Dvorak: Blogging doomed?
Thursday, December 4, 2003 by Frogboy | Discussion: WinCustomize News
John Dvorak's new column in the current issue of PC Magazine argues that blogging is going to "bite the dust" owing primarily to 2 factors: Popular bloggers being co-opted by big media with everyone else being too obscure to keep the trend going.
This article at JoeUser.com argues that just the opposite is happening. What do you think?
Tecumseh
Reply #2 Thursday, December 4, 2003 4:58 PM
Reply #2 Thursday, December 4, 2003 4:58 PM
John Dvorak is one of many reasons I stopped subscribing to PC Mag. Looks as though he still is having trouble getting it right.
ErRoR5o1
Reply #3 Thursday, December 4, 2003 5:23 PM
Reply #3 Thursday, December 4, 2003 5:23 PM
nah, i dont really care, bloggin is nice, its basically, a new type of media. i never read, nor heard of this Dvorak dude, just now. all i know is that draginol is the main guy there. 
scratch_pentagon
Reply #4 Thursday, December 4, 2003 5:42 PM
Reply #4 Thursday, December 4, 2003 5:42 PM
i would agree with the joeuser article.
bakerstreet
Reply #5 Thursday, December 4, 2003 5:44 PM
Reply #5 Thursday, December 4, 2003 5:44 PM
Honestly, it is like the term 'blog' has replaced what would have been known as a 'webpage' in the early 90's; the single page, personal site. Since people have gotten more technically savvy with their HTML, everything has become topic-oriented webSITEs, and the personal page has kind of died. To me, the blog thing is a return to that idea.
That said, I don't think it will ever "die", but anything so broadly defined is gonna suffer a bit of drift. You don't know what you are gonna get when you visit a blog. I remember the first blogs I ever went to were long lists of interesting "FYI" links with short descriptions. Now they can be akin to a diary, a soapbox, a tutorial, pretty much anything.
I think 'blogging' will just subdivide and acquire more complex taxonomy as their content grows more varied and people want to frequent particular flavors.
That said, I don't think it will ever "die", but anything so broadly defined is gonna suffer a bit of drift. You don't know what you are gonna get when you visit a blog. I remember the first blogs I ever went to were long lists of interesting "FYI" links with short descriptions. Now they can be akin to a diary, a soapbox, a tutorial, pretty much anything.
I think 'blogging' will just subdivide and acquire more complex taxonomy as their content grows more varied and people want to frequent particular flavors.
s_r_m
Reply #6 Thursday, December 4, 2003 6:25 PM
Reply #6 Thursday, December 4, 2003 6:25 PM
Dvorak's a pointless blowhard 90% of the time he's expounding on the latest trend. Maybe he gets some points in every once in a while, but it's been over a year since I've done more than skim his columns. That's usually all it takes to figure what his "angle" for a given article is.
craeonics
Reply #7 Thursday, December 4, 2003 7:12 PM
Reply #7 Thursday, December 4, 2003 7:12 PM
Baker just said what I had in mind. There is nothing new about "blogging". It's just a label being put on something that's been around since day one.
Frogboy
Reply #8 Thursday, December 4, 2003 7:37 PM
Reply #8 Thursday, December 4, 2003 7:37 PM
Crae, Baker, yea, totally agree.
What I do think has changed is that a certain type of blogging (a certain type of personal web page) has caught on - indie journalism.
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Reply #1 Thursday, December 4, 2003 2:08 PM
He was a generally decent technical columnist, but a poor prognosticator. I don't think he's had even a 1 in 20 hit rate on his predictions.
Dvorak is far from the first to disparage blogging, both as a concept and as an avenue for expression. It's my feeling that many of these naysayers are scared to death of being irrelevant (and as a result, generally become irrelevant *because* of their fears).