April 29, 2007
update: san francisco geek dinner, tuesday night
Robert Scoble has the details on Tuesday night’s geek dinner in SF. See you there.
[Meanwhile:] So it seems the growth of blogging has finally stalled. Welcome to the Blog Plateau etc. Guys like me should start looking for a new career etc.
Heh. Storm in a teacup. Blogging is not for everyone. Web 2.0 is for everyone. I’m going to have to quote Clay Shirky one more time: “So forget about blogs and bloggers and blogging and focus on this — the cost and difficulty of publishing absolutely anything, by anyone, into a global medium, just got a whole lot lower. And the effects of that increased pool of potential producers is going to be vast.“
Or as I’m fond of saying: Blogging is just the tip of the Cluetrain iceberg. And it wasn’t the tip that sunk the Titanic.
Blogging works for me because I like writing and cartooning, which the medium seems well suited for. I am also fortunate that I have been able to engineer my life to allow for the vast amounts of time and energy a half-decent blog requires.
But people like me are the minority. Most people my age have jobs and families to get on with. This is why Flickr was so important when it came along. The people who just want to share their photos online with their friends and families vastly outweighs the number of people who want to spend four hours a day ranting on their online journals.
Web 2.0 is not about blogging, People. Web 2.0 is about Cheap & Easy.
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Interesting timing re your blog today… what are your thoughts on today’s Observer article? http://observer.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0„2068107,00.html
Well, I’m easy but not cheap
so I guess I’m half way there.
Thanks for the link Hugh. One of these days we’ll finally get to meet in person, I’m sure.
1. Stalled or pausing for breath?
2. Cheap, Easy and OPEN.
You hit the nail on the head. Except that it’s not about age so much as ambition and ability.
How many people do you know that can write? Maybe you know more (the supposed “A list” friendships you’ve formed) but the VAST majority of people either cannot write well enough to form and keep an audience or have no ambition toward it. Possibly if they understood the value the floodgates would open…but inability would surely put an end to most efforts.
I don’t like the connotation of cheap here, but I know what you mean. (Inexpensive, as opposed to lacking in quality, right?) Anyone who has the desire to write and publish no longer has an excuse.
Correct .…
Hadn’t come across the Clay Shirky quote — but it is a good one — does anyone have a link to where it first appeared? I definitely want to stick that in presentations to the blog-fixated and those who don’t get the fact that this is about a whole new form of media.