, and in prototype form.  They're very small right now and have limited life spans and can't reproduce all colors accurately.

But in 20 years or less, people will be able to fold up their wireless Web browser and carry it in their pocket.  They'll unfold it on the train or at breakfast, and read it  just as they do a newspaper or magazine today. Or they'll pop on a pair of Web-connected sunglasses and read, watch, or listen to their favorite 3-D audio/video Web-based wireless programming on demand (the audio will be generated via ear pieces, without ear buds, but rather, through a bone amplifier).

5.  How do you see blogging evolving as it goes mainstream?

It depends how you define "blogging" and "mainstream".

I don't see blogging going mainstream, which I define as being as popular as e-mail. I do see RSS and it's spin-offs going mainstream, which means newsreader-type technology, but not newsreaders per se, goes mainstream. I don't see a majority of Web users writing blogs, nor do I see a majority reading them.

I do see publishers using RSS as one of many ways to syndicate their content and reach the public.  Much of this content won't be blogs, in the sense that there won't be one person penning one post that is then syndicated and commented on, but rather,  a publisher such as MSNBC will use RSS to distribute its headlines to browsers, mobile phones, and Web-based sunglasses.

Likewise, the TV networks will use some future form of RSS to publish their TV guides.  Radio stations will use it to post their daily schedules.
Advertisers will use it to promote coupons and new products.  Wire services will use it to distribute press releases.  Restaurants will use it to post their menus.  And so on.  If you have something to promote or communicate, I see RSS as one of many important vehicles.

Comments

[Yvonne DiVita]

Only one comment -- in response to bloggers as journalists, and I quote: "That said, bloggers talk about becoming more like journalists, but they will never be journalists until they conduct their reporting using the same unvarnished methods as the greats (Murrow, Woodward & Bernstein, etc.). As long as they're interviewing via e-mail or IM, the final product is compromised [NOTE: I interviewed Levin by e-mail after he offered to do it by phone]. As long as they remain mired in the pool of opinion, the final product is compromised."

Puh-lease! Do not expect us to believe that Murrow, Woodward & Bernstein did not EDIT whenever and wherever they chose. Or, if they did not, their editors did. No not purport to say that blogger journalists who take their writing seriously are any less professional than a WSJ writer, or a NY Times writer, or some flunky from USA Today who gets paid big bucks to deliver WHAT THE PUBLIC WANTS!

Bloggers, those who are transparent, authentic, and true to their writing, are heads and shoulders above all other reporters who have gone before us. When the news reporting in this country is so controlled by the $$$ of big business (as you know it is), the ONLY place to get the truth is in the blogosphere. Because we police our own.

Murrow, Woodward & Bernstein would have LOVED blogging. Personal opinion notwithstanding, bloggers are eager to share news, good or bad, about them or the topic they're writing about -- as for being mired in the pool of opinion; read the New Yorker sometime. Now, there's a magazine mired in opinion.

[Steven Streight aka Vaspers the Grate]

Rich: are you sure you fully understand blogs?

You don't seem to put much focus on the comments function of blogs.

You don't seem to realize how the blog could be the salvation of one of the most despised classes of society: the CEO.

You don't seem to understand how bloggers are changing the world, including impact on the European Union, the Ukraine Orange Revolution, etc.

Where was the MSM during the Iraq elections? Sleeping mostly. Or like CNN, broadcasting old footage of Iraqis mourning the dead from a terrorist attack that had happened quite a while prior. Thus: lying to emphasize the negative.

MSM: the Morbid Stream Media that obsessive-compulsively reports on how many AMERICAN SOLDIERS were killed today, ignores Iraqi casualties, and ignores the schools and hospitals up and running.

No--we're not getting our news from Dan Rather (rather not be truthful), but from Glenn Reynolds and Dean Esmay and Atrios and the timely J-bloggers.

I think you overlooked the value of blogs being the first universal publishing system in history, a medium open to any human being with a computer and internet access, open to the average person.

Blogs are the democratization of web content.

This rant reminds me of how Alexander Graham Bell, no idiot, is said to have thought that the telephone, his own invention, would be used only for sporadic news updates and music concert broadcasts.

The phone rings. Just another news update, or symphony. Let's skip it.

Wake up, friend. The Revolution Will Be, Is Being, Blogged, and NOT Televised.

