Comments on: Fading away? (More metablogging)

By: jessamyn

jessamyn — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 05:51:41 +0000

I’ve personally definitely spread myself thinner getting the word out about stuff lately. I blog less frequently and it’s more likely to be about someone I know or travel I’m doing. I use Twitter somewhat, I interact with people on facebook, I put things up with longer essays sometimes on Flickr and I have my personal blog which has really slowed down.
As far as blogs, I’m mostly reading the same ones I’ve been reading for years with a few additions and a few subtractions and I had to poke around a little to even figure out who you were referring to. I’m seeing more and more blogs by more and more different types of librarians than ever before, however, in my random poking around. I can read about more sorts of libraries than I could five years ago which is sort of neat, and most people who might be so inclined to get a blog now likely have the ability to go get one, which is neat.
I’d be interested if you go the research route on any of these paths though, it would be nice to know what’s perception and what’s reality.

By: Walt Crawford

Walt Crawford — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 20:59:20 +0000

“I’m not sure it’s entirely wrong” also means I’m not sure it’s right. As I’ve noted elsewhere, it would be easy to choose “statistically significant” lists of liblogs to prove almost any side of any hypothesis I wanted to prove–certainly including both sides of whether there are still consistent high-profile bloggers. In fact, there are; whether the highest-profile (whoever those are) are starting to fade away is another question.
If liblogs are becoming more and more places with occasional essays rather than lots of links, that’s probably a good thing. Is that what’s happening in general? That’s a research question.

By: Wayne Bivens-Tatum

Wayne Bivens-Tatum — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 03:07:12 +0000

The judgment partly depends on what counts as consistency. The early blogging model of frequent short posts linking to something else has moved elsewhere, which I think is a good thing for everyone involved. If consistency means something other than frequency, then there are definitely other consistent blogs. John Dupuis publishes a post a week at least. Steven Bell blogs consistently at ACRLog. Though my blog is far from major, I do the same, and my blog is as consistent as it has ever been. Maybe liblogland has been left to long form bloggers writing critical opinionated essays.

I would agree that most of the “big” blogs of the past few years have reduced their posting frequency, but of these only one is a longer form opinion blog (Information Wants to be Free). Others post anything from essays to links to photos to news. I might also add, at the risk of incurring one inconsistent blogger’s ire, that at least one popular blog (the one that everyone loves to hate) is as consistent as clockwork, though that blogger has some financial incentive to publish regularly.

By: Christina Pikas

Christina Pikas — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 02:35:16 +0000

Friendfeed has definitely changed my reading of blogs, but it in no way changes my writing a blog. I read more widely- I think- clicking through to more blog posts that were “liked” by people in my network, but that come from blogs to which I do not subscribe. My blogging has always been fairly uneven, and the focus changes depending on what I’m interested in. From far away, this is just the typical ebb and flow. It’s just when someone who has a lot of readers ebbs, it gets attention.
FWIW and if it makes anyone feel better, I heard some of the same irrational exuberance from publishers at this year’s SSP that librarians were spouting 2004-2006. They want to go from static web page to blog(s), wikis, twitter, facebook, myspace(yes, really)… all on the same day… sigh.