Slightly Off KIlter

The Register (an admittedly caustic British ezine with the tagline “Biting the hand that feeds IT”) posted a rather depressing article about weblogs today. In the article, the writer discussed “one of the first comprehensive studies of weblogging conducted by research company Perseus, which has analyzed over three thousand weblogs”.

Perseus claims that they “surveyed” some 2.7 million weblogs; the writer of the article didn’t give any data regarding how Perseus decided to choose or “analyze” 1% of those, but…

Perseus finds that the fad is most popular amongst teenage girls. More than half of the weblogs surveyed are run by teenagers and 91.1 per cent are under 30.

Fad? OK, perhaps among teenager girls…

“Blogging is many things, yet the typical blog is written by a teenage girl who uses it twice a month to update her friends and classmates on happenings in her life,” the report notes.

And this is a problem, why? What’s wrong with using a blog to update friends and family on happenings in your life?

There are a lot of teenage girls in the world and many of them have both friends and access to computers. They used to use the telephone (they probably still do). My guess is that the cellphone and beeper “fads” as well as the Instant Messenger “fad” are also most popular among teenagers.

No less than a million of the 2.7 million weblogs surveyed had been abandoned after a day, and 132,000 would-be webloggers gave up after a year. So like the Hula Hoop, the Pogo Stick or the skateboard, most teenagers will experience but a brushing pass with weblogging, and will continue unscathed to develop normal and healthy lives.

Is this somehow meant to imply that weblogging is unhealthy? Is writing unhealthy?

Perseus’ study doesn’t see a ‘community’ as much as a graveyard. The average weblog is only updated once every fourteen days, and Perseus concludes that “the majority of blogs started are dissolving into static, abandoned web pages.” Well, maybe people have simply got better things to do. This is not a bad thing.

Hmmm. The average personal website (I would guess) is updated no more often. The majority of web pages also (probably) become static; many are abandoned. But, is that really the point?

Isn’t it one of the well known facts of life (especially for those who haven’t yet graduated from College) that new projects and ideas are adopted and discarded regularly? That’s how humans learn. Some find an idea to their liking and keep with it for years. For example; many people kept diaries as children, but stopped, perhaps in High School. I kept a journal through College; then I stopped. Yet, I have a friend in his 40’s who “journals” — he keeps a paper diary for personal thoughts. Consider a weblog as a modern diary.

Let’s make a few changes to the paragraph above. Substitute “project” or “hobby” for “weblog”.

The average project is only revisited once every fourteen days, and [we] conclude that “the majority of projects started are dissolving into static, abandoned pieces.” Well, maybe people have simply got better things to do. This is not a bad thing.

How many times (especially as a teenager 🙂 did you start a hobby or project, only to stop being interested in it sometime thereafter and start something else? Model airplanes? Painting? Jogging? 🙂
Do you have an exercise bicycle in your garage? Woodworking projects half finished? Boxes of material purchased for sewing projects that never “materialized”?

Perseus’ study doesn’t see a ‘community’ as much as a graveyard.

Look beyond the teenagers. Look beyond the people (of any age) who try something new, change their minds, and move on to another hobby. Don’t look at the 1 million weblogs “that were abandoned after one day” but rather at the 1.7 million that weren’t. Don’t concentrate on the apparent failures; concentrate on the successes — on what’s actually happening on the web.

I see a community. I see new ways for people to express themselves, to communicate with others, to share their ideas in a world-wide forum. I see weblogs as the logical next step in the evolution of the Internet, following after personal web sites. First there was email, then there were newsgroups, then came the web. Now we have weblogs. Where will we go next?

Weblogs aren’t a “fad”. They also aren’t anything magic. They’re a natural step past full web sites and “home” pages. They’re another way of thinking, of writing, of communicating. And I think they’re here to stay (at least until they morph into the next interesting thing!)