Via Jon Udell’s comment on overlapping scopes, I found and read Chris Anderson’s essay titled “What is a blog?”. I’m glad I did. This topic could be dismissed as more navel-gazing here (blogging about blogs, etc.). But I think this public distillation of the benefits and uses of this form of communication will help clarify what’s important, useful, and effective about blogs. Without waiting to explain what’s going on, most of us are just jumping in. If it’s rewarding, however you define that, you continue. I have been trying to explain why more people at work should be publishing blogs, and why we as a company should consider public-facing blogs, too. When I run into skepticism, I want to have direct answers. The phrase “publish and forget” is one memorable benefit. Here’s the context:
One reason I believe that blogs are great for corporation internal communication is the question of distribution lists. Inside of Microsoft we live and die by email. However the constant spam of email to large distribution lists ends up drowning out the important information. For many types of communication (but not all) blogs provide a better way of communicating. There are many cases where you as the publisher of a piece of information don’t know who would be interested. Blogs are a way to “publish and forget” – you fire the information out there, and interested people will find it. Once I add our internal blog server to the corporate search service, suddenly I could find people that worked on products that I wanted to communicate with. Amazing. [Chris Anderson, SimpleGeek.com]
While I love the phrase ‘publish and forget’ — it underlines the simplicity — I don’t like the word forget… because often my point in blogging something is not to forget it. If I blog it, I want to remember it, at least. I also want to share things, but first and foremost I’m sharing with myself.
I appreciate the digital form because you can say the same thing (without repeating yourself) to many, many people. When I publish something to my blog, it’s at least in part because I don’t want to have to repeat myself the next time the subject comes up. Of course, that requires introducing people to your blog. At work, with my internal blog, I’ve been doing that slowly… once you’re public, you have a reputation to maintain!
Back to the main point… email is the #1 application on the web, with instant messaging nearly as popular (anyone know if/when it will catch up to email?). The reason blogs are continuing to grow is that it’s yet another form of communication, not ‘just’ publishing. (I work for a media company. My father worked for a book manufacturer. My grandfather was a textbook publisher. I like publishing.) Also, blogs are growing, in part, because those most dependent on email are finding it harder and harder to keep the signal-to-noise ratio high. I wonder if we solved the spam problem, would blog growth slow? I don’t think so, but interesting idea.
One challenge to part of Chris Anderson’s quote… “you fire the information out there, and interested people will find it.” I don’t believe it will always be found. In fact, I think that’s blogging’s greatest weakness — it’s not good at opening up to non-bloggers. If you’re within one of the various circles of influence, you’re often aware of the general meme of the day/week/month, and these circles of influence don’t require participation beyond regular reading. For example, I’ve been reading the well-known bloggers a lot longer than I’ve been blogging. But what if you don’t blog? What if RSS is an acronym you don’t understand (let alone debate what it stands for)? There are plenty of smart people who don’t (yet?) blog, but having them as part of the audience, if not the conversation, is important in the long run. Maybe the explosion of RSS-reading applications, some of which introduce the concept under the guise of familiar applications like Outlook, will bring blogging that much closer to transparent/mainstream in the next year. I think it’s going to take longer than that.