Ha ha ha.

[Steven Streight aka Vaspers the Grate]

P.S. Even our Bloggy Women-folk are "sharp tongued" and ready to pounce, ala Yvonne Divita...you go, sister! I've never liked you as much as I do today.

[Jozef Imrich]

A double-edge sword of note: 'The hallmark of companies that will find blogs useful is the company that cares about its perception ... and the integrity of its relationship with its customers' Bad blogging can easily backfire ...

[Edward Deevy]

First, let me say I appreciate the valuable information available here at NAKED CONVERSATIONS.
Your interview may underestimate what's really unique about blogs. In the past I had a beautifully designed (static)website that died from lonliness. It attracted little more attention than a brochure in my file cabinet. Now, with my blog, I am conversing with colleagues in Canada, Australia, Sweden and other countries around the globe. The blog makes CONVERSATION possible.
I believe the real future of blogs will be at the grassroots level. The restaurant owner who blogs ("converses") with his/her loyal customers. The local pastor who blogs ("converses")with his/her congregation. The owner of a small business who blogs ("converses") with his/her employees and other key stakeholders. The possibilities are limitless.
To borrow a phrase from the political realm: IT'S THE POWER TO ENGAGE IN CONVERSATIONS, STUPID!

[Steven Streight aka Vaspers the Grate]

I agree with Dr. Deevy of The Deevy Report blog, a blog about labor relations and the new workplace.

When people, like the fellow from Burson-Marsteller with whom I've conversed via blogs, say that some corporations think they have many "channels of communication", so why blog?...

...it shows they still don't understand what a blog is.

They keep thinking in terms of the old outmoded declining value Mass Market Broadcast Media.

Blogs represent Two Way Conversations.

It's stupid to think Email is superior to Blogs. It shows you don't understand Email or Blogs or much of anything really, no matter what your credentials and experience may be.

I can crank out better credentials than many I see exhibited here, but credentials mean nothing if you make unwise proclamations.

Email is blocked by filters, untrustworthy due to phishing, vulnerable when it's HTML email, will be deleted when the Sender is unknown or the Subject line is irrelevant, etc. It's also difficult to archive email in a really meaningful manner. Even email search engines are problematic and need big improvement.

Blogs are revolutionary due to, among other things, the interactivity of comments.

Blogs are slow chat rooms and, as Doc Searls said, are "emails to the world".

Blogs represent the first really serious interactive conversation between corporations and consumers, between organizations and the public.

A letter to the editor can be edited or tossed in a trash can. Good luck calling a "customer service" phone number (but MSN is superb with this). A postal letter to a CEO rarely receives a reply.

But when you post a comment on a CEO or corporate blog, your comment actually becomes part of the corporation, part of its interactive communication, part of its culture even.

You embed your thought into a segment of the corporate environment, even if the CEO fails to respond directly to it.

[Steven Streight aka Vaspers the Grate]

P.S. Another stupid remark:

"But are blogs more influential than other mediums? No. They generate the same type of viral influence as online forums, e-mails, IMs, and chats. Again, it's just another medium..."

Beyond the Valley of the Shadow of the Totally Clueless.

Please inform me of any IM, chat room, BBS, email, discussion list, or other online forum that has generated as much Revolution and Power to the People, as evidenced in what happened, largely or at least partially due to blogs, as what happened to:

* Trent Lott
* Dan Rather
* Dutch and French popular revolt against EU constitution
* Iraq Purple Finger election revolution
* Ukraine Orange Revolution
* all the other MSM journalist frauds who've been taken down, dismissed, or "retired" recently

Dig hole in sand, stick head in hole, utter nonsense obsessive-compulsively about the virtues of Morbid Stream Media.

LOL

[shel]

Steve,

We have a wide open comment policy here, and disagreements are not only tolerated, but encouraged. But let's not stoop to personal attacks. Please do not call people who post here--or their comments--stupid. OK?

[Steven Streight aka Vaspers the Grate]

Okay.

[Steven Streight aka Vaspers the Grate]

I thought Rich Levin sounded very hateful and spiteful to Robert Scoble, bloggers, and the blogosphere.

Sorry to stoop to that level.

[shel]

Thanks, Steve.

[Steven Streight aka Vaspers the Grate]

I would like Rich to visit this blog and answer some of the questions posed about his opinions, if he has the time and inclination.

