Where Do Blogs Go From Here?

from the onward-and-upward dept

Salon is running two (count 'em) articles about blogs today. These are very self-consciously going beyond the standard "journalist talks about blog" article that we've complained about before. In fact, the first article talks about that very issue and says it's time to stop arguing about whether or not blogs compete with journalists, since it's pretty clear they don't. They do, however, tend to annoy lazy journalists, who suddenly find out that they've been caught by people who know more about a subject than they do. The second article, written by the founder of FEED and Plastic, says that we need to take blogs to the next level. He suggests that the argument about them competing with journalists is silly and inaccurate. Instead, blogs can become a competitor of sorts to... Google. I'll admit that I don't think this is an immediately obvious step, but through some convoluted reasoning, the writer works out a system he thinks should be created. He says that blogs should "follow you around" by looking at what you're viewing and then pointing out the various blog commentary on that very item. It's an interesting thought, and certainly could be useful. However, it does ignore the "filtering" element that makes blogs useful. People read blogs partly for the commentary, but also for the filter. If we just use them for the commentary and forget the filter, a lot of the appeal goes away.