Speaker 1: Get in touch with technologies with book style from how
Speaker 1: Stuff foks dot com. Pay there everyone, and welcome to
Speaker 1: tech Stuff. My name is Jonathan Strickland and joining me
Speaker 1: as always is Lauren Vocabum. And today we wanted to
Speaker 1: talk about blogs. Blogs. Yeah, exactly, you know, what what
Speaker 1: are they? How they get started? Kind of? I mean,
Speaker 1: it's it's it's a difficult thing to talk about because
Speaker 1: it's sort of a trend and really it's it was
Speaker 1: a lot easier to identify after it had become a thing, right,
Speaker 1: and it's it's really a big thing. I mean, there's
Speaker 1: a whole bunch of them out there. It's basically changed
Speaker 1: the way that we participate in and consume news media
Speaker 1: and uh and even pursue interests that are outside the news,
Speaker 1: things that aren't necessarily what what I guess the mainstream
Speaker 1: would consider newsworthy, but depending upon your interests might be
Speaker 1: very relevant to you. Right, So, very specific types of
Speaker 1: interest groups have their own types of blogs, and um,
Speaker 1: they covered just about every subject. And really, when you
Speaker 1: think about it, this is an extension of something that
Speaker 1: people have been doing for centuries, which is mostly just
Speaker 1: recording their own thoughts. Yeah, I think I think that
Speaker 1: for yeah, millennia. In fact, it's about how long people
Speaker 1: have been doing that. You know, caves, the original blogs,
Speaker 1: maybe the cave blogs, but but but digital blogs as
Speaker 1: we know them. It actually kills me thinking about this
Speaker 1: because I sort of grew up using them. I mean
Speaker 1: not not when I was a child, but certainly through
Speaker 1: high school and college because they started in about and
Speaker 1: this is one of those times what I'm about to
Speaker 1: see Jonathan's I start twitching because that that is not
Speaker 1: when he was growing up. Necessarily I got married. Ah yeah.
Speaker 1: But and to be fair, before anyone starts writing in
Speaker 1: and saying, hey, I know that there were blogs that existed,
Speaker 1: but that is that is the first time that that
Speaker 1: someone called a dated personal content update a weblog, right
Speaker 1: web blog. So so like in the documentary series Star Trek,
Speaker 1: where you had the Captain's log, where the captain would
Speaker 1: keep a log of the events that we're going on,
Speaker 1: usually with some sort of snarchy comment directed at some
Speaker 1: poor crewmember who may or may not been known as
Speaker 1: Wesley Crusher, then um, yeah, it's same sort of things.
Speaker 1: In this case, it was generally speaking, at least in
Speaker 1: the early days of a sort of a personal diary
Speaker 1: kind of thing that you just wanted to share with
Speaker 1: a larger audience, or maybe a collection of links to
Speaker 1: things of interest that you had found around the internet.
Speaker 1: You know, a little bit curation going on there as well.
Speaker 1: But but the person who coined this term was Jordan
Speaker 1: Barger of robot Wisdom. Okay, important, And that was December
Speaker 1: seventeenth actually, And what I what I loved about doing
Speaker 1: this episode is that the dates are so concrete because
Speaker 1: it was on the Internet and it was necessarily recorded,
Speaker 1: and so everything is extremely clear cut. It's much easier than,
Speaker 1: for example, when we were researching Tesla and everything was
Speaker 1: kind of like how this thing happened? It was yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: and and and before you start asking, well, I'll ask Lauren, Lauren,
Speaker 1: So where did blog come from? A blog came a
Speaker 1: little bit later, I think, uh maybe maybe a ninety nine.
Speaker 1: Peter Merholtz joked that he was going to pronounce it
Speaker 1: we blog in instead instead of a weblog, weblog, it's
Speaker 1: blob blog because it was becoming a community. And so yeah,
Speaker 1: so that was shortened down to blog and then bloggers
Speaker 1: were and of course we have variations on this already.
Speaker 1: I mean there are people who do video versions of
Speaker 1: a blog, video logs, blogs, blogs, and then, of course
Speaker 1: Felicia Day, the Internet darling, a wonderful person. I've met
Speaker 1: her a couple of times, very nice lady, love uh.
Speaker 1: And she has her own video log that she calls
Speaker 1: a flog for Felicia's log, not that she actually flogs people.
Speaker 1: As far as I know, she has not done that.
Speaker 1: But not not not not on the air. I'm gonna
Speaker 1: stop conjecturing about Felicia Day. I haven't seen every single episode,
Speaker 1: so I can't say for certain, but none of the
Speaker 1: ones I watched involved any actual flogging. Um. But moving
Speaker 1: back into the history of blogging, I'm sorry you just
Speaker 1: shorted out my entire my entire brain with that one.