I do get "passionate" in defense of people I admire, bloggers in general, and the blogosphere which to me is a revolution that is helping democracy and free speech spread across the world.

[DavE]

But there is way too much noise it the "blogosphere". It's becoming way too saturated and the technical related blogs tend to be a mutual admiration society. Scoble's blog is becoming boring, as is Winers. The political blogs, while interesting, are deeply partisan, which reinforces Levin's point that there is very little vetting going on. I think bloggers tend to be very myopic. Sure, blogging can be a tool and fills a need for some. But, I gotta tell you, it's likel never going to reach the level of credibility newspapers, magazines, and the like will reach. Where the stats say hundreds of millions of people OWN a computer, far fewer actually use one. And even fewer use it for much more than email, cranking out the occasional letter, or viewing digital photos. The geek bloggers need to get in touch more the the mainstream if they want blogging to be a "revolution"

[Huh?]

sorry guys -- the comments above about blogs having more power to the people than email proves to me the myopic nature of the blogosphere.

email and IM have been and will continue to be a far more powerful revoluion than blogs will ever be. Blogs are an interesting phenomenon and I believe a powerful force, but they are still a segment, and will never be the mainstream communication devices of things like IM and email. They will certainly never have the impact that those technologies did/do.

Email is one of the main reasons that computers have penetrated into the older age groups..keeping up with family, connecting with each other, personal communication.

IM and cell phones are the driving communication force of youth today the world over, and is used to create immense, complex, and instantaneous social networks. In Korea, email is what you use when you want to talk to your grandparents :)

Also, while people have blogged about several stories, email and its use/misues have been at the root of far more big breaks. Email has single handedly revolutionized the way lawyers conduct case discovery -- especially in corporate discovery..

tomorrow, 2 of 3 technologies get turned off, forever. You have to choose, email, im, or blogging to be the 1 you keep. how many would put blogging first, even in the blogospher? how many would from the outside?

[shel]

Mr. Anonymous @ Foo: You would carry a whole lot more credibility with me if you would identify yourself and tell me where you were coming from in voicing your opinion.

[Mike Rohde]

I think Rich has some interesting criticisms ofI think Rich has some interesting criticisms of blogging here that we bloggers ought not dismiss out of hand. I too think blogging lives in somewhat of an echo chamber — the idea that if we're talking about something that everyone is thinking the same thing. It's not always the case and it's probably unwise to think that bloggers represent everyone's opinions. We bloggers tend to be early adopters on balance and a niche of society who are heavy online users, can write and read well and seek others' attention (whatever the reason). This is not the picture of the average joe I'm afraid. :-)

While blogging is on the rise, certainly it can be categorized as a niche activity, something that's still making a dent in the consciousness of the general public. I also feel there are many more readers than producers of blogs at the moment, and that's because not everyone is a writer.

Blogging is a great tool for those who write, because it's all about writing. Those who aren't writers might have a difficult time making a blog go and even though podcasting or video-casting are emerging possibilities, the technical requirements right now make them difficult for regular folks. Apple's iTunes and some other services are making these things easier, but it will take time.

However, that said, I think blogging provides a great channel for those who grok it, to reach the niche they wish to cater to. I think one blind spot Rich might not have considered is that blogging need not be necessarily about reaching mass markets — to me it's really about reaching your niche in a fuller way.

So, yes there will be bloggers who rise to the A list, and there will be a b-list and the rest of the bloggers 80% who may indeed be unworthy of notoriety. However, if notoriety with a mass audience is not your goal, then it's no big deal. If credibility with a small group of clients, suppliers, colleagues and competitors is your goal, then it doesn't matter if that means your readership is only 30 people. If you have the 30 most important people in your niche, then you're a success IMO.

Overall an excellent piece by Rich that got me thinking about blogging in a more neutral way. I'll likely re-read this article again and try to be objective about the criticisms, and adjust my perspective. While I think blogging will become more mainstream, I think the greater part of it will remain a mostly nichey activity for those who live to write and write to live.

[Steven Streight aka Vaspers the Grate]

I don't know why we are "myopic" when I hear falsifications like "the average Joe" is not blogging.

Do Evan Williams and Blogger and LiveJournal ring any bells?

It's precisely the "average Joes" who are blogging and whistling at the business slugs to wake up and get with it.

