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About this site
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A new section on the emerging blogosphere that's edited by Hylton Jolliffe, the founder, editor and publisher of Corante who believes blogging's more than mere fad and that what will flow from it will have major implications for media, marketing, distributed thinking and business in general.
Please send any tips, suggestions or reactions to Hylton.
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CORANTE ON BLOGGING: In media res
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By Hylton Jolliffe
Paul Ford writes, from the future, on how Google beat out Amazon and eBay to the semantic Web: "All of a sudden centralized databases - and Amazon and Ebay were prime examples of centralized databases with millions of items each - could suddenly be spread out through the entire web. Everyone could own their little piece of the database, their own part of the puzzle. It was easy to publish the stuff. But the problem was that there was no good way to bring it all together."
Later in the piece: "Google was a natural to put it all together. Google already searched the entire Web. Google already had a distributed framework with thousands of independent machines. Google already looked for the links between pages, the way they fit together, in order to build its index." |
William Safire, in New York Times Magazine's "On Language," introduces his audience to "blog." His take on whether or not blogs will replace old media: "No; gossips like an old-fashioned party line, but most information seekers and opinion junkies will go for reliable old media in zingy new digital clothes." |
Shelley Powers of Burningbird checks in from beyond the blog-grave with some follow up thoughts on her choice to put her blogging behind her: "No one owns weblogging... Each new person that starts a weblog invents weblogging anew because they add their own uniqueness to the mix." |
John Hiler says he feels something akin to post-partum depression every time he publishes an article, conceding that he doesn't think his "prolactin, estrogen or progesterone levels are impacted by blogging." It's significant enough though, he says, that he's "starting to factor the post-partum blues into my writing schedule." |
Marc Weisblott says of Salon's Scott Rosenberg: "[He] is convinced that he can follow the lead of Glenn Reynolds and effectively start up his own blogosphere, and be the puppeteer of a cast of characters." Which is, continues Weisblott, "as cloying as the process of casting a knock-off of the show Friends, with the inevitable lack of chemistry or charm." |
Andrew Sullivan states his correction policy: "There's nothing nefarious here - just an attempt to get things right and transparent in a medium that's instant and personal." |
Steve Outing ponders, in a comment on Salon's blogs, the challenge facing media companies that would set up blog networks: "How much latitude do you give the bloggers who decide to use your hosting service in terms of controversial content?"
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Andrew Sullivan, who's written for some of the most respected newspapers and magazines and reports he's been booted from New York Times Magazine because of critical comments he's made in his blog of the paper, makes an appearance on its op-ed page today in a piece from Paul Krugman who refers to him as an "online pundit." |
Mark Bernstein reviews Rebecca Blood's Weblog Handbook, calling it an "an inexorably romantic guide to building and cultivating a weblog." Bernstein expands on his point: "Weblogs take on aspects of both fiction and performance, but the romantic approach leaves little room for either."
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Frank Paynter interviews Annie Mason in his ongoing series. Mason, on her involvement in Blog Sisters: "We have been more of a coffee klatch than a forum." It's similar, she says, to the "tattoo forum I used to keep up with. We posted lots of jokes and pictures, but we also traded a lot of worries, support, encouragement, suggestions, and listening ears." |
Tom Shugart: "Let's face it folks, I'm in the middle of a serious bout of 'blogger's block.' I'm not going to dignify it by calling it 'writer's block.'" |
Scott Rosenberg, who says 75 people signed up for Salon blogs on the first day: "Aside from the occasional outburst of overheated rhetoric, there is no sensible reason for bloggers and journalists to have any particular animosity towards each other. The two enterprises are complementary." |
Evan Williams, who concedes that his own blog goes quiet at times: "Like anything worthwhile, it takes an investment. Sometimes I don't feel I have the time to make that investment. Or, more accurately, other commitments/investments are more important to me at the moment."
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John Hiler on the fervent reactions his articles sometimes elicit: "I am finding it helpful to think about each flavor of blogware as a separate religion faith." You are, he says, "either a believer... or a heretic condemned to blogging hell."
