Paul Boutin tells us to “kill our blogs” in Wired because the market (i.e. the first page of Google results) has been overrun by professional blogs like Engadget, HuffPo, and Boutin’s employer, Valleywag. Supposedly we don’t have a chance against their budgets, staff, and connections.
He’s right. It would be stupid to start a “gadget” blog today. Engadget and Gizmodo have that market sewn up. They achieved critical mass first so they get the leaks, the scoops, and the invites to trade show back rooms. No lone blogger could compete with that.
Boutin is also wrong. Today is the perfect time to start a blog. This is why:
- As Paul Graham says, writing about something clarifies your thinking about it.
- According to Seth Godin, your blog is now your résumé. Actually, having a blog is far more powerful than a résumé because blogs are discoverable, searchable, and followable. The last time I wrote a résumé it didn’t make me any smarter or better connected.
- Forget traffic and revenue. The first artist painted on the cave wall to tell the universe “I WAS HERE”. He wasn’t out to goose pageviews for AdSense revenue.
- Even if you were the last person on Earth, it would still be worthwhile to keep a journal. It would keep you sane for one, and second, it’s human nature. We’ve been documentarians from the beginning. From our first oral histories, to cave paintings, to Voyager’s golden data disc, we are a species of scribes.
Finally, time has proven that entrenched players are never invincible. Eventually their new hires care more about the paycheck than changing the world, and that’s when a David comes along who doesn’t play by Goliath’s rules.
While I was writing this my friend Havi Brooks of Fluent Self posted another in her “Blogging Therapy” series entitled: “Why even bother when other people are doing it better?“. Great stuff, timely too.
10 Comments ↓
A-fucking-men.
Boutin’s argument is that paid bloggers have made “real” bloggers meaningless. But he *is* a paid blogger. And he’s not just incriminating himself, he’s also totally missing the point. He needs to read “The Long Tail.” Specificity drives blogs, not some “mainstream.” It’s not about dominating Google. It’s about driving community conversation.
Awesome. Well said.
If anyone is blogging or thinking of not blogging based solely on AdSense and Google page results/marketbility, they’re already approaching it without any sense of humanity.
That’s why they also call it “citizen journalism.”
Sorry, Wired. It’s *you* who need to compete with real humans, not vice versa.
Here here!
First of all, a-fucking-men indeed.
Second, a-fucking-men to Jenny’s a-fucking-men, because SOMEBODY has to go around swearing in people’s comments.
Are you capable of any independent thought at all or do you always have to quote other people in order to come to your own conclusions? I didn’t like Paul’s piece in Forbes or his attitude about blogging so I made sure I read both rebuttals mentioned in comments on Wired, but I have to say, you rebuttal writers need to man up and see where your own faults lie before you go criticizing someone else.
@ WWA, funny that you tell people to “man up” while you use a fake email and no URL in blog comments. I don’t bite, I promise.
@ Giles and Sparky, I agree. Funny that Mr. Long Tail himself, Chris Anderson, is editor in chief of Wired. I feel like he knows better, but the magazine has to run a certain way (annoying subscription blow ins, billing reminders, 75% ad content, etc) because that’s just the way the mag biz works. Guess you can’t change an engine on a flying airplane.
Thanks Jenny and Naomi, feel free to come by and swear it up anytime.
Nathan, I saw this post on BoingBoing just after I read your post.
Zombie apocalypse wall-decal Is that a coincidence, or a sign of the coming apocalypse???? :)
I have been planning to get started blogging for several months, but I really stalled out on that concern that the A-listers would always be a step ahead of me. But I finally realized that as you say, it just doesn’t matter – blog anyway. I think it was Charlie Gilkey that pointed out to me that Havi started her blog less than six months ago and she is already tremendously successful. So it’s never too late. Thanks for the encouragement to get out there and do it.
@ Mike,
Decal is *perfect* for a young kid’s room :-)
Yeah you can’t worry about the “A-list”. That’s like never doing anything creative with a pencil because “Picasso was awesome”.
When you launch, let us know!