July 13, 2008
cheapeasyglobal
[Cartoon originally published December, 2007. It was dedicated to my friend, the dauntless Robert Scoble.]
As anyone who has been reading Techcrunch will know, the “Is Blogging Dead?” meme has reared its ugly head again.
Well, before we all get dressed up in our best funeral gear, let me say it one more time: The big story is not about blogging. It’s not about Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, Friendfeed or whatever. And it certainly is not about Robert Scoble, Mike Arrington, Jason Calacanis, Nick Denton or whatever so-called “A-Lister” you care you mention.
Yes, again, it’s all about what Clay Shirky said four years ago, in a wonderful interview he did for Gothamist:
“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.”
I had coffee with Clay a couple of weeks ago. A totally great guy. We didn’t talk about blogs much. Nor did we talk much about Twitter or Facebook.
We talked about something conceptually far simpler: Cheap. Easy. Global. Media.
CheapEasyGlobal is the big story. And it’s here now. It has arrived. And it’s permanent. And there’s not a damn thing anyone can do about it, save for a nuclear holocaust.
Some people will do very well by it. Other people will prefer to stay on the sidelines instead, using the internet to yak yak yak endlessly on about what other people are up to, holding the “players” to far higher standards than they will ever attain themselves. These lovely armchair quarterbacks will be swiftly forgotten by history. Same as it ever was.
Great post Hugh, I’d describe it as, “cheap and easy on a global scale.”
err, I thought this thing was supposed to be designed for nuclear holicosts?
Anyway, A Men.. seems I’ve been having related conversations all over the place.. I’m not sure what it is.. some murmer somewhere.. maybe a discontent with loud voices.. a feeling like what this is really all about is somehow getting missed.. you hear people talking endlessly about.. well things that aren’t all that interesting really. That and I just don’t think there’s enough divergent thinking going on in the fish bowl.. which seems like a very bad sign. I mean tollarance of divergent views.. isn’t that like an essential ingredent to a strong culture?
I agree! It’s really all about how you view this global media thing.
Cheap. Easy. Global. Media. –> Nice way of putting it!
Nice post Hugh. Reading the ‘blogging is dead’ thing from Jason/Miek gets really annoying. Yes, for their little world, for their way of doing things, blogging may be dead and they move onto other things. But for the millions of other people who use it to connect to their group of friends on LiveJournal, or to announce the footie training, or to connect to the people with the same illness or all the 100s and 1000s of other uses that are not mass broadcasting to a group of fans, blogging is nowhere near dead and is more alive than ever.
It’s a tool, a ubiquitous, cheap, easy, low barrier to entry tool. They can communicate with friends, they share stories and comments. Whilst for some the blogging glitz is all about the numbers, for most the heart of blogging is the personal.
Meikah, the internet was designed to withstand a nuclear strike; not the total annihilation of life on Earth
Rachel, yeah, the internet is not the blogosphere. I know that sounds glaringly obvious, but…
I agree and have been saying the same for a long while. It’s common sense. Unfortunately though, common sense is the least common attribute in people.
great point, hugh. and it’s true: “the yakkers push the players to higher standards”
really a great point. so sorry it takes soooo long for the emergence of collective intelligence
sometimes I feel like a trilobites on the beach, fighting for evolution to happen faster
CheapEasyGlobal. Well said.
It is little difference to your “Global Microbrand” idea — that “web 2.0″ has given everybody the power to become a global force through the low cost of entry to publishing tools.
What is it about, if it’s not about Twitter, Friendfeed, etc etc etc?
I like the sentiment but you seem to offer a question disguised as an opportunity. I really like the opportunity — Cheap. Easy. Global. Media. — but this begs the question, what does that mean in practice? Surely it is — in aggregate — Twitter, Friendfeed etc etc etc?
I agree, although I do think that these other services will influence to some extent comment distribution. In the long run, comment frag will probably help blogs, not hurt them.
Anyway, blogging is here to stay. Microblogging is another medium, not a replacement.
Referencing Clay Sharky was smart. He won’t be proven wrong anytime soon. Nor will you.
Great post (as always), Hugh.
Blogging takes effort. I think you need to have a passion for writing and communicating in the written form to really make it work.
As a former Journalist, I quickly realized that most people Blogging were doing it for the same reason a dog licks itself (because they can). After a short while, I started seeing the “chinks in the armour” — a lack of substantial content, no new insight, and what turned into a “look how cool I am” series of postings that looked more like personal press releases than a Blog.
As photos, videos and apps like twitter came along, it was easy to see who was going to make the defection.
I think the people saying “Blogging is dead” are those who are not passionate writers by nature and are simply focused on the next shiny object.
There’s a huge benefit to Blogging that includes stuff like Search Engine Optimization and really seeing how The Long Tail can help your business or your personal goals to get your message “out there.”
The challenge is that it’s a lot of hard work and it takes time, so when something comes along that takes less work and less time, people are quick to jump… much in the same way people jumped on Blogging at first because the barrier became a lot lower from what publishing was (refer back to Shirkey’s quote).
