Laura at 11D on the State of the Blogosphere

Laura at 11D wrote a perceptive post abut the current state of blogging. It will never be the same indeed: The Blogosphere 2.0 I want to highlight coupe of points from the post:

“3. Norms and practices. Bloggers have undermined the blogosphere. Bloggers do not link to each other as much as they used to. It’s a lot of work to look for good posts elsewhere, and most bloggers have become burnt out. Drezner and Farrell had a theory that even small potato bloggers would have their day in the sun, if they wrote something so great that it garnered the attention of the big guys. But the big guys are too burnt out to find the hidden gems. So, good stuff is being written all the time, and it isn’t bubbling to the top.

Many have stopped using blogrolls, which means less love spread around the blogosphere. The politics of who should be on a blogroll was too much of a pain, so bloggers just deleted the whole thing.”

In addition blogrolls have been discouraged by the SOE hacks who are just that and never been to the blogging party. People are are much more self centered. Laura is right in the past you wrote somehting good and the big and small guys would link it. But now it is all shut down. No one links, unless its some viral crap and then every blog has the same lame video on.

“5. Reader burn out. You all are not clicking on the links like you used to. I’m not really sure why. In the past, if I was linked to by a big mega blogger, it meant 10,000 new readers in one afternoon. Now, a link by a mega blogger sends over a couple hundred readers. Readers are probably tired out of trying new stuff. Maybe we’ve sent you to too many crappy places over time and you’re sick of it.”

This is also so true. I blame Twitter and Facebook. They all turned it into one big spam party. In addition people don’t see a point in bookmarking anything, unless its a ‘read later page’ deleted in a week. And most still shockingly don’t use RSS. People stopped linking but they do link ten times more to their own content, the self centered links are just not trusted as much. Hence the fatigue and distrust of it all. Again Twitter has been a major detriment here.