[81] Part 1, on the tradition (11/20/08)
Blogging styles are just different approaches to analyzing and talking about anime – we’ve established that. But when reading all the posts and comments on this, as well as other meta posts, the argument is narrowly focused around the space of the blog, the function of the blog, the mere purpose of the blog (as it should be). The point here is to think a little bit more about the interaction between the four keys parts of the blogosphere – the author, blog, content and reader.
Perhaps in an earlier state the aniblogosphere saw blogs as autonomous entities, that it was the blog itself that produced content as if it were a seemingly animate organism. And perhaps this notion has changed somewhat with the massive surge of team blogs. Team blogs suggest that it is not the blog but the author that creates content, and that the blog is only a space that holds the content. You see, it seems like the essence of the blog is a trivial thing, only an aesthetic visage to keep readers “focused” on the content by utilizing the social processes behind the [anime] blog. In some ways, you could argue that the “blog” is in itself entirely a social entity or a discursive product. This differs from forums, out of which blogs may have possibly evolved, where you can easily get lost in the masses and where avatars and signatures are the only aesthetic and visual means by which you are able to distinguish yourself. Blogs, with their customizable themes/CSS, seek to alleviate the problem of individuality by giving the voice a recognizable platform on which to speak. [Of course not all forums are sink-or-swim, some allow or promote a greater sense of individuality, but blogs do take this to the next level.] The problem is that there are so many elevated platforms that the aniblogosphere becomes a maze, one where you can’t see very far because blogs simply aren’t contained within a single space (readers and aggregators fix this problem) and are limited within your niche unless you venture out via blogrolls, trackbacks, once-in-a-blue-moon-commentators, and so forth.
I wouldn’t say that blogs have lost footing to the author. It seems like we have blogrolls, not author-rolls nor specific-post-rolls. There’s a tendency to get caught up in the general representation of blogs, specifically team blogs – especially RandomC. Of course its house dish is the now-idiosyncratic episodic post, though Natrone’s entries are a rare treat. And exceptions like this precisely outline some of the pitfalls of the blog. This isn’t necessarily to say that we should abandon the blog in favor of the author, towards a seemingly postmodern setting where the blog becomes not an inert location but an amoebic space that acts as a refueling station to which kinetic, nomadic authors or contributors roam. But let’s speculate here:
What if all team blogs became mere receptacles for authors, and concrete locations that seemed like they were inextricably tied to founding authors (like Impz to THAT, Riex to OH! or BigN to Drastic)? I think this would really shift how specific content is distributed throughout the sphere. Blogs attract like-minded readers, and so avid readers would sign up to a blog, yet their content, insofar as it is very similar to what the blog’s prevalent authors already produced, would only propagate that specific type of content as opposed to a diverse spread of content; so to speak, the growth becomes vertical, not horizontal. This is enforced by the thought that people wouldn’t post content on a blog which makes it seem irrelevant – Chuchlann isn’t going to write about literary criticism on Yukan. It seems like blogs establish their own ideologies, codes to follow, specific rules of discourse to which you must adhere. Blogs essentially can act like frames, giving content additional meaning, or changing their “meta-connotation”. Trite material in a “serious” blog might come off differently than the same material at Yukan, typically a very “non-serious” blog. I think this is definitely a reason why some of Jacob’s (and mine) posts stir the shit the way they do. Readers that are attuned to the particularities of an author at one end of the spectrum are not necessarily accustomed to the rambling of voices that are clearly at the other end. To reiterate, and it should be obvious, specific content-driven or content-oriented blogs attract readers that are interested in such content. Superfani is one good case.1
So in the event that this method of blogging arises, how will that affect traffic? Given that content will be extremely centralized, will it then become monopolized? If We Remember Love evolves into a megalopolis that somehow stamped itself (de facto, of course) the king of all things mecha, would that effectively reduce the chance to zero any new blog about mecha? Perhaps. The point is traffic, of obtaining readers and opinions and discussion, so a nascent blog that has no traffic isn’t an attractive locus for the production of content. Would this discourage people from creating blogs? Hypothetically, yes. It would, however, promote people to contribute to already existing blogs. This goes into my last point: what would the role of the “author” become? Would the traditional role of the blogger remain? Or would team blogs then employ a method in which people sporadically contributed material, regardless of authorial position? In this sense, the blog becomes a kind of wikipedia-esque pool that isn’t limited by the voices of its primary authors but, instead, by the collective mindset of its readers and the content they find attractive and wish to propagate.