I’m reading Shirkey’s, Here Comes Everybody, now and I am loving it.
I thought reading Techcruch was dead.
Thank you for reminding me that blogging may be dead, dying or merely passed out in the closet but publishing has caught an unexpected second wind; is alive, well and looking for another drink. It’s easy to get wrapped around the fad and miss reality.
Thank you for reminding me that blogging may be dead, dying or merely passed out in the closet but publishing has caught an unexpected second wind; is alive, well and looking for another drink. It’s easy to get wrapped around the fad and miss reality.
Cheap. Easy. Global.
It sounds like a marketing mantra for the Chinese.
Exactly, what Brendan Cooper said “but this begs the question”.
There seems to be a pattern that whenever anyone who gets *heard* writes about how a negative aspect is playing out in practice, it triggers an immediate defensiveness, a reaction I’d characterize as:
“Don’t think about that! HYPE! HYPE! HYPE! Stand up and cheer! The world is changing! Buzzword! Democracy! Buzzword! Community! Buzzword! Personal! …”
The point about “blogs and bloggers and blogging” is that it’s marketed as one effect of that change, and when the evidence comes in that the change at least has some pretty negative aspects, there’s great effort to claim that somehow doesn’t count.
It’s funny that we’ve gone from tomes, to long novels, to novellas, to magazines and newspapers, to blog posts, to Tweets. As time has progressed, more and more people get involved. I’m thinking syllables and grunts written by just about anyone with a pulse are to follow. Who has time to read Tweets anyway
?
I follow your blog. Through you I read about Clay Shirky. I bought his book. I wrote to him about it. A day later he kindly wrote back to me. That quick. That easy.
Your post sums it all up superbly.
My 2 cents:
web 2.0 = human dynamics 101.
It’ll never die, it’s not about dying. It’s about connection…cheap, easy, global.
Thanks Hugh!
thanks for the inspirational words as always hugh. Prompted a post over at my own blog, chronicling my journey writing my first novel. the Cheap. Easy. Global. Media. is obviously something i’m pursuing.
i think one thing that remains pertinent however, is as easy as it is to publish the material, to get anyone to listen is a whole lot more difficult. but that’s life and the way it’s always been i guess, if it was all easy, it wouldn’t be any fun now would it?
I totally agree, Seth. Life is unfair
Since I’m outside the tech world, I’m sometimes amused and sometime irritated by the whole rockstar/A-lister appellation. But I’ve realized that it’s frequently used ABOUT other people, not by the people themselves. So, why all of the kissing up? It’s almost like some folks need to create celebrities to keep things exciting.
I won’t deny there is an awful lot of self-promotion on services like Twitter (half of the posts I read are “look at my blog!” posts), but it’s also their readers (sometimes called “fans!”) who help create these self-important personas. Why? To curry favor, to get positive press, to gain access, to hope for reciprocal acknowledgment of superstar status…I’m sure there are a variety of reasons for people fanning the flames of egotism.
And like with all celebrity, these A-listers get praise that is undeserved as well as criticism that is equally unwarranted. And I think the only thing that the rest of us can do is to stop using them as a reference point of what is hot or what is not. The problem is not with what they think but why so many people seem to care (and chronicle) what they think.
I’m sure there are equally or more insightful blog writers out there getting 1/10 the attention and readership they deserve. So, it’s our job not to seek the easiest, highest profile writers and seek out people who have the most interesting things to say.
“Those who’ve been obsessing over the blogging phenomenon have missed the point; blogs are merely the most visible manifestation of an explosion in creativity.” Randall Rothenberg.
The commencement address from my undergraduate class was given by an influential economist and politician, having very recently stepped down from the post of minister of economic affairs. He wasn’t too poetical, though, and didn’t inherit us any nice soundbites. His final advice was — labor and love.
Over time, I came to think that what he really meant was “don’t suck”.
Anyway, how does not wanting to be constantly obsessed by the slow drift of the memesphere make you an armchair quarterback?
I mean, we *are* doing it. The C-listers, the long-tailers, the people who never follow the advice at Problogger and Copywriter. Not. Armchair. Quarterbacks. Street basketball players, maybe. Maybe lone jugglers or people into similar feats of skill and intensive training.
The guy from Problogger knows the technicals of writing “compelling content”. The problem is that I can’t seem to reconcile “my voice” with his notion of “compelling content”. So my voice goes online, with the perhaps predictable result of only attracting transitory traffic when misinterpreted into some silly controversy.
I do have a day job. I did find a means of making a living that’s easier, more intensive in technical skills (I’m always awash in pleasure when mastering new technical skills) and less soul-crushing than problogging.
It’s still cheap — even if I pay for a cheapie shared hosting account as opposed to using the free hosts, and I do it on highly-paid time. It’s still easy — even if writing in english is still a tad bit artificial for me, even though I /think/ in english a lot of the time because of all the time spent reading Reddit or suchlike. It’s still global, which is why I switched to writing in english in first place.
