Blogging 2.0 - It’s about conversation, not content
In a post yesterday, Duncan Riley stated “Blogging 2.0: It’s All About The User“, arguing that in many ways blogging has reaching a paradigm shift in which the nature of the technology - and the communication it facilitates - has changed.
“If blogging 1.0 was about enabling the conversation on each blog, blogging 2.0 is about enabling the conversation across many blogs and supporting sites and services. The conversation has matured and no longer is it acceptable to believe that as a content owner you hold exclusive domain over conversations you have started. Users/ readers today demand more than a conversation on one site, and blogging 2.0 facilitates this.”
This is a powerful statement with profound implications for the nature of what blogging is, as well as what it will become. Duncan isn’t the first person to argue this point, however for me personally his logic is the most clear and compelling thus far.
Duncan cites the example of a debate with Robert Scoble about full versus partial RSS feeds, saying he had argued two points:
“…one that it limited the ability of spammers to republish your content, secondly because a part feed drove traffic back to the main site if people wanted to read all the content.”
The fear in including full feeds, Riley argued, was that blogs would be circumvented and readers would not ever visit the site to view the original content. Similarly, he continues, in the context of Blogging 1.0 vs. 2.0, the key threat perceived by bloggers when considering applications like FriendFeed is the loss of control. I have argued the same point myself many times, such as the post I wrote on Shyftr in April.
However having read and re-read his post several times now I’ve begun to question my position. In fact I’m beginning to wonder if there is in fact an inverse relationship between the level of control held by an individual and the vibrancy of the community and depth of discussion that surrounds the content they produce.
An example of this theory in practice might be the Linux community.
The Empowered Community
In 1997, in the now famous work “The Cathedral and The Bazaar“, Eric Raymond discussed the stark contrasts between the long-standing, orderly development style of Unix with the relatively newer, seemingly anarchic style of Linux development.
Describing Unix software, Raymond said:
“I believed (before discovering Linux) that the most important software…needed to be built like cathedrals, carefully crafted by individual wizards or small bands of mages working in splendid isolation…”
In striking contrast, the Linux development style adopted by Linus Torvalds came as quite a surprise and “overturned much of what [he] thought [he] knew.”
“…the Linux community seemed to resemble a great babbling bazaar of differing agendas and approaches…out of which a coherent and stable system could seemingly emerge only by a succession of miracles.”
The significance of this example is that in devolving Linux development to the community mind, Torvald facilitated the gathering of a populous of extraordinarily passionate and empowered individuals. Over time the contributions of each individual were aggregated into a single writhing mass of discussion-driven and cooperative productivity and a body of knowledge and experience that continues to expand today.
The result of this has culminated not only in the GNU/Linux we know today, but as importantly a community of people who have arguably accomplished more together than they could have separately.
In establishing Linux development as a meritocracy, Torvalds empowered the community and arguably inspired a greater sense of ownership in the project than exists in similar proprietary products. In return user/developer contributions exploded, as did their dedication to the community.
In the context of Duncan’s Blogging 2.0 post, Blogging 1.0 saw authors and editors as the kings of their castles and conversations/comments relegated to a secondary position at the bottom of the post. To a fair degree this prevented the knowledge from escaping the confines of the site. Discussion was retained in the comments area, and readers were obliged to return there for updates. It was not, and is not, a level playing field that inspires a great sense of ownership in the discussion; conversations occur on the author’s terms, not the readers.
In the realm of Blogging 2.0 content takes on an entirely new role as fuel for conversations. Applications like FriendFeed and Disqus restore community interactivity back to where it should have been all along - a forum for discussions on IDEAS not just comments on content.
You do not own conversations - you merely contribute to them. Making a name for yourself in the Blogging 2.0 world is therefore about how you participate.
So it would seem the question for bloggers going forward is: How will you participate in the conversation?
References:
- “Blogging 2.0: It’s All About The User“, Duncan Riley, The Inquisitr, 18 May 2008
- “The Cathedral and The Bazaar“, Eric Raymond, May 1993