It’s funny, and disturbing, I just realized – that this method of blogging effectively transforms blogs back into forums, centralized, content-oriented spaces for specific discussion, instead of diverse blogs the way they are now. Hmm.
So, what are your thoughts? I’ll leave you with some questions:
1. What is the role of identity and individuality in the single-author blog and the team blog?
2. What is the social role of blogs? – is it more than just the directing of traffic?
3. Can you see the blogging tradition moving towards this speculative state and would you want it to or not (what is “good” for the blogosphere? What is “bad” for it)?
1 But then there are times when content strays from its portrayed norm and loses readership/traffic, BigN’s Hidamari Sketch posts an example, though that may just be because it’s harder to comment on them? He states himself that “it can be hard finding good motivation to keep at it (like myself keeping at these posts), and while keeping at it can be good motivation in and of itself to keep at it, sometimes you need something more, as can be shown here.” Though this perceived “lack of readership” is based totally off of the absence of comments.
7 Text Responses to “Since Time Immemorial – thoughts on the blogging tradition?”
[83] Part 2, comment responses (11/21/08)
Kiaoshin: “I think what is good for the blogosphere more than anything else is seeing that more variety in the tone and type of message is introduced in the coming years.” It’s really funny. I was about to post this [the first post] on THAT, and it was scheduled to be posted in nine hours or so, and then the next day I look and my post usurped by an episodic post on vampires (yeah, THAT puts episodic priority over editorial but whatever). That was pretty funny, pretty humiliating. I guess I try to diversify the content on THAT, to try and break the flow of constant episodic posts, but if my writing is easily trampled over (access is removed), there’s just as little point in writing if there’s no reading.
Ryan: (1)
The single-author blog spans a single individual’s perspective, while the team blog is a parent wrapper of single-author blogs, in which a sense of conformity is found. This allows the wrapping distribution of content to become more diversified than what a single author would provide.
When we relate blogging to content, however, I think the team blog may need some redefinition. OH is probably the best example, since there are no episodic posts and the content is very diverse. But, even then, content becomes a fickle word. Is THAT diverse, even if 90% of its content is episodic? Do we differentiate between content and form? Is form a kind of content? Yes and no, I think.
(2)
The social role of blogs is on the order of expressing opinion in which readers may be able to relate to, confronting issues objectively, and/or providing a form of entertainment to readers.
This is similar to what I was saying in Omisyth’s original post: some blogs, specifically episodic posts, function as phatic modes of communication. It’s not necessarily about the content or the discussion, but simply a reaffirmation of the existence and presence of the audience, an acknowledgement of one’s place in the subculture. This is enforced by the fact that a lot of bloggers have those pesky back-logs and really, a sense of duty, a sense of connection to the community which cannot be fulfilled by any means other than raw communication.
(3)
By speculative state I assume team-orientation, or bloglomerates. While I do worry that the vertical intensity of subject matter is not going to stimulate positive development in the blogosphere, I don’t believe grouping authors is solely a negative aspect. For instance, a group blog with solid diversity of perspective vs one where the authors agree on everything to watch [or more crucial, what not to watch]; I have seen the latter case and wondered why there were 5+ authors, when there was no discrepency between them … redundancy -_-
Well, content-oriented blogs do not necessarily “engender” or attract bloggers with no differentiation between opinion. In fact it could be the opposite: five bloggers on a single blog writing about a single anime could have very diverse opinions which open up quite an array of discussion that really spreads the anime out in such a way that separate, unconsolidated bloggers wouldn’t be able to achieve. Similarly, I enjoy how Crusader and Cawalain double post stuff.
