Blogs

Rob Scoble is in new-scientist, Scott Wingo is on BBC radio. What is it with bloggers?

Some may say that it's just a way of self publicizing but is there more to blogging than talking about blogging?

Scoble seems to spend a lot of time writing about the process of blogging. He's an RSS nut-case who would have the whole world subscribe to his full-content blog. I say that's ok but only if you can afford to provide the bandwidth necessary for the world to hit your RSS feed once an hour. For people in the real world, it's probably overkill. If everyone demanded full content RSS feeds the internet would grind to a halt. We can afford to do it if we subscribe to very few full-content feeds but it should never be the norm.

Scott Wingo was probably one of the first true bloggers when taken in the current context. His MFC FAQ was a regular release that he worked for long hours on getting right. He used this communications vehicle as a marketing tool that sold Stingray software components to the developer community. Scott's writing skills are excellent and he pens a coherent and readable paragraph (although you'd never think so looking at his recent work in the eBay strategies blog [Sorry Scott]) He was the absolute master of guerilla marketing and someone who I respect enormously. I'd like to see Scott doing more of the real stuff.

Perhaps the process of putting your ideas down for everyone to see clarifies it in your own mind. After all. What use is an idea if it cannot be communicated? Perhaps bloggers are the sort of people who write things in their diaries and then leave the book open in the hope that someone will read it. Maybe they just need to be seen.

Do you blog? Why?