Seat at the Table

Did I say 50%?  Every day it’s going up.   

I thought blogs were way overhyped to begin with and now I think the backlash will be far too strong.  Dana Blankenhorn says it best: “these trends will boom, bust, conslidate and become ingrained in our daily lives…”).   Blogs are already becoming ingrained, we’re just too busy talking about them to notice. 

News.com has a story on how full time blogger Kottke is giving up on having the kottke.org blog be a self-sustaining business. Let uss see if this turns into Exhibit A in the blogosphere’s likely reputation fall from Mount Hype.

Blogging has had incredible hype this past year, and, like all hyped topics, the tide is likely to turn. Reports of failing businesses, common in new industries, are an early sign. But do not let a backlash fool you into thinking blogs are not a core part of the new media ecosystem. If you are a communications professional, ignore the backlash because the influence of blogs can be very real.

While I’ve been skeptical about their current overall demographic reach versus traditional media, I would maintain that blogs can be highly influential on both traditional media (who read blogs for insights and information) and with highly targeted demographics. A decade from now, expect not only that the influence and readership demographics grow, but that blogs become more integrated into the larger media world. In the meantime, ignore the hype, the post-hype negativity, and, for that matter, pundits in general (certain exceptions to be made of course…).

Some related links of interest:

Amy Gahran provides a good overview of the issues at hand.

Here’s the Financial Times trying to make blogs’ demise true.  It won’t work although it’s an ironic read when you read it online as print tried the same against online news in the 1990s.  But irony never stopped someone from trying to be contrarian (and short public memory allows them to do it repeatedly).

Paul Kedrosky goes after more of the irony coming from some of the blog attacks.

Mathew Ingram goes after an ex-Gawker trying to push a backlash.

———update————

Shel Israel writes about the normalization of blogging.  I think we have to get through the backlash first but that doesn’t mean normalization hasn’t started as well (the backlash starts as people treat the hyped area as just another part of the whole).