Speaker 1: But it happens. Yeah, yeah, back into it, back into
Speaker 1: the history there. Um But what long before Felicia Day
Speaker 1: was was doing whatever it is that she does on
Speaker 1: her her own uh flogs? Uh. Peter Merho coined the term,
Speaker 1: and also the year that basically blogging as we know
Speaker 1: it sort of launched, Uh, Pyra released blogger that's h
Speaker 1: V Williams and Meg Horahan. Does that sound like a
Speaker 1: way that you might pronounce that name. That's that's just
Speaker 1: how I would pronounce it. So excellent. Uh, Rock Soup launched,
Speaker 1: Brad Fitzpatrick starts started live Journal, a few of those
Speaker 1: really basic, original big ones. Yeah, the big platforms, and
Speaker 1: these were important tools because you know, I know it's
Speaker 1: hard for people to imagine it now, people who weren't
Speaker 1: using the web when it first started. Uh, And it's
Speaker 1: it's something that you don't run into these days. But
Speaker 1: when when web pages were first a thing, they tended
Speaker 1: to be static. So you would create a web page
Speaker 1: and you wouldn't really change it very much because for
Speaker 1: one thing, it was a real hassle to do it. Oh, sure,
Speaker 1: you might add a page, or you might update it,
Speaker 1: you know, once every once in a while to include
Speaker 1: new information, but it certainly wasn't daily, right, It wasn't
Speaker 1: And it wasn't a log right right. You were generally
Speaker 1: either replacing something that was already there, or you might
Speaker 1: add a paragraph, but you're not creating a log of
Speaker 1: of of entries. You are just editing one page over
Speaker 1: and over, maybe adding another page like a link you
Speaker 1: might link to a second page or whatever. But it
Speaker 1: was not easy to record a series of events because
Speaker 1: the tools weren't there. So you start seeing the development
Speaker 1: of these tools and the distribution of these tools that
Speaker 1: make it easier for people to have this outlet to
Speaker 1: to communicate. Right before then, even if you did want
Speaker 1: to create a log, you could certainly do so yourself,
Speaker 1: but you had to code it yourself, and so only
Speaker 1: people who were pretty well familiar with that web programming
Speaker 1: languages were going to be doing that, right Yeah, And
Speaker 1: and this is I mean, you know, it's it's easy
Speaker 1: for us to take for granted now, but trust me,
Speaker 1: if you had been surfing the web back when I
Speaker 1: was first starting the web, and I know some of
Speaker 1: my listeners, I know you guys were there with me,
Speaker 1: it was just such a totally different world. It is
Speaker 1: impossible for me to think of, based on my first
Speaker 1: web page, that I would be able to have an
Speaker 1: outlet that would allow me to update so frequently and seamlessly.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, absolutely. And I guess it's a good good
Speaker 1: thing to point out that blogs tend to have a
Speaker 1: similar UH structure, in the sense that whatever was the
Speaker 1: most recent post tends to be at the top of
Speaker 1: whatever the blog is, and then the earlier posts are
Speaker 1: chronologically ordered in reverse order, so the earliest blog post
Speaker 1: is at the bottom of the chain, so it might
Speaker 1: be several pages back, depending upon the layout of the blog. Now, Lauren,
Speaker 1: I didn't ask you this before the podcast Excellent pub Quiz.
Speaker 1: Did you have a live journal account? I, in fact
Speaker 1: did have a live journal account. I created mine in
Speaker 1: two thousand three. I you know, I don't even know
Speaker 1: when I created mine. I I can't remember the last
Speaker 1: time I logged into mine. I logged into mine while
Speaker 1: researching this article, and that was the first time that
Speaker 1: I had logged in. I switched from from live journal
Speaker 1: to blogger maybe around two thousand seven. I want to say, well,
Speaker 1: live Journal, the last time I remember looking at it,
Speaker 1: it looked like it had really started to lose a
Speaker 1: lot of the community that was there. I mean, obviously
Speaker 1: I was not the only person to have drifted away
Speaker 1: from that platform, but I do remember back in the day,
Speaker 1: the live journal was one of those places that almost
Speaker 1: all of my friends had an account their. In fact,
Speaker 1: to uh, you know, a lot of us didn't have
Speaker 1: access to things when I first came out, like Facebook,
Speaker 1: because we were not in college and Facebook was reserved
Speaker 1: just for college students. In the early days, right right,
Speaker 1: And and Facebook wasn't a blogging platform either, right, Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think when I first got on Facebook, and I
Speaker 1: didn't I I also didn't get on Facebook until only
Speaker 1: just a couple of years ago, actually really like two
Speaker 1: thousand nine, I want to say, um, but but when
Speaker 1: I was first using it, I feel like a lot
Speaker 1: of people were moving there from live journal, and therefore
Speaker 1: we're using it like they were using live journal. They
Speaker 1: were posting a lot more notes and more long form content,
Speaker 1: and and over time I think that that's really shortened
Speaker 1: down to to this sort of micro blogging that's occurring today. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and we'll talk more about that when we get into
Speaker 1: what the state of the blogosphere is today. But yeah,
Speaker 1: in those early days, it was really exciting because what
Speaker 1: this blogging world did was it opened up the world
Speaker 1: of publishing in a way online publishing to an enormous
Speaker 1: crowd of a huge audience. It gave voices to people
Speaker 1: who you who you might never have read anything from before,
Speaker 1: and also let you It wasn't until that Opened Diary launched,
Speaker 1: which started really allowing people to comment on other people's blogs.
Speaker 1: Before then, it was a little bit like the way
Speaker 1: that tumbler is today, Like you might see something and
Speaker 1: then take that link and repost it and post your
Speaker 1: own comments about it and start a conversation that way.
Speaker 1: But it wasn't. It wasn't until it was really um
Speaker 1: that there were tools out there for for incorporating comments
Speaker 1: and to create a dialogue as opposed to just shouting
Speaker 1: into the atmosphere and hoping people are hearing you, right, um, yeah,
Speaker 1: And that's another really key component to what makes blogs
Speaker 1: so enduring. And uh, you know, what was also interesting
Speaker 1: to me is that blogs were being used not just
Speaker 1: by by folks like like me and you, Lauren, before
Speaker 1: we were big time podcast stars. They were being used
Speaker 1: by you know, by by actual celebrities or by writers, journalists,
Speaker 1: people who already had outlets, but they were using blogs
Speaker 1: to express themselves in ways that they might not otherwise
Speaker 1: be able to, or to provide more context to whatever
Speaker 1: it was they were doing. We even began to see
Speaker 1: early early on companies get interested in blogs. It became
Speaker 1: a possible outlet for a company to have a dialogue
Speaker 1: with either customers or potential customers, right the same way
Speaker 1: that it gave people that you might have never listened
Speaker 1: to a face on the internet. It also gave company
Speaker 1: companies kind of latched onto it and said like, hey,
Speaker 1: we can use this to to allow people to see
Speaker 1: us at a more ground level, a more human level. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And and and in fact, a lot of companies, especially in
Speaker 1: the tech sector, which again should be no surprise, but
Speaker 1: in the tech sector, a lot of companies began to
Speaker 1: allow their their employees to blog and even created or
Speaker 1: provided tools for them to do so. Not that it
Speaker 1: was a compulsory thing, but they were allowed to and
Speaker 1: they didn't necessarily have to blog about what it was
Speaker 1: they were doing. So it wasn't like a corporate sponsored
Speaker 1: you need to go out here and message that this
Speaker 1: next product that we're coming out with is awesome and
Speaker 1: let people know. It was more like, no, if we
Speaker 1: give them the tools, they'll they'll they'll do it. They'll
Speaker 1: do it themselves. They'll they'll talk about what they're interested in.