I end up either writing very personal, very context-intensive one-liners or pouring an hour of intense ritalin-powered spirits into some long-winded essays on abstract subjects sprinkled with run-on sentences and strange uses of propositions (I’m still getting used to “naturally” writing “on”, “in” or “at”).
And even when I’m writing on my best-honed subject — the one I went to graduate school for — I still want the freedom to go the extra inch and spell out the leaps of thought I wouldn’t put on an entry to the Palgrave Dictionary of Economics. I value that freedom enough to have added a disclaimer that basically disqualifies me as a thinker: “you should not believe in me”.
Needless to say, I’m not doing very well at blogging. Unless you count the judgement of my 20-odd RSS subscribers — I suppose they are enough “into” the intensive context of the flow of one-liners. Or the once or twice a month 900-hits days driven by plain stupid misreading. But really, I don’t count 20 regular readers as doing well, as much as I rally for micropolitics and the power of mouth-to-mouth actions to “save the environment” (and I don’t mean reducing carbon footprints) or reducing social inequalities by reducing the monetary aspects of social life.
And it’s not that I take “offense” or such at the suggestion that I’m an armchair quarterback — I have enough to take offense at. I’m just doing my share of micropolitics in some place that has more visibility than my blog for a change.
It’s not about empowering the little guy. It’s about lowering the threshold. At the end of the day, all that my blog’s worth is a document of my brief, weird and unredeemably personal existence. But while we only know tidbits about Van Gogh from letters to his brother, we know plenty about Hugh McLeod from the long-term pattern of his blog — nevermind if it’s popular or not.
On the other hand, when McLeod starts posting for the sake of being a blogger, things suck.
Good one. Everyone is a journalist. The cream always rises. AND, more will always be revealed…
Seth, you so often say the Right Thing and then pick dead wrong examples to “prove” your point and/or further your relentlessly unchanging agenda. Worst of all, you don’t recognize when you’re guilty of precisely the things you accuse the “A-list” of. You use the cred of The Guardian, for example, to hurt others you believe ‘deserve’ it. I have no doubt your heart is in the right place, but a little self-reflection is in order.
Hugh, as always, you rock : )
Sorry, totally off topic.
Kathy,
Hope all is well. I miss your kick ass contributions, and playful graphs.
Be well.
The “free” part attracts a lot of cranks, but I wonder how long the new media will stay so “hot” and contentious. Unmediated media — and media that can transmit a variety of forms — is such a new concept that the consequences of freedom will take time to sink in.
Publishing was either so expensive, so suppressed, or so controlled by institutional gatekeepers that upstarts had to be outrageous to make a splash. It may be my imagination, but as we get away from text-only, I sense that that hotter styles aren’t wearing as well (or self-segregate).
This is actually all due to the lowering of transaction costs (something every comms revolution does at its core, whether its printing, rail or the internetz).
Ronald Coase was onto this in the 1930’s
There’s a great song by TQOTSA, to the sound of sharpening knives U can hear the mosquito conspiracy.
CheapEasyGlobal is the big story. And it’s here now. It has arrived. And it’s permanent. And there’s not a damn thing anyone can do about it, save for a nuclear holocaust.
Some people will do very well by it. Other people will prefer to stay on the sidelines instead, using the internet to yak yak yak endlessly on about what other people are up to, holding the “players” to far higher standards than they will ever attain themselves. These lovely armchair quarterbacks will be swiftly forgotten by history. Same as it ever was.
Thinking 1.0 ?
The problem here is that if CheapEasyGlobal is indeed as big a story as you suggest it will be, the “same as it ever was” conclusion does not necessarily hold. We just have not been around in these conditions long enough to know. Yes, there are the existing forces and order that might suggest “same as it ever was” will be the result, but it’s just too damned early to tell / know.
It is often said that people in general don’t change much, hence the permanency of Love, Avarice, Envy, Hate, etc. and thus, I assume, your “same as it ever was”. Many of history’s big changes have occurred after a long, long period of people being pissed on (usually to support the chase and harvest of money and the sustenance of the power of the Few over the Many .. in the case helped greatly by what The Media have become).
You and I may well not be around to see what the big and (maybe) permanent change will bring to humans.
But it seems clear to me that it will be one of two generally-defined outcomes. Either
1) the “holding to higher standards” will prevail due to transparency and publicity (conditions favourised and desired by those who suggest the Web is a major democratizing force,
or
2) a (probably) soft “fascism” consisting of eyeballs monetised to kingdom come and back, major and sophisticated electronic surveillance and network visualisation, and people conditioned by fear, economic uncertainty and inability to deal with ongoing ambiguity (often known as FUD).
No. 2 is , in my opinion, more likely, and so then Yes, it will be “same as it ever was”, just amplified and made more public. Guy DeBord wrote a book about this once upon a time .. The Society of Spectacle.