Just read a news item on the popularity of blogs:
Boredom fuels blogs
The popularity of Weblogs can be attributed to readers’ boredom with traditional media, according to Nick Denton of Gawker Media. Even as advertisers puzzle over reports showing, for instance, young men are watching less television, and therefore aren’t seeing their TV spots, Denton’s latest blogs are catering to that demographic with Web sites about cars, TV, and gaming. The Weblogs’ “voice is truer and so advertisers that want to reach that increasingly jaded audience pretty much have to follow them,” Denton told the Wall Street Journal in an interview. Gawker’s most recent high-profile Weblog, Jalopnik.com, is sponsored by Audi. -CBS Marketwatch
Like to hear my prognostication of what this means? If the past experience with webpages means anything, this market interest in blogs will mean short term money opportunities for now popular or newly made professional blogs which will end up degrading the whole concept of blogs into a mainly commercial project.
Just look at what happened to personal webpages. They started out being fun and interestiing and original, but as the web got congested with more and more industrial strength commercial pages and many run of the mill pages that simply used old , generic brand information…. it became much less common to find the original thinking uniquely styled web page that made web surfing so much fun.
Then, viola… along came blogs, which I had seen earlier in the form of personal online diary type journals. Always good for a read. But now that blogs are gaining in popularity and exposure, it will be interesting to see if the line can be held against bland homogenization of style and content.
…That’s what I think, anyway….