Speaker 1: Occasionally that might be something that we are specifically doing,
Speaker 1: but if it's not, that's okay. And uh, and so
Speaker 1: it really helped engender the spirit of blogging. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and you know, I don't think that I don't think
Speaker 1: that the original creators of all of this, expected it
Speaker 1: to to grow in such a ridiculous way. Um, I've
Speaker 1: got a quote from from me from Mega Horahan, and
Speaker 1: I really hope that's how you say her name. She said,
Speaker 1: we joked about the idea that people could start change
Speaker 1: in far away places and revolutionary things would happen. But
Speaker 1: to see that it's actually happening, I get a thrill.
Speaker 1: I see it everywhere. Yeah, and and that's that's so
Speaker 1: much fun. I mean, that's and and to really understand
Speaker 1: and why blogging is important and to understand its impact,
Speaker 1: all you really have to do. You know, we've been
Speaker 1: talking about, well we all know what happened in two thousand.
Speaker 1: That's the dot com crash. So you have all these
Speaker 1: big web companies that started up and uh and and
Speaker 1: they had inflated stock prices, they didn't have proven revenue
Speaker 1: generating models. There are all these issues that that combined
Speaker 1: to make a bubble that burst, and then you had
Speaker 1: the dot com crash and as a result, lots of
Speaker 1: different companies went under. This is also the dividing line
Speaker 1: between what some people call web one point oh and
Speaker 1: web two point oh. Now those are mainly marketing terms. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's no riley thing. It's sort of like a buzzword.
Speaker 1: But but it does give you a useful shorthand to
Speaker 1: talk about certain aspects of web pages that became um
Speaker 1: more important than others. So, for example, the old static formula,
Speaker 1: that web page that you put up and you only
Speaker 1: occasionally tweak but you don't really have any dynamic elements
Speaker 1: on it, that was shown to not be a very viable,
Speaker 1: long lasting strategy. It was much more interesting to have
Speaker 1: a dynamic kind of web page where things were changing.
Speaker 1: It gave people a reason to return to that website.
Speaker 1: It gave it which gives you more ad revenue by
Speaker 1: the way, and and I mean, obviously money is one
Speaker 1: of those things that's underlying all this, but even beyond that,
Speaker 1: it creates that amazing thing that all companies strive for engagement,
Speaker 1: where people are wilfully coming to your website and engaging
Speaker 1: with you, hopefully in a positive way. And so the
Speaker 1: blogs show they had these elements built in. Like there
Speaker 1: was the element of expression. You are able to blog
Speaker 1: about whatever you like. You can change dynamically. You can
Speaker 1: update several times a day or a week or whatever.
Speaker 1: However your sched to allows and like you were pointing out, Lauren,
Speaker 1: the common ing feature was a huge part of what
Speaker 1: web two point oh is all about. It is this
Speaker 1: idea that there is a dialogue, it's not just a
Speaker 1: one way communication. Another company that we talked about recently, Amazon,
Speaker 1: one of the reasons that that people cite it as
Speaker 1: a as a survivor of the dot com crash was
Speaker 1: because it had that customer reviews. Yeah, which that that's
Speaker 1: one of those elements that is often associated with web
Speaker 1: two point oh. So blogging was really kind of a
Speaker 1: an ideal representation of what web two point oh was
Speaker 1: all about. And uh, I think that's one of the
Speaker 1: reasons why the trend was not only surviving through the
Speaker 1: dot com crash era, it was thriving so Unlike the
Speaker 1: traditional websites that uh that that did not do so
Speaker 1: well or the startup companies that ended up floundering, blogging
Speaker 1: continued to do pretty well. And we're gonna talk in
Speaker 1: a second all about how it blossomed from that little
Speaker 1: bitty plant of promise back in two thousand into the
Speaker 1: enormous industry it is today. But before we do that,
Speaker 1: let's take a quick break to thank our sponsor. Okay,
Speaker 1: so back to the discussion about blogging. So around two
Speaker 1: thousand we had the dot com crash and uh, and
Speaker 1: blogging makes its way through mainly because again this is
Speaker 1: a user generated sort of platform. It's it's not reliant
Speaker 1: on some other company other other than the fact that
Speaker 1: the platforms themselves were developed by other companies, right. But
Speaker 1: you know, and someone has to host that web space,
Speaker 1: and there was all kinds of advertising that was worked
Speaker 1: in slowly over the years. So in two thousand three,
Speaker 1: Google acquired Piro, which again were the people who had
Speaker 1: launched Blogger, and they actually made Blogger free to use
Speaker 1: at that point, right right. I think before then, well
Speaker 1: that there had been paid tiers. I think most most
Speaker 1: blogging platforms had paid tiers. There there was some kind
Speaker 1: of free for use thing and then a premium users
Speaker 1: us get extra space, etcetera. Right right right? Um? Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: that and that was huge. I mean, with Google behind
Speaker 1: the the company that created a blogger, then that meant
Speaker 1: that it definitely raised the visibility even beyond what it
Speaker 1: already was. Yeah, it raised the visibility enough that by
Speaker 1: two thousand four, um, there are about ten million blogs
Speaker 1: in action around the world. Um and blog in fact,
Speaker 1: became Miriam Webster's word of the year. It was those
Speaker 1: you know, it was a buzzword. Was everyone was was
Speaker 1: kind of participating this. Uh. It was the year of
Speaker 1: the US presidential election, and both major political parties gave
Speaker 1: credentials to bloggers at their conventions. Well, we'll get into
Speaker 1: some discussions about blogging versus journalism, I'm sure, because there
Speaker 1: are a lot of discussions to be had. Uh, keeping
Speaker 1: in mind that some journalists are bloggers. Some some bloggers
Speaker 1: have graduated if you want to call it, or maybe
Speaker 1: it's a lateral move. It's a different things that to
Speaker 1: be a blogger, you just need a platform. Now, to
Speaker 1: be a great blogger, you need lots of talent and
Speaker 1: thoughts exactly, but you but really just to be a blogger.
