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From Marc Andreessen, a nicely written set of observations on his experiences since starting a blog less than two months ago. My favorites are the fifth and the seventh. Some excerpts:
Fifth, writing a blog is way easier than writing a magazine article, a published paper, or a book — but provides many of the same benefits. I think it’s an application of the 80/20 rule — for 20% of the effort (writing a blog post but not editing and refining it [to] the quality level required of a magazine article, a published paper, or a book), you get 80% of the benefit (your thoughts are made available to interested people very broadly). Arguably blogging is better because the distribution of a blog can be even broader than a magazine article, a published paper, or a book….
It is going to be tremendous fun to see the race that is rapidly evolving between blogging on the one hand and traditional forms of publishing on the other hand — there are advantages on all sides, but I think blogging is going to post a lot more challenges to magazines, newspapers, books, and other forms of traditional written media in the years to come, and more so than many people in those industries currently imagine….
It’s also been striking to me how much more fun blogging is versus public speaking — at least for me. And the reach from blogging seems to be much broader than speaking even at the largest conferences. I’m not sure I’ll ever speak in public again — I’ll be at home instead, blogging in my underwear….
Seventh, it is totally clear that original content is what generates readership, at least for most bloggers. Some bloggers who blog a lot and link to a ton of interesting things every day have high levels of readership without a lot of original content, but I’d argue they are in the minority — most of the bloggers I’ve talked to over the last year who have significant levels of traffic attribute their readership mostly to original content, and this is certainly true for my blog….
His comments on challenges to traditional media are exactly true, I think, especially when he points out that the scope of that challenge is still unknown. I think creative discourse across all fields will benefit, in time, but there’s a rupture out there waiting to happen that will need to be healed first. While I hate to cast it as a battle (especially one that hasn’t fully engaged yet), I still think “both sides” will need to be vigilant as we begin to confront the ways in which media is once again changing. What matters, in the end, is that the conversations continue through the connections we make. “Only connect,” is the well-known E. M. Forster phrase we should resurrect for the new century and stamp somewhere on our sites.
Original source: Matthew Ingram: Do Blog Comments Still Matter?
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