Decadism 2010: Blogging

In many ways 2000–2009 was the decade of the blog. In the space of the last ten years you can map blogging’s inception, it’s quick acceptance by the online community, it’s peak in popularity when it seemed as though any site could be converted into a blog, to the end of the decade when the first signs of rot were setting in. So here we be. Where now for blogging? We attempt to answer the question overleaf as well as asking a hand picked selection of fave bloggers to answer the question ‘why blog?’…

Although it often seems that the more things change the more they stay the same, the internet has been with us long enough now to have produced it’s very own trail of the dead. Remember firefly, geocities or boo.com? Possibly not. Will we remember the act of blogging as clearly in 10, 15 years time?

Blogging is old. Just over a decade old, in fact, which might as well be a century ago in internet years. 1999 was the year ‘blogger.com’ first appeared on screens the world over. It wasn’t until 2004, after Google acquired Blogger and made it free to use and the freshly released WordPress (2003) made it easy to customise blogsites, that the phenomena of ‘blogging’, ‘bloggers’ and ‘blogs’ really took off. In recent times new types of ‘blog’ style offerings have come along such as Tumblr (2007) that makes posting stuff even quicker and easier (allowing uses to simply ‘re-blog’ other peoples posts).

A recent Morgan Stanley report made news on The Guardian website1, mainly because the author was a hyper-articulate 15 year old and because it offered insight into internet usage that has been rarely considered. We learnt that ‘young people‘ aren’t so interested in blogs or social media (well there’s still loads into Facebook but they use it differently to us older folk) and no-one is interested in MySpace. I don’t want to pry into the likes and dislikes of teenagers around the globe but part of me thinks it may have something to do with attention spans. Not that teenagers have shorter attention spans than adults (well, maybe a bit), it’s just that it’s possibly more a kin to an intensely focused beam of light—settling for a short time before flitting off to the next byte of information, always self consciously aware of being talked at or talked down.

Whereas us older interweb users love reading online. We love swapping witty comments and sharing articles. We like to linger. The problem here though is that the World Wide Web as we know it—in terms of age and attitude—is a teenager. Us older types linger on sites that are constantly battling with the choice between stagnation and change. It’s a given that blogs stay relevant by changing as often as they can. Stop posting for while and your audience eventually dissipates. What’s happening now is that blogging as a format has begun to share a similar fate, coming across as predictable and a bit stale. It’s an odd thought that blogging itself could become an outmoded exercise. Once, it was both beacon of hope in the battle to set information free from corporatisation and the scourge of ‘proper’ journalism.

Blogging reached out from the internet and effected huge change in the way we consume mass media. Newspapers are still on the run from ‘citizen’ journalism, unsure whether to embrace or reject this intrusion into an age old arena. You get the feeling they are increasingly worried about the 140 word counts you need to get yourself noticed on Twitter these days too or how to distract the nattering masses on Facebook or whittle down their content to fit their latest iPhone app.

The shift away from blogs can also to attributed to the fact that, in recent times, bloggers got lazy. Reblogging, either by copying and pasting or by hitting a ‘reblog’ or ‘like’ button, became rife. Original content was sacrificed, replaced with re-runs of the same things you were reading on a gabillion other blogs. Readers, in turn, got bored. The original ‘blogging’ format struggled to break out into new forms too, retaining its predictable ‘big column, little column’ style of layout that continues to thrive today.

Here, at Linefeed, we’ve been navigating the rapids of the blogosphere since 2006 (bit slow on the uptake really). Since it’s inception, the Linefeed site has endeavoured to provide original content. No re-blogging. With help early on from invited guest bloggers such as Simon Whybray, Luis Mendo and Joe Bland, Linefeed (or Boicozine as it was know back then) earned mentions in international design journals such as Print, Creative Review and even a particularly popular link from the Wired magazine website. Podcasts, video reviews and print-on-demand publications followed. All in the name of helping plug up some of the knowledge gaps in the humaversal hivemind.

We’ve also had time to muse on the future of blogging and, although we still feel it’s a valid and entertaining way to communicate with an audience of like minded individuals (and, indeed, friends) we can still see the cracks appearing. Finding new formats (such as the magazine you hold in your hands now) to disseminate information is all part of the fun. One major change we’ve made here is to shift the focus slightly back to print. Most of the articles appearing on the blog will now have been written for the printed publication first rather than the other way around. Sounds a bit revisionist, I know, but there is always the possibility that one day the internet itself will become passé, in which case print will out. Besides, things still just look better in print, don’t they?

So here we be. For your author, blogging has become recreation; blogs have become archives; and bloggers are dead friendly folk, of a like mind, that we’re happy to call friends. One other thing that’s been decided… popularity—once you stop checking the stats—is seriously over rated. 

 Questionaire: Why blog?
Jeremy Leslie, MagCulture:
“I started blogging as an experiment and got hooked. It’s a great way to record and share content, combining spontaneous bursts of information alongside more reflective material. The novelty factor of the medium has worn off, but there are still plenty of active blogs out there playing their part in the online mix. Things keep moving—comments have been left redundant by twitter for instance—but as with magazines, if your content is interesting people will want it.”
Andrew Losowsky, Magtastic Blogsposion:
“Because I have a lot to say and some time to say it. Because I want people to know who I am, and where I’m thinking. Because I want other people to take my thoughts away, to run with them, keep them as pets, attach wings to them, make them fly, and in return send their thoughts over to my head to look after, where I’ll feed them and nurture them and try to understand what makes them purr just so. Because now people send me their books and their magazines, opening my eyes to new and wonderful things. Because I want to publish, fast and loose, here and now, without getting my hands dirty. Because people now ask me to give talks and presentations about why and what I think and how. Because it’s fun.”
Heath Killen, Made by Heath Killen:
“During a brief stint at Art School, one idea was pushed upon us more than any other was that of ‘discourse’. Discourse was taught to be the ability to speak about and justify that things you make and do. At the time my personal belief was that art simply was or was not, and that good work always spoke for itself. I thought the act of discussing art was futile. Now I know better. Now I know that it’s the discussion of ideas and the sharing of these resources invigorates culture and pushes things forward.

Discourse is at the heart of any blog. Whatever the topic, be it personal or professional, the content of our blogs are directed by our interests and the desire to examine them. Bloggers are writers, curators, investigators and diarists. Blogging is a unique mix of journalism and fandom. Through the magic of the internet we can communicate meet other people who are also examining what interests them. What begins as a personal discourse, becomes a vast, international library of information.

My blog consists primarily of what I’m currently working on or what I’m consuming and discussions with people I admire. I love the freedom to explore any subject from any period of time. Ultimately I create my blog for myself, but the fact that people are reading it means that there are others out there with similar interests who value what I’m doing. This provides the motivation to keep doing it.”

Dave Smith, Collate:
“For me blogging is a love-hate relationship, often subjective, very indulgent, sometimes an obsession and other times a chore, but ultimately for me it’s a public service.”
Claire McManus, Thewhatwherewhen:
“In no particular order:
1. I had nothing to better to do
2. I like websites, especially their code
3. I’m a born collator
4. To create a blog that I would use
5. To share
6. To filter out the noise
7. To get free, high quality shit
8. To (hopefully) be rich by 30
9. Because it keeps me credible as a human being”
Reference:

 ‘How Teenagers Consume Media’
by Matthew Robson
Morgan Stanley Research, July 2009.
 ‘How Teenagers Consume Media: the report that shook the City’
by Morgan Stanley Research
The Guardian, July 2009
Self published via Linefeed
August 2010