Speaker 1: Anyone with an access to a platform can be a blogger,
Speaker 1: you know. But to be a blogger who who creates
Speaker 1: newsworthy or at least information that is interesting to read
Speaker 1: and is useful, then you have to have this talent
Speaker 1: and ability. Um and and journalists, true journalists, if we're
Speaker 1: using the word the way it was meant to be used,
Speaker 1: have to go through quite a bit of training to
Speaker 1: get to a point where they are able to craft
Speaker 1: a story properly. Um. And you know, I'm not saying
Speaker 1: that that that I idealized journalists or I don't consider
Speaker 1: myself a journalist. I'm a writer. I'm not a journalist.
Speaker 1: I don't think even I don't think I'm even a writer.
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, it's as I read some cool
Speaker 1: stuff online and then I say it to you guys,
Speaker 1: hopefully relatively pretty ways. But but yeah, there there is
Speaker 1: a difference, right journalism, especially if you're talking about investigative journalism,
Speaker 1: that there's a very specific set of skills that go
Speaker 1: along with that. And it's a discipline. And I dropped
Speaker 1: out of journalism in school, so you you know about it.
Speaker 1: You you you lack all the discipline you need because
Speaker 1: you didn't That's okay. I never went to journalism school,
Speaker 1: and yet I was occasionally put into the role of
Speaker 1: journalists and I learned how hard that job is. And
Speaker 1: so there's there's not I don't know if it's as
Speaker 1: pronounced now as it used to be, but I remember
Speaker 1: the first time I went to c e. S. There's
Speaker 1: the reporters section, the press section, and then they had
Speaker 1: a blogger lounge, and your badge determined which of those
Speaker 1: you went into, whether it was the press lounge or
Speaker 1: the blogger lounge. And it just felt like there was
Speaker 1: this crazy division there, some class division. I'm picturing free
Speaker 1: martinis and and sorts of things and press side and
Speaker 1: exactly I got the press badge. Yeah, so I was
Speaker 1: in the press section and and I didn't know any better.
Speaker 1: I didn't know blogging from journalism. I was. I was
Speaker 1: a writer for How Stuff Works, which was, you know,
Speaker 1: writing articles. Uh, But even then, I felt like there
Speaker 1: was a bit of classism there. Um. I think that
Speaker 1: might be less so today. And part of that is
Speaker 1: the changing nature of blogging. And and again we'll talk
Speaker 1: about that. But two thousand four, when that that era
Speaker 1: you're talking about, that was also the same year that
Speaker 1: Technicoty released their State of the Blogger Sphere report. Right
Speaker 1: well around around that election, rather Gate happened. And this
Speaker 1: was when I don't know if you remember this or not,
Speaker 1: but this this is when um CBS wound up redacting
Speaker 1: a report that had been made off of unauthenticated documents
Speaker 1: after blogs challenged it. And that's crazy, I mean, I mean,
Speaker 1: that's that's wonderful. I mean that is driving investigative journalists well.
Speaker 1: And there was also the year that we saw started
Speaker 1: seeing reports on events be four of the mainstream media
Speaker 1: picked it up. So bloggers would, especially for very very
Speaker 1: niche oriented blogs. There was, um, there were these blog
Speaker 1: blogs that were all about bicycles, right, so they're all
Speaker 1: about bicycling. You wouldn't think that this would be a
Speaker 1: blog that would break a news story, but they did.
Speaker 1: Back in two thousand three two four. Uh, there's a
Speaker 1: bike lock company, uh, and they create a product called kryptonite.
Speaker 1: And back at this time that particular lock, this Kryptonite lock,
Speaker 1: it was discovered that you could pick the lock using uh,
Speaker 1: pretty handily available materials and without too much trouble. This
Speaker 1: is a huge deal. I mean, this is a company
Speaker 1: that's marketing its product as being something to secure your bike.
Speaker 1: And anyone who owns a bike knows like these can
Speaker 1: be really expensive and and and very attractive targets for thieves.
Speaker 1: So when that information broke in the blogs, it was
Speaker 1: in the blogosphere for like a week before the mainstream
Speaker 1: media picked up the story. So we're already seeing, even
Speaker 1: in these early days, that blogs are playing a role
Speaker 1: in breaking the news, not just you know, regurgitating it,
Speaker 1: which is again another common perception of blogs is that
Speaker 1: they'll they'll look at some news reports only re reporting
Speaker 1: everything right, right, not adding any other commentary, because that's
Speaker 1: not what people do all the time on the internet. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's not that's not entirely true. But um, but so
Speaker 1: so what did what did this technicraty report this first inaugural?