The solidarity affirmed by a single space is also a big plus; but on the other hand, with interblog groups like round robins and the defunct ABC, a different, more “transcendental” solidarity is created which makes participants seem connected in a way that surpasses the medium of the blog and is about a specific goal or ideology that a blog/space can’t always create through the merits of its materialism alone – materialism as in the “tangible” interface of the blog. [This isn’t to say that a blog cannot be ideological, though. Also, a material blog can be the product of an abstract ideology, like Calamtious Intents, a product of the AGRR, an effort towards greater female anime/blogger/fujoshi/whatever solidarity.]
animekritik: “Ideally the blogger has a certain perspective that allows his readers to connect to their favorite shows in a new, deeper way.” Hmm. This is an interesting point. It brings up the question “what is the thing we really get from anime blogs?” Is it specifically about the content, the anime, or is it about the author’s perspective/ideology and methodology? You can get both, and you can get to one through the other; it depends on the personality of the reader. These meta posts are a good example. They’re not about anime, so the only thing we can convey are our thoughts on the mechanisms behind anime blogging, which may, indirectly, open up for viewing our ways of engaging with our social environments and negotiating with the social terrain, for example, where we post (I guess that only applies to me), who we trackback to and why, how much trackbacking, comments (that’s a huge area in itself), and so forth.
“I’d rather there were 5 million bloggers debating with each other than 5 forums each with a million participants.” Well, what’s not to say that you can create a cohesive group of five million people that collectively debate with another set of five million? Obviously those numbers aren’t possible, but I could see some collective debate, like, OH vs. THAT or RandomC vs. Drastic. Actually, that would be really interesting to witness, if not partake in. But even then, it’s hard to homogenize even the small team blog.
“By providing the blogger with a stable identity, his/her message will get across more effectively and the level of discussion will rise, rather than get drowned in a foamy forum.” Yeah, I think this is the case, generally speaking. Moderators probably have much more voice in forums, though, and have a similar quality of authority as bloggers do when commenting within their own blogs as administrators.
Ghost: “When I told myself that I want to emulate Cuchlann in being a uniter and not a divider, it didn’t necessarily mean I wanted to be the definitive mecha (or even Macross) blogger, nor do I intend to be limited by that identification.” I think the distinction between unison and division gets rather tricky the more complex things become. My view is that I strive to be a united divider. Similar debates frequently arise, however subtly, in college classrooms between people of very different opinion. The point is not to force equal views upon everyone, hence the irony of “indentured democrat”, but to strive to flesh out differences and then build cohesiveness upon that dissonance. It’s a rather “post-modern” (uh-oh) view, where you can build affirmation on argument, methodology on madness, comfort on chaos. When two oppositions collide, you needn’t be restricted to viewing things in those limited terms of the binary – there is the hybrid, conflicting space creating at the cusp of those two colliding forces, and it is this very interesting space I would like to utilize.
[85] Part 3, blogomerates (11/25/08)
So, to me, it seems like hypothetical blogomerates would “consume” all available space in which single-author blogs might otherwise exist. Essentially, they reallocate so much traffic that single-author blogs become obsolete and, instead, the entire aniblogosphere is comprised of perhaps thirty or so blogs instead of the hundreds if not thousands we have today. Neutral space becomes subsumed by the sheer power of traffic and discourse-producing dynamos of blogomerates: these blogomerates act as platforms not by which people become authors, but by which people contribute writing and constantly vacillate in and out of the visible public sphere. This produces an interesting way of viewing the private sphere, taking Twitter as an excellent example. Calaggie (or was it Sasa?) called it the “back channel” and its precisely this “behind the scenes” action that suggests that blogs are incredibly public matters. This is also reinforced by the “advent” of microblogging, how there are norms for discourse which are established by public blogs. And of course instant messaging is the most informal medium, since it’s out of the eye of the public – I wonder what that says about people posting chat conversations? I wonder how podcasting fits into all this?
