Over on Twitter, we (Kathryn, snail, Trish, Clare, Megan, Sam, Alisa) have responded to my earlier post and commenting about blogging (and #blogjune) and how the way we interact online has changed over the years. It turns out a few of us have noticed, and maybe have been missing, the ways we used to communicate.
I note that in pointing to people’s online presences above, I chose to link to their Twitter handles rather than their blogs, because 1) the conversation was on Twitter, and 2) not everyone blogs any longer these days.
I think the online ecosystem for our community/communities changed. We had RSS and everyone happily kept up with each other that way and we linked to blogs naturally and there was this great feedback loop with comments and questions and people responding to your posts by posting their own thoughts and takes and on it went. Then it fractured/frayed/fragmented and our attention was diverted into all the other platforms.
I woke up this morning and remembered a paper I wrote for a conference way back in 2006: Creating community: The blog as a networking device.
From the paper:
Along with ease of creation and maintenance, the blog has other features that
add to its appeal. These include the archiving or preservation of posts, search
capabilities, permanent links and RSS feeds. These are ‘built-in’ or automated by
the blogging software. Arguably the most important feature of the blog is the
comments feature. This feature allows readers to write comments in response to
material posted on the blog. These comments can be read and responded to by
anyone who visits the blog. I would consider the comments feature to be what
truly differentiates a blog from a ‘traditional’ website.
And I went on to say:
This is where the true value of the blog lies, in the interaction and participation it
allows users. The term ‘blogosphere’ is frequently used when describing blogs.
Because blogs ‘often contain numerous links to other blogs and websites, they
each act as a unit in a dynamic community. Together they form an
interconnected whole or the “blogosphere”’ (Xiao, 2004) [emphasis mine]. Conversations develop
as people read and comment and post their thoughts and ideas on blogs. Where
blogging has value for librarians can be found within that section of the
blogosphere that librarian bloggers ‘inhabit’, the so-called biblioblogosphere or
liblogosphere. [ugh, I’m glad the terms biblioblogosphere and liblogosphere are not used these days. Awful.]
It’s the interconnected whole that has disappeared, I think. As snail points out: “10 years ago, 15 years ago, perhaps more, there was the fun of the new and a large bunch of folk all trying out new things together. It started out slow: 1 then a few, then a few more, then at some point or other it hit critical mass.”
And in the way of these things, after you hit the peak, don’t you then head downhill? (So we should just move on? Can the beast be revived?)
This is all a bit disjointed. Just some idle thoughts – this is a blog, hooray for blogs – and maybe I should stick to posting my cartoons/drawings instead.
4 Comments
I like your blogging and your drawings. In reading Andrew’s blog this morning https://bibliothequebound.blogspot.com/2021/06/blogjune-day-2-ghosts-of-blogjunes-past.html?m=1 I’m struck by the personal value in looking back at your blog for personal reflection; yet it’s also a link to how I collaborated with others and was inspired by others. Some posts were responses to other blog’s; some don’t label themselves as such but were topics that arose tangentially in my brain because of the topics others chose. Perhaps the value is in the dedicated time to share one’s thoughts, rather than the medium.
I’d love that last sentence “Perhaps the value is in the dedicated time to share one’s thoughts, rather than the medium.” – I love it a lot.
I like these thoughts you’ve shared, Con. I concur also. The short-form has a lot to answer for. I could write a blog post about that, my connection to Twitter and Jack.