A Blog About Making Culture
The Blog Cycle
March 21, 2005
The basic format of the weblog medium has been pretty much set for more than 5 years now, and it's enough time that we can probably make some safe observations about bloggers' behavior.
First, it's important to note that there is no "blogosphere". There are hundreds of blogospheres. Each sub-community of weblogs has its own social norms, its own traditions and its own thought leaders. And as each community has formed and evolved, you can see it go through a few common steps as it evolves as a medium.
A lot of these points could be debated, but this is what I've noticed as some of the common steps of evolution within a blogging community:
- What is blogging? There's an initial period of a lot of excited attention to the format itself, followed by attempts to define blogging, either in reference to other media or by itself. This tends to lead to a lot of heated but fruitless debates with no clear resolution.
- Our community invented blogging! Notwithstanding the fact that (unless you're Tim Berners Lee) someone's already done a large part of blogging before you, each community thinks it has invented/revolutionized blogging. Some acknowledge that there were bloggers prior to their community's existence, but generally will point out a reason that those examples don't really count.
- Blogging vs. Journalism Phew. This old chestnut gets trotted out the first time someone in the community gets press coverage, the first time a blog breaks a news item before the paper of record for that community, or the first time someone makes a transition from blogger to journalist or vice versa. Ultimately, most rational people come to the conclusion that some blogging is journalistic, some journalism happens in the weblog medium, most people are content to have the lines be blurry, and in general the two forms of media are distinct but have some overlap.
- Where are the women/minorities? We've been going through this one again lately in the tech blogging realm, and to a lesser degree I've seen it flare up with political blogs. Interestingly, it's mostly a problem in technology and political blogs, though the most popular members of those communities are loathe to admit it. Other huge and growing communities, like knitters, food bloggers, baby bloggers, and corporate/PR bloggers don't seem to have nearly as much of a problem being blind to identity when linking to or quoting from others.
- You'll get fired! If you read my site, you probably already know my feelings on the subject, but suffice to say each new community has its own backlash on this, especially as people try to find scaremongering ideas to use as the hook for press coverage.
- Think about the children! This is the other big hook for media coverage that wants a scary angle for a story. Some vague intimation that kids who blog give out their home address and social security numbers, along with the requisite mention of a kidnapping or other threat to children, and you've got a basic "be afraid of new things" story. This happens with pretty much anything having to do with the Internet, but when each blog community gets its coverage, it gets the added fear that parents have of their children having a voice.
- The technology is boring/unimportant. Someone in each community will realize that the core technology for publishing on the web is fairly straightforward, or will make the argument that you can already communicate by writing a broadsheet and tacking it to a telephone poll. This is often the first step in a blog backlash, to form the basis of an argument that blogs are insignificant.
- Will blogs change the world? Either on their own, or in reaction to the building backlash, some of the most gung-ho bloggers (which, not coincidentally, will often be people who are newest to the medium) will declare it The End of Ignorance or The Birth of Freedom or something equally grandiose. This tends to do a better job of offending doubters than it does of convincing believers.
- What you do isn't blogging — do it this way. One good sign that a community is maturing is that some of the earlier or more influential members start trying to dictate how it should be done. Use more bold letters! Don't use comments! Insert more pictures! Whatever the rule, it's generally being used to assert authority over the nascent community, or to defend some arbitrary choices that have been made and are now being questioned. Sometimes a new community will splinter off of the existing one if the identity/definition questions are deemed to be fundamental, but usually you'll just end up with an ugly and long-simmering division.
- They don't deserve it! Newer members of a community will lament that the earlier members have a disproportionate influence. This, of course, has been the trend in every human society since the dawn of civilization, but that doesn't make it any less frustrating or any less legitimate a complaint. Nobody's figured out a way to undo this tendency, but in general, most online communities are actually much easier to enter and participate in than they may at first seem. Write a lot and write well, and see if that doesn't help.
There's a lot more common trends, but those are some of the main ones. You'll see a tendency for parallel communities to hit some of these points simultaneously (for example, the food blog and baby blog communities are both on the rise right now, so infighting can be expected within 6 months or so).
It's also common to find communities identifying themselves by lashing out at others. Early in the history of weblogs, the distinction between diaries and journals and blogs was an almost political one, with some of the biases still being carried on today. (Bloggers are full of themselves because they think the world wants to hear their opinion on everything; Journalers are full of themselves because they think their friends want to hear them report on everything in their lives.)
Once you see these trends, it becomes much easier to see how there is no one monolithic weblog medium, and that these trends are likely to repeat themselves forever. It can be handy to identify a certain news story or blog post and see where it fits into this list, and to which community it applies.
The other interesting generality about these issues is that they almost all end up not being a big deal. They seem like huge, all-consuming issues of great importance at the time, but they almost always end up being resolved with no clear answer and a vague sense that maybe it wasn't the end of the world after all. I find it somewhat comforting that humans tend to come back down to a fuzzy moderate position instead of a crystal-clear extremist one.
If you'd like to see the early history of some of these community trends, you can take a look at Weblog Madness, an early resource from when many weblog trends were still forming. Some of the earliest items listed on the media mentions page document the first occurrences of a lot of these concepts. Those of you who've been around the medium for a few years – have I missed any big points?