One thing blogomerates would effectively destroy is a heterogeneous voice. The guy who runs Oguie Maniax has a diversity of posts that, if he were incorporated into a blogomerate, I don’t think would exist as effectively, and by “effectively existing” I mean the readership he acquires due to the “strength” of his voice vis-a-vis other voices (which I guess could be measured in traffic). I think I have yet to see a niche media-centric blog. Perhaps Erica Friedman’s yuri blog is an example.
Buzz, as we know, is the [over] popularity of a single artifact, spread far-and-wide, and for bloggers, that means writing about it over, and over, and over, sort of like blogger-on-blogger drama. This is the divide, because in a centralized and controlled environment, buzz-redundancy is less likely to happen, but given a one-blog-per-author environment, we would see this the buzz thrive while other issues are left unexplored, more or less, until it’s dropped.
In the case of multiple blogger-clusters, if there is redundancy between clusters, it drives competition (Rocky vs Drago or William Wallace-cluster vs Brit-cluster). If clusters can keep the redundancy in-check, competition will be good, but when redundancy exists within the cluster, it is made of fail. A good example would be a forum which has two threads for one episode, which is not far off from two members of a group blog writing separate posts about one episode.
RyanA provides a lucid example, however, I think this is – or at least has the potential to be – quite different in blogs. The difference is the “quality” or “timbre” of the author. As McLuhan would say, the medium is the message, and thus the medium determines what the message is and not vice versa. In this light, a very distinct argument arises: this becomes a debate of structural hegemony vs. personal agency. Does the writer have the power to overcome the limitations of the medium (structural hegemony) or does the medium always overpower the writer and reduce him or her to a mere abstraction, an ideological quality inherent within the medium? This is, again, quite different if we’re talking about the same person when in a forum or on a blog. I’ve had little experience with such encounters, but from what I’ve seen and remembered, I felt no different when conversing via comments or thread posts. But that’s just one person, not at all a good cross-section of the ’sphere.
RyanA prompted me to read about the Nash Equilibrium, though I’m not quite sure how it fits into the larger picture of blogging. To me, Foucault’s notions of power are very significant here. Ghostlightning touched upon how blogs have the potential create power (or to motivate the generation of power), as opposed to a model which describes the internet as having a set limit of power (traffic?) and that power can only be distributed, which is a zero sum model. Given that, insofar as traffic = power = readers, there is in fact a set limit of power within the aniblogosphere. This can leads to the conclusion that blogs cannot generate power, that they have no agency within their social structures, and that they can only reallocate power/traffic. The real production of power resides outside the internet, perhaps, in the creation of readers. Maybe the internet has an indirect effect on this, maybe a lurker informs his friend, and an otaku is born. Power is also generated by readers simply reading more, and to this effect blogs can play in part, especially if they are blogs with exceptional content to which readers are attracted – pingbacks ensue and then additional traffic is generated. Intro and Author have talked about how feed readers (as well as “organic feed readers” like Author himself, a reason why I always read his notepaddings) make large amounts of the blogosphere “readable” within a small space.
To backtrack a bit to the nature of the author, I’ll leave with a question, if anyone is reading this. What is the distinction between the [reader/writer] and [author/audience]? I think the former set is concrete, while the latter is made of abstractions.
[86] Part 4, nexistence and z-axis orientation (11/26/08)
RyanA: What would be really awesome, you may already be thinking this, is to have an aggregator of various reader/blogger’s lensing/noting (Shared Items in Google Reader). Unfortunately, this is more work for authors and asking readers to do such a thing is sort of fishy. If there were a sub-group of producers, not authors, that did this and that is all they did, it could be highly effective…. I wonder if any team-blogs have thought of designating that position to members.
