Guardian Unlimited | Online | Second sight
Tom Coates in the Guardian muses on the changes about to come to the 'blogosphere'.
It's a strange time to be a weblogger. Our little hobby looks like it's finally about to enter the big time. I mean, you know you've made it when Lycos has a weblogging system, right? When AOL's system has just been launched? When Blogger has been bought by Google?
He goes onto make some very good points about communication in blogging, i.e. its about listening (or reading) just as much as writing:
A future weblogging culture should be able to find counterpoints to arguments, to identify experts quickly and easily, and it should help good commentary bubble up effectively from new or low-trafficked sites. Mechanisms that help us know who to read, who to trust and who to ignore should be permeating the entire community invisibly and pervasively.
Yep, that's certainly a good point although quite how you can do this easily is unclear. It has taken me some time (a few months) to make contacts and dare I hazard acquaintances (that could be friends!). Would this be the way of the future? "I vouch for John, he tells it how it is but David talks rubbish" but then who is to say I'm playing with a straight bat? (oh more cricketing metaphors). I'm not criticising Tom's points merely wondering what kind of mechanism will arise?