Speaker 1: The first thing it said was that the first inaugural.
Speaker 1: The first thing it said was that from June two
Speaker 1: thousand three to October two thousand four, the number of
Speaker 1: blogs increased by a factor of eight eight times the
Speaker 1: number of blogs, so so in in uh, you know,
Speaker 1: a year's time essentially, um. And that they reported that
Speaker 1: twelve thousand new blogs were being created each day, not
Speaker 1: blog posts, blogs, so it said there's an averagely it
Speaker 1: averaged out to a new blog created every seven point
Speaker 1: four seconds. Four hundred thousand posts were being created each day,
Speaker 1: which averages out to four point six uh posts per second,
Speaker 1: so not you know, not every four point six seconds,
Speaker 1: four point six posts every second. We're going up now.
Speaker 1: They did also point out that just under half of
Speaker 1: the blogs that they were tracking um about them had
Speaker 1: not had an update in the last three months, which
Speaker 1: that's a That's another another facet of blogging is that
Speaker 1: it's something that a lot of people get into and
Speaker 1: they experiment with and then maybe lose interest with. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: not everyone obviously, but there's there's It's definitely one of
Speaker 1: those things that a lot of people try and then
Speaker 1: a smaller percentage stick with it. And and with any
Speaker 1: with any daily journaling kind of habit, I think you know,
Speaker 1: it takes what like sixty six days of doing something
Speaker 1: in a row before your brain really like an average
Speaker 1: of that, before your brain really kicks into a habit
Speaker 1: something something like that. Yeah, And and most bloggers even today,
Speaker 1: if you follow the the different metrics that technicrati UH
Speaker 1: ends up following, don't blog once a day. They're blogging
Speaker 1: maybe three times a week. So you know, you're talking
Speaker 1: about it takes even longer for you to build that
Speaker 1: in if it's it's something you actually have to think about,
Speaker 1: it's not something that you're just you know, compelled to do.
Speaker 1: But yeah, that there were some interesting things from that
Speaker 1: first UH State of the Blogosphere. Their last, by the way,
Speaker 1: State of the Blogosphere was in eleven. And the reason
Speaker 1: why that was the last one is that the nature
Speaker 1: of blogging was changing so much that Technorati came to
Speaker 1: the conclusion that calling the report the State of the
Speaker 1: Blogosphere was no longer truly accurate. Yeah, yeah, that it
Speaker 1: was just that it doesn't encompass what's really going on
Speaker 1: because social networking has caused such a huge disruption in
Speaker 1: the way that that individuals and companies and organizations approach
Speaker 1: online interaction that blogging was too narrow a focus. However,
Speaker 1: in that report, uh, they identified bloggers and they put
Speaker 1: them into five categories. So your five categories of bloggers
Speaker 1: are hobbyists DING, part time professionals DING, full time professionals DING,
Speaker 1: corporate ding, and entrepreneurs DING. And so out of those
Speaker 1: five different types, they said that the hobbyists were the
Speaker 1: vast majority. They represented six of the blogging population. So
Speaker 1: these are people with personal blogs. It may be about
Speaker 1: their own lives, it may be about their community, it
Speaker 1: may be about specific interest they have, but it's it's
Speaker 1: a hobby. It's not their job. The part time and
Speaker 1: full time professionals, uh, they were only getting a small
Speaker 1: amount of money from blogging. Like in almost every case,
Speaker 1: blogging was not their prime source of income, right, right,
Speaker 1: because that's really difficult. For example, you know, I've had
Speaker 1: that blogger blog for a few years. I have made
Speaker 1: a grand total of I think twenty two dollars and
Speaker 1: eight cents on advertising on its. Well, you are below
Speaker 1: the average the mean, Well, I should say you blow
Speaker 1: the mean the mean income non salary. So this is
Speaker 1: this is someone who's making money from their blog. But
Speaker 1: there it's not a sound it's not part of their
Speaker 1: their professional role. So it's you can't because otherwise you
Speaker 1: have to figure out, like, well, what percentage of your
Speaker 1: salary is at, and that would be impossible. But but
Speaker 1: for people who are making money directly from blogging, the
Speaker 1: mean salary in seventeen thousand dollars seventeen thousand one dollars,
Speaker 1: so seventeen grand a year. Oh, I mean, you know
Speaker 1: that's that's not good. But you know, next next to
Speaker 1: my twenty two dollars, that's pretty okay. I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: I'm and granted I blog, maybe you can you can
Speaker 1: go find it if you really want to know. It's
Speaker 1: I blog maybe three times a year these days. So
Speaker 1: I assume that they're posting more often than that, but
Speaker 1: right right, um, probably. But the the other elements of
Speaker 1: the report that were kind of interesting to me report
Speaker 1: where that so the professional bloggers were about eighteen percent
Speaker 1: of the overall blogging population, corporate bloggers about eight percent um.
Speaker 1: And that could be that it was corporate bloggers where
Speaker 1: identify as people who blogging was part of their job,
Speaker 1: but it was probably not the primary, uh job role
Speaker 1: they had. It was just something they had in addition
Speaker 1: to everything else they do, right, I imagine, especially by
Speaker 1: two thousand and eleven, more people were being hired on
Speaker 1: as a social media experts uh, as an umbrella rather
Speaker 1: than just bloggers. How you would come to that new
Speaker 1: social media at your year it's the entrepreneurs made up
Speaker 1: about so corporate eight percent entrepreneurs. But then you think, okay, well,
Speaker 1: if you are someone who's your your role is to
Speaker 1: create new business, like you are a visionary who's out
Speaker 1: there to try and build something that did not exist before,
Speaker 1: blogging is a great outlet to be able to connect
Speaker 1: with people. Absolutely, yeah. It lets you get your personality
Speaker 1: out there and kind of build yourself into that, you know,
Speaker 1: hopefully rock star status that people are going to want
Speaker 1: your products because they're your products, not just because they're
Speaker 1: cool products. I mean hopefully that too, right, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: to identify with like a particular lifestyle or personality type,
Speaker 1: that kind of thing. Um. Yeah, And and they Tangnaratti
Speaker 1: also broke down some demographics. Uh. This is all based
Speaker 1: off surveys that Technaroti put out too. So when I
Speaker 1: give these percentages, it's based upon the survey responses they received.
