Is blogging the future of everything?
May 28th 2009 08:10
A few weeks ago I wrote a post here entitled "Will blogging rule the world?" It evoked a lot of discussion, and I have found myself thinking about the question ever since. This opinion piece is the result, looking at changes that the digital age and, in particular, blogging, may bring to many things that we now take for granted. It is the first of a two-part series, with the second instalment to cover media, publishing and opinion leadership.
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Is blogging the future of news, publishing and the world?
To borrow from Mark Twain, reports of the death of newspapers and books have been greatly exaggerated. The world wide web was supposed to finish them off, but it has not done the job any better than radio or television before it.
As part of the Innovations in Newspapers 2009 World Report, released on April 29, Rupert Murdoch wrote that he was optimistic about the future of newspapers, and warned that complacency, rather than new forms of media technology, was the threat. Newspapers that continue to succeed in the digital age will do so, Murdoch said, by developing their traditional relationships with readers, no matter how they are delivered.
"Our success will still depend on the bond of trust between readers and our content, not on how many platforms we use."
Blogging is part of the social media revolution. MySpace and Facebook popularised it, LinkedIn corporatised it, and Twitter is heading into outer space with it. According to Australian futurist and University of Sydney associate Mark Pesce, social media heralds the start of a truly fundamental change, and one most companies have yet to grasp.
"Power flows in large organisations will change," Pesce says. "All their processes and marketing and advertising will change. Business as we thought of it over the 20th century made it to about 2007 and then started to shudder.
"The wheels came off, and the thing that comes out in 2010 or 2012 looks quite different. The power flows in business and how they're talking to customers is all changed."
Pesce sees three waves of change: the sharing of media, the sharing of knowledge and the sharing of power. The first two are "well under way" he says. The third thing, the sharing of power, is the "chasm that we've started to cross right now".
At first glance, the views of Murdoch and Pesce may seem opposed — the newspaper magnate arguing that there's life in the old way, and the futurist who doesn't bother mentioning newspapers at all. There is, however, a common theme, and it is perhaps the one theme to bind the old and the new; the way that news will be presented in future no matter what medium is used for the delivery.
The theme is engagement. It is what Murdoch meant by relationships, and it is the basis of Pesce's motif of sharing. In the new, digital, sharing world of news, the Letters to the Editor column has been promoted to the front page.
Social media is built on a platform of interaction, and engagement is the step up from there for any commercial application — selling anything from news to real estate to widgets which will net you 1,000 new Twitter followers per day.
Among the glittering young actors on the social media stage, the standout engagement star is the blog.
In the run-up to the US presidential election on November 4, 2008, the most read political commentary in America was a blog. Nielsen Online reported that The Huffington Post gained "the most unique readers among all outlets on a list of top 30 news destinations in October (2008)", ranking it ahead of news portals such as CNN. The Huffington Post had about 8 million readers during the election campaign, became the most linked-to blog on the Web. In January 2009, it was valued at about US$200 million.
Go to its web site today and what you see is a newspaper, future style. It looks like an online newspaper, and it reads like a newspaper, but there are two big differences with the online presences of mainstream papers such as The New York Times.
The first difference is The Huffington Post's Blogger Index tab. Click on that and a world of blogs opens, pretty much every one of them written by politicians, well-known political commentators or experts in some field or other. Many of these blogs have daily readerships in six figures, and those that don't will have just as soon as the blogs have been around a little longer and the search engines have a firmer hold. If your blog is accepted for The Huffington Post site, you are virtually guaranteed of that kind of success.
The Huffington Post has evolved from a blog to Blog Central when it comes to American politics and social issues.
The second difference is that The Huffington Post employs approximately 50 staff, an astonishingly small number for a $200 million company. Its blog writers and news gatherers don't work for The Huffington Post — they work for themselves and sell their expertise and views.
There is a telling third difference — at least there was today when we checked — which is that The Huffington Post web site was carrying an advertisement for The New York Times, but we could see no Post ad over at the Times site.
This post appeared first on the Salient Point blog by Chris Champion. Image: "The History of Writing", by Henry Noel Humphreys, 1810-1879; first published in London in 1853 by Ingram, Cooke and Co.
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