Overrated: Too Many Blogs, Too Little Time...

Most bloggers are "wanna be writers" who are awful writers. I hate blogs and I rarely read them unless it is by a well known writer of a newspaper or magazine. I don't really look at those as blogs but giving me up-to-date information or an opinion but opinions have been around forever by newspapers, magazines, and the electronic media.

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"They take up too much of people's leisure time that could be spent offline interacting in person."

So what? The same could be said of reading books, or any other leisure activity that is done in private. Not everyone is an extrovert, and not everyone considers constant chitchat the pinnacle of human experience.

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With new blogs being created about every three minutes and mainstream publishers putting out their own blogs, aren't we just about finished riding this wave?

NO! What we need are websites that can help us to search for, gather, and manage blogs of any topic. Don't kill the Blogesphere, MANAGE IT!!!!

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Another thing we could do without is people --bloggers or not-- who are so self-absorbed that they seem to think that their personal opinion of what's hot, trendy, uncool, or whatever, is relevant to anyone else. I'll make my own opinions, thank you.

But I agree with the Donald Trump choice.

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Blogs, taken in context, are okay. However, whenever you receive any type of information; weather it be from the news media, your family, friends or blogs: you must weigh in your own mind the validity of the information that you have received.

You should not take everything you hear as the complete truth. It might be; or it might be someones interpretation of what they believe to be the truth. Either way: you have to make up your own mind as to what you believe. This has always been the way...even before weblogs, or even the internet.

I manage several blogs; and they are mostly just to express my ideas, opinions or the happenings for my company. I also use it at times to document ideas and thoughts that are relevant to MY life. However, I have learned (the hard way) that you shouldn't always post online all of your thoughts and feelings...as they will be their for all to see....and this might not be a good thing.

Blogs can be a useful tool, and I would agree somewhat with DR Brennan in that if we had a way to search through the myriad of blogs on a particular subject; it would be quite useful. However, you can still do a search using Google or Yahoo (or what ever your preference is) and get the information that you need. But that still does not release you from the responsibility from getting the big picture; and seeing all sides of any topic.

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Ironic, considering how commercial and mainstream this blog is. It shares little in common with real blogs that are off the cuff where people truly do share alternative viewpoints. I hope your advertisers are happy.

Advertising streams have killed the true spirit of blogging. The worst thing that ever happened to bloggers were to loose themselves in pay per post schemes. They tell you what to write, what products to push, you try to find a way to creatively and transparently mention it in your blog post, without digressing to selling the product. You begin to loose inspiration and find you don't have anything to blog about if they don't have any work. Your blog looses traffic because you started selling to begin with.

Blogs like WalletPop were inevitable, but then again so was Adriana Huffington's blog as well. But blogs like WalletPop have to keep themselves from turning into an electronic magazine, which is the antithesis of blogging to most bloggers. I don't subscribe to the feeds of any blogs, and I doubt that any of my readers subscribe to mine. I wouldn't want them to. If you see something you like click on the link, but if I'm not talking about something you're interested in reading let the next guy handle it, he's more than capable.

Professionalism has it's place in blogging. If your town has a newspaper that sucks, like my metropolitain area does for example, there is a serious need for bloggers to aggregate and do serious reporting and research and create an answer to the void that publication was supposed to fill. But if you are writing for yourself, as 99% of writers are, do what you want say how you feel. Most "successful blogs" have sold out and compromised and "cashed in" thousands of times over. It's their perrogative to do so however, but I'm never going back towards that abyss ...

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"Everbody's bloggin' at me... I can't hear a word they're sayin'" James Taylor(?)

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AOL is particularly bad. You click a link and think you are getting a legitimate story on a topic that sounds interesting and you get some lame blogger with delusions of competence.

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