Wow, that’s a really nifty idea. I hadn’t been thinking of that specifically, but I had been conjuring up some group google documents thing. The problem is that I think using platforms besides blogs enters into the “private sphere”, effectively damming communication. Twitter is for bloggers by bloggers just as these posts kind of are, but that’s a totally content related matter as opposed to form-oriented.
You could approach the following paragraph in two or three ways, I think:
(1) Get non-blogging readers to diversify along the “z-axis” – x is blog genre, y is specific content, z is the platforms for accessing both x and y related material. I think that if the barrier of mediums was breached, that would be a totally revolutionizing thing. It’s interesting and important to think about the significance of accounts. What is their relation to identity? To individuality? We know that in forums you need an account, but in blogs you don’t. This sort of contradicts the public/private binary too! – basically, the account-centric nature of forums refutes the very notion that accounts provide individuality, insofar as forums are not good locations to foster individuality, as the conversation has indicated thus far.
(2) You mention an interesting new breed, a “sub-group of producers, not authors [whose role was "limited"to precisely this task]“. I mean, talk about division of labor! Now, in relation to Author, this brings up a huge topic I haven’t talked about yet. If you type in “Pete Zaitcev” you get a boatload of other internet accounts, other nexistences (to quote Kaiserpingvin’s coinage). Is this the same Author? I don’t think so, not necessarily. Perhaps internet identity can be limited to their specific spheres. Anime blogging/notepadding Author isn’t the same on in a political blogging sphere or whatever else. This applies to me, I post in some music forums, and my nexistence may be linked (only to me), but they are totally unrelated. For all intensive purposes, I’m a completely different nexistence vis-a-vis respective content-oriented spheres. This is because, related to the ubiquitous Marx quote, it is not the consciousness of men that determines their existence, but their social existence that determines their consciousness. I don’t want to get into a philosophical debate on the nature of “consciousness” since I haven’t really read any of that kind of text. But, here, I’m effectively saying that the real life individual has the potential to be comprised of a plethora of distinctive internet identities or, possibly, individualities because it is precisely the distinct social nature of each sphere which determines that very “consciousness” or identity. As I stated, the problem is that I’m indexing “identity” for “consciousness”, which isn’t really what Marx was getting at, but that’s beside the point; hopefully you get my gist!
In fact, Douglass Rushkoff said this:
What’s the continuing shape and shift of the bias of the media that we use; and the bias of the internet is shifting away from contact between people and more towards contact through content between people and particular content that is less and less local.
This idea of, as we have been discussing, a content-oriented digital society is extremely important because Rushkoff uses it to describe contact and social organization, I don’t necessarily think it’s redundant up to this point. Essentially, tying together Marx, Rushkoff and Kaiserpingvin, separate nexistences are the product of social spheres which are created by content-oriented individuals. “Division of labor” is too harsh a term, the aniblogosphere has no monetary system nor economy. I think what I’m getting at (it’s nearly over the top of my head) is that in order to breach the damming effects of the medium and de facto private spheres and channels, new forms of digital identity have to be thought of. These new notions of identity and nexistence might have the potential to challenge or at least engage with these incredibly stable discursive regimes and continuous practices of “private” and “public” spheres – there’s nothing really “private” about google documents at all besides the hype and representation it has received from the digital public, the aniblogosphere. Exclusivity in general is a good example.
