Wednesday, April 16, 2003

4 motivations for blogging, with 2 digressions I’ve been ruminating about this topic for several weeks and now I feel inspired to write about it. So why do people blog? For some people, it fits in very well with their day job. This is partly the reason why I blog. As I’ve explained in some of the essays I’ve written about blogging, maintaining a blog is a good way of keeping up with the latest news and technology concerning my profession - being a law librarian. For some people, this goes further. Blogging is becoming a parallel way of publication, which is so important in the academic world. Of course, self-publication will never be as prestigious as peer-reviewed or paid publication. But does this distinction really matter when blogs are offering the most innovative and accessible (read cheap) content and form? I’m sorry, but if I only have x hours per week for professional reading, that time is better spent reading blogs than journals or trade magazines. <Digression1> Of course, I’m a Very Naughty Librarian for saying this. We always push getting the best of both print and online worlds. So why have I turned heretic in this way? I know that blogging is far from perfect. It can be a breeding ground for rumours, half-truths and bad scholarship (I’m guilty of this at times, so I’m allowed to say this). It can be very circular or self-referential. On other hand, established publications aren’t perfect either. They can be expensive, full of ads, and print only publications don’t have hyperlinks (and rarely do their online versions) – footnotes aren’t quite the same. I think that reading online materials with hyperlinks is a more active and engaging process than reading articles in print. Most importantly, more often than not, I am simply not interested in the content which has been selected by publishers. Reading blogs, I am in charge of what I’m reading. I choose which blogs I put in my aggegator, which posts to skim over and which ones to read in detail. This is one of the benefits of information overload. I know that there will always be more things to read than I have time for. I can use this situation to my advantage by letting myself focus in what I’m really interested in. I’m not saying that publishers don’t add any value. They do by paying professionals to write and sometimes selecting interesting articles which I wouldn’t have read otherwise - Salon being a case in point for me, for which I’m very willing to pay. But other bloggers can do this too - and they point me to interesting articles in other publications which I would never read otherwise. All that said, I still do read print journals and trade magazines - because I'm also a bookworm and feel that I should. </Digression1> Some blogs greatly compliment the blogger’s paid career. I know of instances of people being offered real jobs because of the quality of their web logs. Another reason to blog is that it’s good for the ego. I don’t mean this in a derogatory way. For people who think that “ego” or “egotistical” are invariably bad things, think self-esteem instead. I think that most honest & self-aware people who aren't saints would be hard-pressed to deny that the ego boosts can help. It’s nice to read your blog being praised. It’s interesting to see the number of hits & referrers to your blog increase. Of course, I must mention the BlogShares (truly, life is too short to be fixated by such things). Of course, depending on their sensitivity, a blogger’s ego can be hurt by criticism, being delinked or receiving reduced readership. Some people have a thicker skin and are not bothered by this. Other people reduce the likelihood of negative reactions by not going out on a limb or expressing opinions which would be inflammatory to members of their particular blogging community. <Digression2> It’s very hard to define what a blogging community is. I don’t mean anything monolithic such as - “Trent Lott’s racist remarks caused such furor in the Blogging Community that the mainstream media could no longer overlook them.” There are many different blogging communities. They include the formal attempts to establish a blogging community - e.g. Salon blogs, the blawg web ring, various LiveJournal communities etc. But these formal constructions only help facilitate a blog community, they are not essential for a community. I would tentatively say that a blog community consists of those formal or informal relationships between bloggers who frequently read each other’s postings and occasionally point to or comment on them. I would guess that relationships are based on shared viewpoints and personalities. The blogiverse is like the night sky. Stars all over the place, in every direction. Some are bright while others are very faint, some have different colours, and they arranged in constellations. Now, imagine a series of Venn diagrams overlaying these stars. And so the image changes to light rain falling onto a pond. The water's surface is covered with interlinked and concentric circles. Some circles are larger than others, some circles intersect with others, some circles are wholly contained by others. So each blog falls into a number of different communities, some of which may be large, other which might be small or narrow. For example, if it is very important for me to be included in the mainstream law blog community or the library blog community, it is not wise to rant my particular blend of left-wing politics. Because I may alienate myself from the members of these broad communities who have opposing or neutral point of view, and I move to the fringes of the community. On the other hand, my rants may bring me closer to the centre of the smaller communities of lefty lawyer/librarian bloggers. </Digression2> So if you aspire towards the centre of a large mainstream blog community, you can’t be too controversial, particularly about issues which are outside the main focus of that community. Before I finish about blogging and the ego, I must point out this