It has never dawned on me, but in the last 3 or so years in which I’ve been a one man, happily unpaid, part time tech blogger (in addition to the 11 years I’ve been in technology and technology research now) I’ve never had an original thought, and the blogging world is better off with out us run of the mill bloggers who happily and by choice earn a living by other means than writing for public consumption.
Well, that’s basically the logic behind Ed Bott’s (changing) recent unfair attack on your average hobbyist blogger like myself. They always say the truth hurts, well I can honestly tell you my feelings are doing just fine and I don’t think any of my fellow bloggers will loose sleep.
Check out Mark Evans take on it too, he’s more down to earth apparently, and actually cares enough to give some good advice.
I want to give some more unoriginal thinking on the subject. (I really haven’t had time to read a whole lot on the subject, my entire goal is to game Techmeme.com and get money and hits. (I haven’t checked my hits in over a month, when my numbers start going up, I actually stop blogging for a while because I never want to change the reason why I started blogging in the first place.)
- Diversity of thought is what’s great about the Blogosphere–its pure strength–and not its weakness. If you didn’t understand that, you (like myself) have a lot to learn. Many subjects don’t offer a vast repository of perceptions. Does that mean some bloggers should refrain from blogging if Ed Bott has it covered already? I don’t think so but I encourage you to form your own thoughts.
- "Me too" bloggers, cover the stories which are the most interesting or inflammatory, we do the work which brings out Mike and Scoble, and M. Kirk Patrick’s (my favorite blogger lately) posts. Techmeme doesn’t bring in the traffic–Google does. (Believe me)
- Techmeme has obviously assembled the best "me too" bloggers on the web or you wouldn’t waste your time complaining about it. If you have a complaint, offer a pragmatic solution, especially when the "problem" is all of these lame people. (wow)
- Attacking people and pretty much calling them uncreative might create uncertainly in them but sure isn’t going to bring out the creativity in them. If you truly cared about the quality of younger bloggers, I’d see you putting comments on people’s blogs (sending them tweets) encouraging them to think a bit more critical about the subjects before they post (after pointing out a good point), and letting them in on some of your always original, never Techmeme bandwagon, not "me too" writing skills.
- It sometimes takes a post like this to stir up the emotion inside me enough to actually fire up Vista to post but the people on the blogosphere are not here to entertain or enlighten Edd Bott, they obviously–even the most evil seemingly pointless mob of Digg–sometimes have original meaningful & insightful thoughts at times or you would still be working for a newspaper.
- I don’t have all the time in the world to read everything, but I read more than most bloggers I would assume, so I don’t know if someone else has made this point. People are used to Micro-blogging now too, and the two arts are converging and having an editorially gravitational pull on each other.
- I don’t write for money, never have, most likely will never want to do so. (not that I think it’s in any way bad)
- Even though I love reading Techmeme, I don’t write for Techmeme (I love the fact that Gabe was (or his algorithm) insightful enough to notice I had been blogging quality content for years happily without any readers). (I’m not saying I’m a good blogger, I’d have to spend more time to get the quality of my posts up and there are a few times that I will try to get on Techmeme when I feel what I have to say is a good point.
- I write for myself. The moment people like me (especially the even younger people) disappear from the blogosphere is the moment it will be an outdated extension of big boring media that gets purchased, and rehashed to the lowest common denominator of what makes the most boring dollar.
- The real blogosphere always will be just this, an extension of the each individuals online persona. This is just an extension of my passion for technology.
- I’m not a me too blogger, I’ve provided "A LOT" of original thinking though the years.
- We should all be encouraging young, inexperienced bloggers to post–indeed coaching–giving advice and be grateful that medium exists because it will become more of a long overdue democracy 2.0 over the next five years.
Update: I might have lost my ability to read a post, but I think everyone is having a bad weekend, and it looks like "The proto-blogger" Dave Winer is going to quit blogging? All of us recycled garbage speaking bloggers who have spent countless hours blogging are pretty much just worthless trash. Head for the hills guys. Invesnt something cool again Dave like you did with blogging and then when what you create so cool that a new younger, different generation of individuals look up to you and get excited about what all of the old school people are talking about, we can get reduced to just a waste of bandwidth that we really are… Just a big waste of time, why the heck does anyone blog? I am stunned that no one recognizes it’s the diversity of thought which makes the whole damn think worth it.
Update2: There are a lot of people talking about these "me-too" bloggers. What everyone is missing is the fact that when people start blogging (especially younger people) it takes a little bit of time before they learn the ropes, gain resources, good reading sources and so forth. This attack is the equivalant to attacking kids as they get on the bus in the morning in some situations.
The entry barrier is being lowered, what many of these old men don’t understand is this is a good change in the blogosphere, more people with more diversity of thought is fantastic, it helps research in many areas.
Blogging is a skill of applied research, and usually the best bloggers are the unpaid ones (IMHO). The conversational and technical nature of Techmeme is an original one, and one I’m proud to be a part of at any given time, whether in a small sub headline, or a main one. After reading a lot of these "critics" posts lately, I just wanted to say to all of you small time bloggers, you have way more potential than anyone will give you credit for! Keep blogging, let the conversation keep flowing and growing. By the time you reach the age of most of these people who are attacking you, you will have so much more knowledge and blogging skill than they ever had time to achieve in their lives.
Don’t let a bunch of jaded–has been–old school paperboys make you upset about what you are passionate about. Like all places worth arriving, there are no shortcuts, becoming a blogger will take time, the problem is not you, just do your best to be a good blogger and try to think of original implications but I don’t think you should worry about a bunch of old men getting upset about the way you, write, what you write about, or anything; be yourself, don’t change for them.
GeekSpeaker 
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