Speaker 1: They may not be truly reflective of reality, right, but
Speaker 1: but I know the people who responded. Three fifths of
Speaker 1: them were mail so uh so more than half of
Speaker 1: the respondents are mail. Uh. And most of them were
Speaker 1: between the ages of twenty and forty four. One third
Speaker 1: of them were over forty four, so uh not as
Speaker 1: many younger bloggers. Uh. And in fact, that might be
Speaker 1: an interesting thing to watch in the future to see
Speaker 1: if blogging becomes less important over time as the as
Speaker 1: the population ages, because it may be that younger people
Speaker 1: don't pick up blogging at all and they adopt some
Speaker 1: other format. Uh. And we'll talk a little bit about
Speaker 1: some of that. Yeah. Well, just just another quick fact
Speaker 1: in there. Um. As of two thousand and ten, according
Speaker 1: to a Pew Internet research blogging was in decline among
Speaker 1: twelve to thirty three year olds, but on the rise
Speaker 1: among year olds. Yeah, yeah, there you go, and uh
Speaker 1: it says, uh the the report from Technology I'm going
Speaker 1: to quote directly here. It said a large number of
Speaker 1: respondents who are blogging more are driven by both personal
Speaker 1: and professional benefits to do so, along with their interactions
Speaker 1: with their audience. Many corporate bloggers and entrepreneurs say they
Speaker 1: are blogging more because it has proven to be valuable
Speaker 1: for promoting their business and also valuable to their profession,
Speaker 1: which is respondents. And and that they noticed that people
Speaker 1: who said they were not blogging as much mainly cited
Speaker 1: the reason of I need more time, like's it takes
Speaker 1: up so much time and I don't want to sacrifice
Speaker 1: that time. I need to spend time with my family
Speaker 1: for those people who you know value that I don't.
Speaker 1: I don't know any of those. Or I need to
Speaker 1: spend more time on Twitter, or I need to spend
Speaker 1: becausit my wife's blog with this point is what I do.
Speaker 1: UM anyway, that I found it really an interesting report,
Speaker 1: especially when you start breaking down those demographics. And now
Speaker 1: today they have Technarotti does a new kind of report.
Speaker 1: It's not again not called the State of the blog
Speaker 1: is Fear anymore. Now, it's called the Digital Influence Report,
Speaker 1: and they identify uh, entities, whether they are people or
Speaker 1: organizations or whatever, that they call influencers, and then they
Speaker 1: look at how the influencers are using various outlets on
Speaker 1: the Internet to connect to their audiences. And blogging is
Speaker 1: one of those outlets. It's not the only one, it's
Speaker 1: still one of the most popular ones that are being
Speaker 1: used by companies right now. And uh, it's interesting to me.
Speaker 1: I was looking at their their statistics. They say that
Speaker 1: eight scent of the top influencers blog for themselves. So
Speaker 1: even if they're not blogging for their company or whatever
Speaker 1: right they are, they do maintain a blog. And out
Speaker 1: of the ones who are blogging, of them have more
Speaker 1: than one blog, but fewer than six, so between between
Speaker 1: two and five blogs that they maintain themselves. And um
Speaker 1: and out of all the people who are blogging, a
Speaker 1: six of them prefer to use text still to blog,
Speaker 1: so they're still writing out these posts use video. So
Speaker 1: video blogging. While I think of it as being this
Speaker 1: huge thing, only a tiny percentage of all bloggers are
Speaker 1: really using it. I'm kind of the opposite. I always
Speaker 1: think of it as a very fringe sort of thing.
Speaker 1: But but that's because I don't like my computer to
Speaker 1: make noise at me. So yeah, I don't listen, I
Speaker 1: don't watch. I don't watch as many videos as perhaps
Speaker 1: I think it's because I know a lot of video
Speaker 1: bloggers at this point, and so it's it's just it's
Speaker 1: just sample. Yeah, it's just always in front of me.
Speaker 1: So that's why, that's why I think of it as being,
Speaker 1: you know, a larger thing. And then only four use audio.
Speaker 1: So we're in a we're in an elite for you,
Speaker 1: although what we do is not really blogging, right, No, no,
Speaker 1: it's not. It's it's not it's well, it's probably more
Speaker 1: personal than than a lot of you guys want to hear.
Speaker 1: Sometimes apologize for that, but but but actually, I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, the entire point of blogging is personal. Way
Speaker 1: back in two thousand six, Time named their person of
Speaker 1: the Year. You, Yeah, I remember, I remember people getting
Speaker 1: a little snarky about that. People on the Internet got snarky.
Speaker 1: Well not just on the internet, but yes, particularly on
Speaker 1: the Internet. Yes, but it was not restricted to the Internet.