discussion by Jonathon Delacour. Another reason to blog is simply for self-expression. Blogging for self-expression is similar but different from blogging for the ego boost. It’s not hard to imagine situations where self-expression will get you into trouble and cause you to be criticized, delinked or removed from aggregators. The people who blog purely for self-expression are not interested in their readership or number of links, so long as they are saying what they want to say, in the way that they want to say it. Of course, ego can be important to even the most idealistic / artistic bloggers, because what is the purpose of self-expression if nobody is going to read it? But now I’m approaching into questions which have challenged philosophers and artists for centuries, and I don’t want to add another digression. Finally, there are some people who blog for money. I suspect that this will become a trend, as blogging becomes more mainstream. Depending on the financial relationship, this could seriously undermine the ability for self-expression. On the other hand, being paid may confer extra legitimacy and visibility, which could help the ego. Finally, blogging for money could conceivably become a job – which returns to the first motivation I that mentioned. I’m writing all this to understand my own motivations for blogging. I think that I’m motivated in part by my career, my ego and my need for self-expression – but not for money :) I wouldn’t be opposed in principle to blogging for money, so long as it didn’t interfere with my other needs, particularly self-expression. I’m not going to rank how important these three different motivations are for me, because it changes on any given day. I can say that the self-expression motivation is getting more important, but I doubt that the other two motivations are going to disappear. 11:46:20 PM     from How to Save the World's survey of Salon bloggers Q6 How do you gauge the success of your blog?. Most popular answers, in declining order of importance: personal satisfaction, compliments received from others, having fun, buzz (number of hits and ranking), opinions from people I know, number of new visitors, consistency of my writing, number of people who've blogrolled me without my asking, therapeutic value received from blogging. Several of you commented on how easy it is to 'cheat' in number of hits, and how number of hits can sometimes be misleading for other reasons. A few suggested that for that reason the right-hand (number of hits since inception) Salon Ranking column list should be eliminated, or at least cut back to latest-30-days ranking. A few people said the Salon 'community' really hadn't gelled and that we as a group need to do more things proactively to welcome and include fellow 'sloggers', and make Salon blogs a real community. [How to Save the World] Too bad I missed out on that one - my blogging was in a hiatus at the time. 10:59:39 PM     "why I blog" - my thoughts on this are forthcoming PUTTING THINGS IN CONTEXT: WHY I BLOG. One of the great challenges in knowledge sharing, and in asynchronous communication, is to provide your audience with enough context to understand where your message 'comes from' -- what mental models, preconceptions, hidden agendas, historical baggage and motivations filter and taint what you say. Conveying this context makes it easier for the recipient of your message to internalize what you're saying more accurately and fully. It can also prevent misconceptions that lead to argument or disparagement of your point of view. For that reason, I thought it might be helpful to let you know not only who I am (in the sidebar About the Author ), but also why I blog -- what motivates me, on top of a heavy business workload, to spend at least 25 hours a week reading blogs and other resources, and writing my own blog posts. So here goes: I do this for three equally important (to me) reasons: Improve My Writing Skills: I love writing, and always wanted to make a living at it. By reading a lot on many topics, and practicing incessantly, I hope to learn to: write powerful, persuasive essays (like this one of Toby's) that stake out radical positions without sounding strident, write humour (like Dave Barry ), once I figure out what makes humorous writing funny, write clear, motivating, informative and actionable business essays, incorporate these 39 steps from Frederick Barthelme in my fiction writing, and  broaden my eclectic intellectual reach so I have more knowledge to draw on in my writing (the way Mark Woods can). Institute Weblogs in Business: As Chief Knowledge Officer of a large professional services company, I've been grappling with two major cultural obstacles to knowledge sharing - employees' reluctance to contribute their knowledge, and the absence of context sufficient to make knowledge that is contributed easy to assess, internalize and re-use. I think employee weblogs might solve both problems. Environmental Activism: Although the title of this blog is ironic, I am a hopeless idealist and really would like to make the world a better place. I'm about ten years from retirement, and plan then to dedicate my life full-time to environmental activism. I'm dissatisfied with existing environmental activist programs, which seem to me rear-guard, ineffectual, naive, inadequate, and often too little, too late to have major, lasting impact. I'm equally dissatisfied with the lack of coherent and actionable blueprints for environmental action, and I'm hoping that by blogging environmental manifestos like How to Save the World and The Third Way, SETI-like, I will be able to find like minds with whom I can work to drive a powerful, effective, broad-based environmental movement. For those that have read my posts before, is this helpful? Should we make it part of the blogger culture that each of us provide some context for our writing with both a bio and a 'why I blog' summary? [How to Save the World] 10:55:57 PM

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