(3) To totally forget about the previous two points, you say that team blogs can designate members to perform these tasks. The notepadder then becomes not a distinct nexistence but a role, as the individual can “defy quantum physics” by being two things simultaneously.1 By “things”, I perhaps mean representations, or perceptions that society superimposes upon the individual. Similarly, with fansubbing, you can have a typesetter who is also the translator. This method seems relatively unproblematic. It goes back to the structural hegemony vs. personal agency: can distinct nexistences spontaneously pop up out of nowhere, unbeknownst to the structure? – or do the social mechanisms of the structure necessarily have to (a) provide for a ripe social environment into which (b) new forms of nexistence arise? In this case, I think the structure wins. It is essential to have continuously progressive forms of software and blogging interface (Moore’s law?, but the aniblogosphere isn’t necessarily teleologic) to establish the “luxury” or “necessity” of new nexistences and social roles onto which people consciously subscribe upon their entrance into their preferred spheres. Basically, the structure of digital societies create slots for employment, and the people come running: if you build it, they will come! As we’ve discussed, however, the problem is that we need to avoid building bridges to nowhere. In order for a collective notepadding society to exist, those roles and their constituent technologies must have a function and use.2
1 However, I think it’s very hard and extremely rare for someone to be a notepadder and not, first and foremost, an aniblogger. How can they skip those successive phases of nexistence construction? It seems like one must first become steeped in aniblogosphere culture before they can progress to become a meta-blogger. Perhaps Author does contradict that.
2 I remember reading that functionalism in sociology is obsolete, so I don’t know why it sounds so enticing here, though.
[108] Part 5, broadcast perimeter expansion and syntagm structures (01/08/09)
jpmeyer brings up a whole lot of excellent points:
There are so many aspects of the blog format…that subtly subsume the writer to the blog itself.
Yes, the author is inextricably subsumed in the blog because – by the very fact of their existence in the blogosphere – they cannot exist without a blog. Revisit this paragraph:
lelangir: …[I]n the ‘sphere, it is not communication that is most significant, but being. Being is not a prerequisite for communication – communication is a prerequisite for being. In the ‘sphere, you cannot be unless you write and are read. If no one reads your blog, that makes you not a digital individual but simply a person who keeps a private online journal. Our public identities are predicated upon this collective society, and it is a discursive system of acknowledgment that grants us individuality. So in a world intrinsically reduced to mere letters, what more can we do than produce these mere letters? [my re-emphasis]
As for my cross-posting, jpmeyer asks:
Why post at one of the over 9000 blogs you post at over another unless they are all indistinguishable?
To which I responded with this diagram:
The hypothetical circumstance “indistinguishable blogs” (as I am interpreting the phrase) has one large implication; it assumes that the focus of the content is the same (i.e. twelve blogs focusing on mecha).
What happens when content is all similar? You get a smaller readership because the perimeter of your broadcast is reduced. Let me re-articulate the previous diagram:
Now we have overlapping paradigms: the content paradigm (mecha etc.), the blog paradigm, and the author paradigm. This diagram isn’t to scale – nor is this a precise way of visualizing the complexity of the sphere (which is too complex to bother). But just to clarify this visualization, Crusader’s sphere is totally within THAT’s sphere. Crusader is also within the mecha sphere, etc. Visualize indistinguishable content-blogs:
In this hypothetical situation (and hypothetically insofar as the entire mecha sphere is comprised of three blogs), because the three indicated blogs all write about the same thing, the perimeter of their broadcast is coextensive with their content – they don’t write about yuri hentai, do they? The outlined circle is just a representation of the broadcast perimeter, and the space onto which that representative perimeter is displayed is the readership. White space outside the mecha sphere is constituted of readers, but not mecha readers.
jpmeyer: Why make an identical post on two different sites which have very different focuses? That’s brand dilution on multiple axes.
(1) The focus of the blog is irrelevant when considering expansion of broadcast perimeter, as was depicted in previous diagrams. (2) “Brand dilution”? – I don’t know if “brand” refers to blog or blogger…but in any case that also has little significance. If the representational power of my handle is diminished, then so be it, what good was such power anyway? I haven’t noticed any sort of effect after doing this since August.
jpmeyer: Why have ghostlighting make a post here rather than WRL about pedophilia here rather than somewhere else if what truly matters is who is saying it? Or, this would indicate to me that the importance is on what is said, not who is saying it. [my emphasis]
This is half true – ghostlightning constitutes the ghostlightning sphere – his own entourage. If he didn’t post it, digiboy probably wouldn’t read it, so you lose reader[s] there. Then, ghost in part constitutes the [oh, say mecha] sphere, which is author-independent – readers of the mecha sphere read mecha posts, not ghostlightning posts, so a mecha reader reading ghost writing on mecha is just incidental.
jpmeyer: Thus, [the] reason that different readerships exists is because the different blogs provide different things. This would imply to me that the blog and its branding is more important than the author when dealing with [aggregate blogs].