Speaker 1: Well sure, but you know, just just as a kind
Speaker 1: of signpost of of how big it was. Then, I
Speaker 1: think that that the fact that that that a publication
Speaker 1: like Time picking that up. Yes, well it was it
Speaker 1: was our time. Literally, I'm just gonna I'm I'm shaking
Speaker 1: my head. There should be some kind of sound effect
Speaker 1: for when Lauren shakes her head that Time was on
Speaker 1: our side. Yes it was. It just makes me think
Speaker 1: that you're that demon from Fallen This is bad. Well,
Speaker 1: I haven't thought about that in a long time, I
Speaker 1: speaking of Time. Sorry for that all that. That was
Speaker 1: a ridiculous, uh little tangent. But yeah, the changing nature
Speaker 1: of blogging is is happening right now. I mean we're
Speaker 1: seeing lots of other products coming out that are making
Speaker 1: blogging transformative. So things like tumbler. Oh yeah, yeah, which
Speaker 1: which debuted in two thousand and seven, I believe, Yes,
Speaker 1: I found it then. Yeah, it's it's actually been around
Speaker 1: for a few years, quite a few years now when
Speaker 1: you think about it. But it's it's like I really
Speaker 1: wasn't aware of Tumbler. I mean, this makes me a
Speaker 1: terrible tech guy, right, but I wasn't really aware of
Speaker 1: it until a couple of years ago. I don't. I
Speaker 1: don't have data on when I on when I launched.
Speaker 1: I think I probably launched my first tumbler around two
Speaker 1: thousand eleven, I think the same year that I went
Speaker 1: to a WordPress. So yes, another another platform that a
Speaker 1: lot of bloggers have adopted. The interesting thing I find
Speaker 1: about a lot of the platforms you see today are
Speaker 1: that they give you a great deal of flexibility and
Speaker 1: how your your blog appears to the to the viewers.
Speaker 1: So you aren't you know. When we think back to
Speaker 1: the live journal days, there was only so much customization
Speaker 1: you could do. If you could code your own if
Speaker 1: you wanted to, you could always get back into the
Speaker 1: HTML and do what you wanted if you knew how
Speaker 1: to do that or uh yeah, yeah, yea one yeah.
Speaker 1: Once you got back into the back end, you could
Speaker 1: you could alter it a bit. But even even with that,
Speaker 1: there was a certain kind of structure that, you know,
Speaker 1: when you saw it, you'd think, oh, they must be
Speaker 1: using live journal, you know. But but when you get
Speaker 1: into some of the modern blogging tools, you might visit
Speaker 1: a site and have you know, not even realize that
Speaker 1: it's built on one of these platforms because they are
Speaker 1: that versatile. Yeah, there are. They're actually sixty one million,
Speaker 1: seven thousand, hundred and fourteen word press sites currently on
Speaker 1: the Internet. I bet that at that number change between
Speaker 1: the time you said it and the time that people
Speaker 1: heard it. I'm absolutely sure. I mean, and to be fair,
Speaker 1: a lot of those are corporate. I mean, we ourselves
Speaker 1: have a couple of corporate WordPress sites. Yeah yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: and uh and so I mean it's clearly really revolutionize
Speaker 1: this whole process. And then you have other tools out
Speaker 1: there too, like Pinterest, which isn't really a blogging platform blogging. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, it allows you to post new things and
Speaker 1: to comment on other people's posts kind of sort. It's
Speaker 1: it's mostly um kind of mean sharing the limit and
Speaker 1: I think that you know, I don't know, it's it's
Speaker 1: the state of blogging is very very short these days,
Speaker 1: and you know, people want to be able to do
Speaker 1: things very quickly and to consume things very quickly. I think.
Speaker 1: So you do have some pretty big sites that have,
Speaker 1: uh that are a cross between a blog and say
Speaker 1: an online magazine, so that they're updating more frequently than
Speaker 1: a magazine. Would you know, traditional magazine. You think of
Speaker 1: it coming out on a monthly mon flee basis something
Speaker 1: like that. But then you've got websites out there that
Speaker 1: have really flashy uh interfaces and design, and so they
Speaker 1: kind of give you that magazine field, but they're updating
Speaker 1: on a daily basis, multiple times a day. So I'm
Speaker 1: thinking of things like the Verge, which is an example
Speaker 1: I use all the time. But it's because I genuinely
Speaker 1: go to that site a lot. It's very it's very
Speaker 1: well done, and and so you know, it has elements
Speaker 1: of blogging in it. I wouldn't call everyone they're you know, uh,
Speaker 1: just a straight up blogger. Some of them, you know,
Speaker 1: maybe the term journalist is more relevant. I mean. And
Speaker 1: here's another interesting thing I found about blogging. A lot
Speaker 1: of the people who responded to the surveys and technicraty
Speaker 1: identified themselves as being uh people who had worked in
Speaker 1: traditional media at some point, um like professional full time bloggers,
Speaker 1: and half of all corporate bloggers said that they had
Speaker 1: worked for a monthly magazine in the past. So slightly
Speaker 1: more than half of these professionals at some point or
Speaker 1: another traditional journalism. Some of them might have been also,
Speaker 1: we're blogging at the same time as working at them.
Speaker 1: But yeah, it's done a big surprise because the public
Speaker 1: publishing world has gone through such tumultuous uh issues in
Speaker 1: the past few years. We've seen publication houses closed down,
Speaker 1: We've seen companies really downsize, so those people in the
Speaker 1: downfall of print and and even yes, the great paper
Speaker 1: revolution of twenty oh nine and I made up um yeah, no,
Speaker 1: but no, there really has been a lot of of uh,
Speaker 1: you know, turnaround because we've seen a lot of layoffs
Speaker 1: things like that. So um, journalists, many journalists have turned
Speaker 1: to the blogging world because I mean, that's that's where
Speaker 1: their skill set is, and this provides them the opportunity
Speaker 1: to continue the work that they've trained for and that
Speaker 1: they love. Yeah, and and they still want to mean
Speaker 1: people do still write and consume long form. I mean
Speaker 1: I always tag them long reads with with a tiny
Speaker 1: bit of ironic eyebrow involved when I when I post
Speaker 1: links like this on Twitter. But you know, it's it's
Speaker 1: as as busy as everybody is. I think that there
Speaker 1: is always going to be room for for a little
Speaker 1: bit of that of that good old blogging style. I agree,
Speaker 1: and uh, you know, it's it's about once a year.
