Photo Credit: Sweet Juniper
I miss blogging.
I know a number of people have written over the last few months that with the rise of social networks like Twitter and Facebook, that people are blogging less. This isn’t about that.
This about the lack of story telling or opinion in many of today’s personal tech / geek blogs.
The other night I was through a series of blogs posts that gave me an insiders view into what is happening to the housing market in Detroit through the Detroit UnReal Estate and Sweet Juniper blogs. I was able to get a glimpse from the insiders that write into what is happening in Detroit as the American auto industry resets. Sad times. It reminded me of the view I was able to get from the personal blogs of many folks in the tech business in my early days of blogging. In those days my favorite bloggers were the story tellers. These were the folks who through their blogs granted me access to experiences and insights that I did not previously have access too.
In my blogging past I think back to my posts about my youngest daughters hip problems, why I drive a Corvette, being stuck in India, a fun family trip as guests of Farm Aid or Bill Gates announcing his Transition to the Foundation as examples of where I told a story and shared an experience. Truth told, posts like these are my my most popular and my best writing. Somewhere along the way (myself included when I actually do blog), I’ve noticed many of the geek bloggers have become less about telling a story and adding insight into just rehashing the days tech news. In many cases authors just attempting to gain an audience as they rehash and repeat announcements from the popular news blogs like TechCrunch and TechFlash. Their hope? Ride the TechMeme wave and often leaving out any further analysis, insight or perspective. Not a lot of value for the reader.
Not everyone has fallen into this trap Scoble once in awhile still blogs, Jeff Attwood is the gold standard of geek bloggers and I still enjoy reading Dare’s original posts.
So, I wonder if we’ll get the stories back into personal geek blogs? I’m going to start back hee shortly and once again get back into sharing stories and lessons learned from my life.
I’m hopeful you all will too.
In a way I’m glad that the 2nd-gen "social media" have taken the spotlight away from blogging. Because it needs a quiet space in which to mature. A whole lot of people — inside and especially outside the tech and political worlds — can and will enrich their own, and one another’s, personal and professional lives using this medium.
I hope to not fall into this trap. I think of blogs as a great way to communicate to people. This form of communication is super important. The type of communication you can have with people through a blog is beyond much of the social media stuff that is popular today. You can only say so much in 140 characters. Telling stories, communicating, sharing experiences – this is why blogs are important and I hope to see a re-emergence of blogs because of this. I would hate to think people finding importance of sharing experiences, discussing opinions, etc. to become far less important than doing a "tweet".
I couldn’t agree more Jeff! We brits like to ‘tell a good story’ in our blogs, and you are right when you say that giving a post the ‘more personal touch’ gives your readers insights into what is happening elsewhere in the world that they wouldn’t get via any other method. It is as you say, enriching.
The truth is that it is not easy to blog. You write one or two posts but this is not blogging. Real blogging is putting posts regularly for years and not only for month or two. And there is a lot to write about in years. Sometimes the topic becomes so expanded that you have nothing to write about… And the better way (in my opinion) is to wait until something new shows up on the horizon than to write about anything that is not very interesting.
Hey! I found Sweet Juniper last week through either design*spong or Oh Joy!. Either way, I love its posts on feral houses and dogs in Detroit!