Previously: Music, Music Everywhere
mikel.org | Michael Boyle's weblog
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Use more bold letters!
Unfortunately, you have a <?strong> instead of </strong> in there which means you’re doing precisely that ;-)
NickFitz
Use more bold letters!
Unfortunately, you have a <?strong> instead of </strong> in there which means you’re doing precisely that ;-)
NickFitz
Aaagh, an internal server error made that post twice :-(
Philipp Lenssen
Most of the links in the media attention collection you point to have died by now, and there’s an unclosed “strong” bolding the second part of your article.
But I’d like to add one more step to the blogolution: the patronizing “been there done that” attitude by those who’ve been around longer than others. You can see this in newsgroups which often dismiss a newbie’s question because something has already been discussed years ago — they want to kill the conversation by pointing to the old one. I can sort of see it in your post.
Now sometimes, these attempts to kill a conversation by making it look trivial are justified (the issue has been successfully resolved), sometimes they aren’t (the issue is still worth discussing). As for the journalism vs blogging, or blogging minorities, or other points you mention, you are right: these have been discussed, and they have been resolved (if only by admitting there’s no one extreme solution, as you say, and mostly, it was just hot air).
One more thing: just because the blogosphere can be split up into sub-spheres doesn’t mean it doesn’t exists. That would be throwing out the baby with the bathwater. In any case the term is overused so let’s just not use it for 2 years. We can go back to it in 2007 and maybe the break helped us all to find new meaning in what defines us.
Gordon
This sits nicely alongside the piece I just wrote up on why people “blog”.
“Bloggers are full of themselves because they think the world wants to hear their opinion on everything” is in part true but not from the point of view of the person doing the writing.
And for all the reasons stated above I think that is why so many people have a hard time answering a simple question like “what is blogging?”
Best answer (not from me) is that it’s a hobby. Like most hobbies there are variety of topics, and some people may make some money from it. Some people may become well known in the topic arena they specialise in but there will always be other topics.
And in the end, am I right in saying “they are only blogs”?
Joe Gregorio
It’s not just blogging. Look at podcasting going through the same steps. I can’t wait for some to start syndicating ‘samples’ and watch them get told that they’re doing podcasting /wrong/.
Bill Jennings
The only things I’d add:
It’s about who you know: There’s a tendency to assume that many of the influential bloggers who link to each other are just each other’s friends who spend their non-blogging time hanging out with each other at SXSW/ETECH/WYSISWYG/whatever.
A major award: People keep deciding that they need to give out awards because the Webbies/Bloggies/Koufaxes/whatever aren’t representing the real community.
Ian Kennedy 
There’s also the “echo room” stage when someone in the community says, “Hey, wait a minute, we’re all just reading one another and not doing anything to bringing in new members or viewpoints.” This will be confirmed by someone in the community that will point to an article or post that accuses the group of being nothing but a group of navel-gazers. There will be much hand-wringing about outreach and diversity and the dangers of being myopic. Then big news will break and shotput folks back into the spotlight and all will be forgotten until things slow down again and someone, in a fit of intraspection, brings the topic up again.
finn
Maybe this is just a more minor milestone under What you do isn’t blogging — do it this way, but I have noticed that at some point there is almost always Meta blogging wherein the community parodies or catalogues the sterotypical contents of their weblogs. This stage was recently reached by what I like to think of as the NYC/LA/mediacentric axis of weblogs. This is notable as without a more or less coherent topic, style or preoccupation there would be nothing to parody or catalog.
Also, among the “hundreds of blogospheres” there is a fair amount of overlap and blurring. Each sub-community might have a center, but I don’t think any of them have definable edges.
donnie j
I don’t know if I buy the “Echo Room.” Yes, people do inevitably end up blogging about the same thing - but isn’t that what a community is? A group interested in the same types of things. It’s common knowledge that you can’t browse through the influential blogs without running into the same sort of commentary, yahoo buys flickr, blogging vs. journalism, kottke goes pro. However, I don’t think there is any complaining or handwringing going on over it.
I am with Phil: I would love to get rid of the word blogosphere. Let’s just agree that there are a large number of people out there who write down their daily thoughts and some of these people link to each other.
Domoni
Very good points. The process seems similar to the BBS world of the 80s. Someone familiar with fanzines of the 70s probably saw the process unfold in the same way.
Anil has put together a great start for someone who wants to write a paper on community building. I’d like to read a well-researched paper on this subject.
As for “blogosphere”— yes, please kill it. I’ve always preferred “blogverse.” That metaphor allows for multiple star systems and galaxies.
Jozef Imrich
Blogburnout appears to be an appropriate metaphor as well …
Jameson
I agree on the echo chamber comment; it’s a definite part of the cycle. Didn’t HP chart up all the links and show that they basically stem from a few key sources? It’s the only omission in the otherwise impeccable analysis. Well said! It’s insight like this that I point to when those around me want to believe that blogs are the solution to all the world’s ills.
Scott B.
You forgot the phase where the old-time gurus start analyzing “The Blog Cycle”.
BobbyMasteria
There is a Blogosphere like there is a Universe.
Shelley
Be nice. You forgot the stage where people will lament the ‘trolls’, put down the critics, and exhort each other to ‘be nice’.
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