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Brian Carnell on Dave Winer: "Most companies would look at the numerous Radio and Manila blogs that say something like "We've had it with Dave, we're moving our blog to Movable Type" and step back to try to figure out what they're doing to drive people away. But Winer simply chalks it up to abusive people who just hate him because he's a rock star." |
Andrew Huff says, in a Blogroots discussion that touches on the URLs that those who sign up for Salon's blogs are given, "Of all places you'd think Salon would make users feel they're not just another number." He continues: "I'd love to see some more differentiation among the blogs. [They] all looked basically the same, which along with the numerical addresses does not bode well for audience building." |
NZ Bear on Salon's blog network: "I think we can safely assume this is not the giant revenue-generating plan we've been waiting for to save Salon." But, he adds, "This is a good thing... think of all the thousands upon thousands of daily readers of online mags like Salon who aren't in the habit of reading weblogs... those are your future readers --- and Salon just created a massive free advertising campaign for all of us." |
Dave Winer in a post about the deal UserLand's struck with Salon: "Writing about weblogs is and probably always will be a good way to get flow."
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Lloyd Nebres on a graphic system he's devised to help him reflect on the quality of his posts: "The thermal pattern may in fact map to the waxing and waning of my moods or psycho-social temperature... Or not. It may be just a random picture." |
Phil Jache, who says he was the "guy that paid for Frontier 1" and was the first to commercially apply XML-PRC: "I have had enough of Dave Winer. This is the first day of my weblog without Manila." |
Mike McBride, in a sentiment shared by others, on the recent spat that played out on Queso: "I guess arguing about the technology and who came up with what idea first and who's not getting enough credit is going to make people take the medium seriously, isn't it?"
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Dan Hersam on a MeetUp of bloggers in Salt Lake City: "One of the best things of the evening was that it was the first time I was able to mention my blog without having to answer the question: "What's a blog?"
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Dave Winer responds to his critics: "I edit in public. You may catch me saying something that I change my mind about later. You may not like this... but (key point) that won't change the way I write."
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Anil Dash on the Queso dustup: "There are people to whom all of these technical arguments are as irrelevant to their expression as technically correct mandates like XHTML and CSS positioning are to some of the creators of publishing tools." "And those people," he continues, "are the overwhelming majority of the online community. We're screaming and pushing our way into irrelevance." |
Nick Denton on the flamewar involving Dave Winer, Jason Levine, Jason Kottke, Rebecca Blood and others: |
Dave Winer disses both John Hiler's article on blogware - "I suspect there are (many) other factual errors in this very long piece" - and Rebecca Blood's book - "We're going to be fixing her bugs for years to come it seems" - in the same post.
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Ken Layne riffs: "Next time I'm interviewed for one of those blogging stories, I think I'll grab a random bunch of sites off Blogger's home page and claim they're the most famous... 'You haven't seen Chistopher Hitchens' site? It's great, goddamned great...'"
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Dawn Olsen explains the form of blogging that suits her best and asks of those who leave harsh remarks in her comments section: "[Is it] just to insult me? I have professional trolls for that. If you would like to become a professional troll for this site you will have to fill out an application, talk to my lawyer, go through a series of interviews and have an intense, security filled background check done." |
Glenn Reynolds, better known to some as Instapundit, in the aforementioned San Francisco Chronicle article: "Bloggers aren't just cutting [newspapers] out, they're replacing them..." Says Reynolds: "It's like discovering you can hit a baseball as well as Sammy Sosa: empowering for the discoverer, not so good for newspapers."
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Doc Searls comments on the San Francisco Chronicle article: " The Web, where blogs are published, is a public place. It's in the public domain. As a form of journalism native to that public place, blogs are not like desktop publishing. They are a form of public publishing. Like public radio and television, recipients can pay for it if they like, but the goods are free for the taking." On the "Joe Schmoes" the article refers to bloggers as: "Are they all Schmoes? Is anybody really a Schmoe?"
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Cameron Barrett on the increasingly small world that blogging's becoming: "Riding the C Train from work on Friday evening, I was headed home to change and then meet Rael Dornfest for dinner and who do I run into on the subway but Cameron Marlow, the guy behind Blogdex."
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Copyright 2002 Corante. All rights reserved. Terms of use
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