He got me there – revisit this:
Which can be succinctly countered with: you’re not a reader until you’ve read.
So my previous thoughts on readers exist before the fact that they read doesn’t make any sense because I was confusing the author paradigm with the content paradigm. It’s like saying a reader that reads mecha is intrinsically a reader of Crusader before Crusader existed. Nope.
…however, because some readers of mecha read Crusader not for the fact that he’s Crusader but that he writes on mecha, that seemingly author-centric reading is merely incidental, as I said before. In this respect, the creation of Crusader functions as an insertion into and expansion of the greater mecha sphere.
Dr. Lolikit (PhD in lolikiteanism) gives us his last remark:
[W]ho’s saying it and where it’s being said BOTH matter.
Yes, and this is the only benefit of nomadic blogging: I have my own author-paradigm lelangir sphere, the entourage that follows my centralized feed, and I also appropriate the THAT sphere, the Cal’intents sphere, the F’aizen sphere, those blog paradigms.
Viewed this way, the internet is fractal – the previous diagrams in part constitute the sphere we are familiar with. But it is reducible to one circle that shares the same paradigmatic space with other content-oriented spheres, technology, news, porn, etc. What syntagmatically connects these spheres is cross-posting authors, trackbacks and links:
Maybe it boils down to that we need to recognize the author (unlike the plethora of bitches who don’t distinguish between authors in team posts) as the content-producer of the blog, the readership as an equally important component, and the blog as a significant, integral, intrinsic and inextricable part of the blogosphere (hence BLOGosphere, or what have you). Anyway, thanks, jpmeyer, for shoving a whole bunch of flutes up my ass…it was fun.
And chew on this for some idiolectic food for thought
previous collations
I will also offer that in my case I sometimes offer topics that I know very few people want to read and the goal in that is just the fun in doing it. I also think there is more to measuring the success of a blog then the number of comments or viewers one gets in a day, week, month or year. That would of course be the quantitative side of evaluating a blog, but the qualitative side comes in analyzing the quality and meaningfulness of the comments one gets as well as the uniqueness and quality of the message the author is offering. Some blogs can get many hits and short comments while offering an equally short and possibly irrelevant message that does not carry with it much meaning or weight beyond a way to pass the time, while others can get an average number of hits and comments that spark relevant discussion within the group participating, but that those that are just looking for a way to pass the time will not be attracted too. This is where the importance of the reader becomes in since it is their preferences that will determine the overall quality of a blogs message.
I think what is good for the blogosphere more than anything else is seeing that more variety in the tone and type of message is introduced in the coming years. To much of the same message can lead to stagnation and choice as if going from premium cable to basic cable down to eventually just one channel. Variety is something that is up to the readers to introduce to the medium though and this is where their potential power in the grand scheme of the blogosphere comes into play.
1. The single-author blog spans a single individual’s perspective, while
the team blog is a parent wrapper of single-author blogs, in which a sense of conformity is found. This allows the wrapping distribution of content to become more diversified than what a single author would provide.
2. The social role of blogs is on the order of expressing opinion in which readers may be able to relate to, confronting issues objectively, and/or providing a form of entertainment to readers.
3. By speculative state I assume team-orientation, or bloglomerates. While I do worry that the vertical intensity of subject matter is not going to stimulate positive development in the blogosphere, I don’t believe grouping authors is solely a negative aspect. For instance, a group blog with solid diversity of perspective vs one where the authors agree on everything to watch [or more crucial, what not to watch]; I have seen the latter case and wondered why there were 5+ authors, when there was no discrepency between them … redundancy -_-
I’ll likely write a related follow-up shortly on my own blog, nice writeup lelangir.
