Blogging is great
People have, since it started, complained about the fact that there is junk on the web. And as a universal medium, of course, it is important that the web itself doesn't try to decide what is publishable. The way quality works on the web is through links.
It works because reputable writers make links to things they consider reputable sources. So readers, when they find something distasteful or unreliable, don't just hit the back button once, they hit it twice. They remember not to follow links again through the page which took them there. One's chosen starting page, and a nurtured set of bookmarks, are the entrance points, then, to a selected subweb of information which one is generally inclined to trust and find valuable.
A great example of course is the blogging world. Blogs provide a gently evolving network of pointers of interest. As do FOAF files. I've always thought that FOAF could be extended to provide a trust infrastructure for (e..g.) spam filtering and OpenID-style single sign-on and its good to see things happening in that space.
In a recent interview with the Guardian, alas, my attempt to explain this was turned upside down into a "blogging is one of the biggest perils" message. Sigh. I think they took their lead from an unfortunate BBC article, which for some reason stressed concerns about the web rather than excitement, failure modes rather than opportunities. (This happens, because when you launch a Web Science Research Initiative, people ask what the opportunities are and what the dangers are for the future. And some editors are tempted to just edit out the opportunities and headline the fears to get the eyeballs, which is old and boring newspaper practice. We expect better from the Guardian and BBC, generally very reputable sources)
In fact, it is a really positive time for the web. Startups are launching, and being sold [Disclaimer: people I know] again, academics are excited about new systems and ideas, conferences and camps and wikis and chat channels and are hopping with energy, and every morning demands an excruciating choice of which exciting link to follow first.
And, fortunately, we have blogs. We can publish what we actually think, even when misreported.
what a great pleasure ... together on one site with Tim Berners-Lee - the "maker" of the www :-) have i understand it right that aaron schwartz is "sold"??? never know that, but okay maybe at sometime every successful webpage or company is gonna be sold.
i like blogging too but what i don´t like is the "new wave" of rel=nofollow for links. it destroy the fundamentality of the internet (connections, links) and only all about these SEO-Thingy, if i remember right the rel=nofollow is a thing coming from the great search engines? previously to prevent spam but the spam is still out there but the links break away.
i think Tim you must help your baby (internet) a little it in the right direction again before its to late.
best wishes from germany,
Miranda
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Visite me at dmp|cda
Blogging today is practically a "must" for anybody who works on the Web.
Sometimes it's hard to keep it up to date, but it's one of the best ways to
let people know you.
On the other side, these days everybody blogs!
Magic Foro de Alopecia
I really love to blog and to read other peoples blogs worldwide. Since software like wordpress is freely available for everyone blogging is supporting the freedom of speech and we all benefit from the easy exchange of information.
On the other hand blogging led in my homecountry to a new source of income for unemployed lawyers. Since German laws make it possible to charge bloggers for formal mistakes like an incomplete impressum, specific statements or the usage of a copyrighted youtube video. This is called "Abmahnung". Such a mistake can be very expensive for a blogger. One has to pay 600 $ or more. And there are many lawyers in Germany searching the the web for "extra income".... The government is trying to make a law to protect private internet publishers but they are either incompetent or just averse because they are talking about this law since more than 2 years without a result.
I'm really angry about this. But this is no wonder because in our parliamant 60% of the representatives are lawyers....
Bloggers in Germany really have to be careful.
Keep on blogging !
Visit my Ibiza Blog: http://www.e-ibiza.de/blog where I blog about an Island in Spain that I really love.
Visit also my personal Website: www.boruschek.com
About 2 years ago blogging was the sole marketing tool that was used to run geek dinners, and girl geek dinners, since their inception they have started popping up around the world. They are creating changes in perception and a platform for ideas swapping and new ventures being started!
What do you think of blogging as a viral process? I know it's an odd phrase, the reason I ask is because more and more I see blogging and twitter etc as a viral process in terms of one person puts and idea out there that sparks peoples interest and they tell x others who also tell x others and so on. Word of mouth and communities seem to be coming back in a virtual world as well as th real world and are becoming once again key to society and are leading the communication and marketing of ideas and products. Through these communities people group together to create products such as those that your two friends have done.
I guess I am just curious to find out what you think of these thoughts. A few friends and I were talking about community and technology an were it will lead when you start mixing environmental change factors in such as eco-friendly companies.
If you would like to, I'd also like to invite you to speak at a London Girl Geek Dinner at some point in the future at a date and time to suit you. Please do get in touch if you would be interested in it or just catching up at some point.
Blogging is great because it enables me to write down my diary in the internet.
But thanks to the work of the opensource programmers, blogging engines do more than just enabling a web-diary today. In my opinion it is often used more like a community communication tool than like a diary. I.e. the "pages" integration in wordpress now - or the multiblog capabilities of b2evolution. Seems like if the engines are becoming more of a CMS each version.
I use the blogging engine wordpress for my own diary-like techblog, but also I use it to drive a community of young parents - discussing their problems on baby-netz.de. On another plattform I use the b2evolution engine for a multiblog about the new Nintendo Wii Console.
My point is: Blogging is not only a technology for selfish portrayals, it is also a technique to bring people together and join a community in the net.
Best regards to the honorable inventor of the web!
Rainer