While I have little interest in most Personal Diary Blogs, they do represent the voice of the people, which has been suppressed by the MSM for a long time.

MSM credibility? LOL. You must not be paying attention to the crumbling of the MSM Empire, which they themselves are reporting on sporadically.

If you have ever witnessed or been a part of any news story, then looked at the television news or newspaper coverage, you know how details are left out, distorted, and even falsified, then a biased twist is put on the whole story...in far too many cases.

While email is good for Known Sender to Known Recipient, it stinks for other purposes. Most unknown sender email, even when legit, uses poor subject lines, thus is rightfully deleted without opening.

But I can communicate with bloggers who do not know me, simply by posting a radical, controversial, high valuable, insighful, or otherwise attention-getting comment. I'd say upwards of 80% of the time, the stranger will email me or post a comment at my blog.

Blogs are being used as Hyper Alternative Emails, Slow Chat Rooms, Project Collaboration Platforms, Alternate Intranet-type Platforms, etc.

Who is myopic? To me the blog bashers are myopic.

They need to see the light, which Shel and Robert are doing a good job of shining.

I visit this site far more than any other.

[Steven Streight aka Vaspers the Grate]

P.S. Dave: ever heard of "online shopping" or eBay or Amazon.com?

[shel]

Huh,
You are the same anonymous blogger with another anonymous name. I don't usually answer anonymou posters, but just for the record, Mena Trott, co-founder of Six Apart pointed out in her interview with us that Live Journal was the fastest growing segment of blogging. Live Journalists have an average of well under ten readers--usually small circles of families and friends, very often young people. They seem to be very much average Joes. Technorati's numbers are a couple of months old now, butmost people are guessing there are now over 50 million bloggers worldwide, and probably 300-400 million blog readers worldwide, a number exceeding the populations of all but two nations on Earth. How can there not be Average Joes among them?

[huh]

Shel -- I don't think i've ever posted on a blog, so I'm probably not the other anonymous person you are talking about. i wasn't bashing blogging, I do think average joes are blogging, etc etc. My point was simply that it seems like hyperbole to say that blogging is more important than im, email, etc..

Why am I posting anonymously? Well, I don't "get" blogging in that way I guess, i'm an email guy and i don't like my email out there :) I don't understand the "it doesn't matter unless you have an email address"...especially since I'm not posting something factual, just my opinion..this is probably another place where I do not "get" blogs.

I *like* blogs, to be clear.

[shel]

Hey, Huh. I'm sorry if you took offence. By odd coincidence we have two anonymous senders in two days whose email seems to be to foo, whatever that is. I hope this site and the eventual book can help you "get" blogging better. Several other people, new to blogging have come here and both Robert and I have been happy to go back-channel with them to help them better understand blogging. One of the reasons so many of us are excited about it, is that it involves conversation between real people expressing their opinions and revealing to some degree where they are coming from. But if I do not know who you are, I don't know where you're coming from or in fact if you are for real. If you are anonymous and critical about material posted here, I will take you more seriously, and treat you more respectfully than if you choose to be anonymous.

[DavE]

Shel, the defensivness of your comments does not lend you much credibilty. Sure, lots of kids are hanging out in LiveJournals. Maybe that will translate into something useful when they all get into the business world. Likely so. Still and all, like another poster said, bloggers seem to live in an echo chamber. They are in some ways out of touch much like actors in Hollywood is out of touch. They have a circle of friends and aquaintences that causes them to think everyone else lives like they do. Much like Jennifer Aniston said on "The Good Girl" DVD, that she didn't know what a Chucky Cheese was until they filmed a scene in the parking lot for the movie, I'm sure geek bloggers would be shocked that there are people out there that don't give a crap about computers or have no interest in using them for more than 15 minutes a day. I can walk around my neighborhood of 200+ homes and tell you that less than 1% of them will tell me they regularly read blogs. And this is a neighborhood of $300-500K homes, so we aren't talking trailer parks. These people use computers to get things done.. send email, plan travel, write letters, manage their finances. Blogging or readingn blogs doesn't help them get things done. I see more value in RSS than I do basic blogging. Will blogging eventually be as commonplace as email? Remains to be seen. However, text messaging and IM'ing has a huge lead.

[watch friends online]

blogging is getting so you will not be able to control it. Its growing everyday.

watch friends online