Speaker 1: I think back in two thousand eleven, it was inc
Speaker 1: five hundred reported that blogging had leveled off and was
Speaker 1: in decline among its its top companies. And you know this,
Speaker 1: this sponded entire internet full of blogging is dead. OMG
Speaker 1: kind of kind of articles and buzz And I think
Speaker 1: that what really summarizes that is Mitch Joel of Twist
Speaker 1: Image suggested, is blogging dead or are useless blogs dying? Yeah? Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's still plenty of sites out there that I really
Speaker 1: consider blogs and they're doing quite well. And there's still
Speaker 1: a lot of people who are independently blogging, but I
Speaker 1: think they do get you know, people get weeded out.
Speaker 1: Like if you don't get a lot of visitors to
Speaker 1: your blog, it could mean one of many things. It
Speaker 1: might just mean that your blog has low visibility, and
Speaker 1: it doesn't necessarily mean that you're a poor writer or
Speaker 1: anything like that. It just means that, you know, people
Speaker 1: are having a hard time finding your voice, or it
Speaker 1: could mean that you're not a great writer. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's it's something that's a possibility. It could be that
Speaker 1: you know, you're not striking a chord. And when I
Speaker 1: say you, I don't mean you, listener. I'm sure you
Speaker 1: are an amazing la hopefully pathetically Yeah so. But yeah,
Speaker 1: And if you're wondering why we even brought this up,
Speaker 1: the reason why we brought it up is that, uh,
Speaker 1: one of the social platforms I'm on that I'm sure
Speaker 1: many of our listeners are on is linked In, and uh,
Speaker 1: every now and then, you know, LinkedIn gave you the
Speaker 1: ability to endorse people for certain skills. And I had
Speaker 1: received some responses about people endorsing me for different things,
Speaker 1: and I thought, you know, I hardly ever do that,
Speaker 1: and I really should. I should pay it forward because
Speaker 1: I know a lot of these people, and I know
Speaker 1: what they're capable of. I should endorse them for the
Speaker 1: things I know that they do. I could not believe
Speaker 1: how many of my my links listed blogging as one
Speaker 1: of their skills. Like, like it was back when I
Speaker 1: made a resume, saying that you had a proficiency in
Speaker 1: Microsoft Office was the thing. Today it looks like it's blogging. Wow,
Speaker 1: that you just I'm not sure if you've if you
Speaker 1: told me this before, about this, this genesis of this topic,
Speaker 1: I have forgotten it completely because this is actively blowing
Speaker 1: my mind. Yeah, and it was just one of those
Speaker 1: things where as I was going down endorsing people for
Speaker 1: the stuff I knew, because I mean, I'm only going
Speaker 1: to endorse them for the stuff I know that they do, right,
Speaker 1: I Mean, my credibility is something I take very seriously,
Speaker 1: despite all despite all outward appearances. But yeah, I was
Speaker 1: I was going through and I'm just like, wow, I
Speaker 1: have never known this person. I mean, I'm sure they
Speaker 1: have blogged, but I'm unfamiliar with their work. I didn't
Speaker 1: know that that was one of their like top five
Speaker 1: professional quality. Yeah, and and it was. It was repeatedly
Speaker 1: popping up, and I think it's almost became like the
Speaker 1: catch all, like better throw blogging in there. I mean, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's that's crazy to me. I mean, you know it
Speaker 1: certainly not begrudging anyone who does it, because a lot
Speaker 1: of people are way more serious about blogging than I am.
Speaker 1: I've always used it as a very personal, very hobbyist
Speaker 1: kind of thing. Most of the time, I'm talking about
Speaker 1: things that are completely off color or ridiculous, or I'm
Speaker 1: just talking about OCTOPI I don't know, you know, it's
Speaker 1: nothing octopus. An octopus can change its color and shape
Speaker 1: and texture. That's very quickly, less than a second. You
Speaker 1: clearly have blogged about this. No, I was the same
Speaker 1: way like I was using until I worked for How
Speaker 1: Stuff Works. I would use blogs essentially to I have
Speaker 1: some ridiculous thought and I would have feel like a
Speaker 1: compulsion to post it somewhere. So yeah, I honestly haven't
Speaker 1: gone back and visited. The other thing is that when
Speaker 1: I visited those old blog posts, I would read them
Speaker 1: and think, man, I used to be funny. I'm like
Speaker 1: that every five years, be five years, I can go
Speaker 1: back and look at what I did five years ago
Speaker 1: and think, Man, what happened? I used to be I
Speaker 1: used to be really good. Probably just I just don't
Speaker 1: remember anything that I've written more than three days ago. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's why I have to go back and reach it.
Speaker 1: It's like a goldfish. I'm like, oh man, this is great,
Speaker 1: oh man, this is great. Well, we think blogging is great.
Speaker 1: We There are a lot of blogs that I visit
Speaker 1: on a regular basis, and whenever I discover a new one,
Speaker 1: I'm always excited. There's a couple of regional ones that
Speaker 1: I go to all the time here in Atlanta because
Speaker 1: it's a great way of keeping up with news about
Speaker 1: various communities and when that Mexican restaurant's finally gonna open. Um.
Speaker 1: It's a topic that we're really interested in. But if
Speaker 1: you guys have any topics you think that we should cover,
Speaker 1: I highly recommend you get in touch with us. Our
Speaker 1: email address is tex Stuff at Discovery dot com, or
Speaker 1: you can get in touch with us on Twitter or
Speaker 1: Facebook or a handle. There is text up hs W
Speaker 1: and Lauren and I will talk to you again really
Speaker 1: soon for more on this and thousands of other topics.
Speaker 1: Does it how stuff works dot com, um p check