Les Jones

Blogging > Blogging Love Fest

From Jeff Jarvis's Buzz Machine comes this quote:

As we scientists say: Blogs are the only medium that can praise itself simply because the audience is the producer and vice versa.

Man's got a point. Most of the people who post in the comments here are other blog authors. For a counterpoint to the self-congratulatory blogging revolution, read John Dvorak's Deconstructing the Blog, published in 2002. Choice excerpts (he's discussing rules for a successful blog):

Blog daily. If you miss a day, use the next day's entire blog entry to apologize profusely. Explain in detail the fascinating adventure you had that caused you to miss a day of blogging. Make sure to rave about how great blogging is and why everyone should blog and how blogging will change the world.

I won't quote the parts about blogs that have "blog" in their name (d'oh!) or the artisty types that use black backgrounds (double d'oh!). For something even closer to home for all of us cross-linking bloggers, read Dvorak's Cult of the Cluetrain Manifesto, which contains this zinger:

In fact the brown-nosing that goes on between bloggers singing each others' praises makes the worst office kiss-ups look tame by comparison. I mention this anomaly since these Cluetrain folks all believe the opposite to be true. Somehow networking like this, according to the Cluetrainees, reveals truth - when in fact it supports and forces the worst kind of conformist behavior.

I'm not expecting to get a lot of inbound links or comments on this post, for obvious reasons.