*blink* Not being familiar with Yukan at all, I’m not sure if I should feel slighted or not. : D
@Ryan A: Do you mean by “parent wrapper” just that the blog collates the bloggers together? Because I think a team blog does alter the content of each member’s posts. (When I’m not busy with schoolwork) my personal blog has theoretical posts and random, reaction-filled posts with nothing critical about them at all, but I would never post the latter at superfani. I did once, actually, and it made me uncomfortable.
Of course, that’s just me. I could be the fluke, not the standard.
I’m new to actual blogging, but I’ve been looking through anime blogs for some years, and there are definitely some blogs that are turning into specialized forums. That’s fine, but it would definitely be a pity if they all ended up that way. Ideally the blogger has a certain perspective that allows his readers to connect to their favorite shows in a new, deeper way. I’d rather there were 5 million bloggers debating with each other than 5 forums each with a million participants. By providing the blogger with a stable identity, his/her message will get across more effectively and the level of discussion will rise, rather than get drowned in a foamy forum.
Oh wow. This is exactly what I needed to read.
Being so new to all of this (lurking around since April this year, and blogging for 5 weeks) I don’t have an opinion yet on the three questions asked. I apologize for not contributing to the discussion directly.
I do want to react how reading this post led me to evaluate my own goals for blogging. When I told myself that I want to emulate Cuchlann in being a uniter and not a divider, it didn’t necessarily mean I wanted to be the definitive mecha (or even Macross) blogger, nor do I intend to be limited by that identification.
I do find myself partial to animekritik’s view above who’d rather there were many many bloggers interacting rather than 5 forums having all the traffic. I don’t think this will be the case, as niches upon niches are created as categories are likewise created and filled. As Long Tail economics can tell us, there is merit in this optimism.
I think that if a single-author is looking to find themselves a wider audience then the team blog serves to help them achieve that without having to resort to blogging about something they have no passion for.
Unless they are just doing it for fun and are unconcerned with whether or not people read what they post.
Team blogs allow the individual to keep their identity by taking away some of the pressure. In a team situation they can feel free to express their individuality by discussing a subject they enjoy because topics they have no interest in or no knowledge of will be discussed by other members of the team.
For me joining a team blog was sort of a support kind of thing. I wanted to post on shows/mangas I enjoyed but didn’t really have much confidence in my writing. Writing in a team setting gave me a little bit more confidence about doing so.
Gah I don’t know if anything I’m saying even has any relevance its just what popped into my head after reading what you wrote.
“I think what is good for the blogosphere more than anything else is seeing that more variety in the tone and type of message is introduced in the coming years.”
Pretty much, though I’d favor the tone more than the type of message.
1. Well to me, identity is more defined by what the collective other things than what you yourself think. Taken individually, the first thing that apparently many fellow bloggers see about me is that I’m an ARIA fan. Well yes, but there’s more to me than that, and I’d like to think that you could see it in content. Taken collectively, I think DMAB is seen as more of a hodgepodge of stuff, which suits me just fine.
As an aside, I expect the Hidamari Sketch posts not to get as much traffic than other posts, as it focuses on one show that not many people have seen, and because my posts aren’t episodic summaries but expansions on a theme or themes that I see in each episode. Or so I’d like to think.
2. I’d say the social role of blogs is, sadly, to get people to like interest to come together in a way. People that like a certain subject matter, or a certain writing style will likely gravitate to a specific subset of blogs compared to taking a chunk of all that there is to to offer from all sides. Though I do want to see people do more of the latter.
3. I say it only becomes a problem where the blog encourages isolation from other groups of blogging. You might want to keep your communities to yourself (a couple come to mind, but I won’t name names) and that’s all well and good for you, but it deprives the entire blogosphere another set of interesting opinions and insightful points. While the animeblogosphere probably wouldn’t need it, I’m of the “more is better” argument. When it gets saturated (if it ever gets saturated), I think we could deal with that when the time comes.