In conversation with a business associate, Alan Moore of SMLXL, yesterday, we got on to the topic of how the UK really is lagging behind when it comes to anticipating and preparing for the seismic shifts that are happening in business. I’m not sure if it was Alan or me who came up with this line, but it is as if they are standing at the foot of the volcano, having a picnic and drinking champagne. Maybe if they pretend everything is going to be okay, they won’t have to change. (See, on this note, SMLXL posts passim, including yesterday’s Another business model under threat.) Yes, we have covered this ground with Alan before.
Similarly, the UK market is way behind when it comes to blogging. I met in Paris last week with Guillaume du Gardier of PR Planet, and he was surprised to hear that France is much more developed on the blogging front than Britain. Does that make sense? On the surface, no, it doesn’t. The UK, sharing a common language with the US, should be much more up to speed on these things.
I am sure it can be annoying for a Brit to hear it from an American, but I suspect that one of the reasons for the slow uptake of blogging in the UK is that in general it is quite unlike Brits to get overly excited about anything. It is almost something of a sin to be wide-eyed and evangelical about anything, no matter how worthy that thing may be. Brits excel at cynicism and being understated and controlled; they are not entranced by the sort of hype that excites people in the US. (I again emphasise the generality, as I know and work with many Brits for whom the appearance of cynicism is not a concern.) In Britain, it is far more the done thing to be looking the other way when the bandwagon rolls up, and then scoff and roll your eyes when you finally see it, as it goes past…and then run run run to jump right on it, usually about 18 months behind the rest of the developed world.
Indeed, I remember as far back as a year ago, observing many conversations in British blog comments and on UK-based blogs, wherein bloggers themselves were turning their noses up at the buzz being whipped up in the US about blogging. Sure, it is good enough for them and they spend hours a day in the blogosphere, but God forbid they appear genuinely enthralled by this ‘phenomenon’! No, it is far easier to seem cool towards blogging. A shrug of the shoulders and a yawn would suffice…and then back to updating the blogroll and commenting on their daily tour of their niche of the blogosphere.
And so it goes. In the end, all you can do is shake your head and smile at such people – they can appear as unfussed as they like, and the bandwagon will roll on with or without their enthusiasm. But it is a shame for Britain that it once again is playing catch-up with the rest of the world when it comes to blogging and to the shifts in business that will be necessary for success in the coming decades. At times like these, that usually charming cynicism costs – big-time.
This post has been cross-posted to the Big Blog Company blog.
In other news… person selling blogs says people should buy more blogs.
In other news…commenter with nothing substantive to say makes desperate attempt to sound clever.
You may be interested, TJM, in a piece I blogged yesterday, wherein I state quite emphatically:
See also:
Etc etc, ad nauseam. In case the point is unclear: Not every company needs a blog, and indeed there are many companies we would strongly advise against having one, and for whom we would not build a blog for any price.
But the fact remains that Britain is far, far behind the rest of the world when it comes to blogging. The most vibrant and active blogospheres are in the US, France, Iran and Japan.
Touchy, touchy, touchy. The reason bloggers are “unfussed” about blogging is that many regard it as a tool. A useful, innovative tool to be sure… but no more so than the telephone, fax, email, or the web. I don’t see why bloggers should be expected to be evangelists for the technology they use.
Your position is different… being professionally involved in the area, of course you will promote the technology (even while recognising that it isn’t suitable for all). And you’re absolutely right in saying that it is an important development. But that’s not the role of the individual users nor should it be.
TJM, excuse me if I seem touchy when someone accuses me of shameless shilling – but glad to see that you accept the evidence to the contrary.
And I never contended that bloggers should be “expected” to do anything. The fact is that blogging has been picked up and spread like wildfire in the US and multiple other non-English-speaking countries, while the UK is lagging far behind. My post was a mere attempt to explain what I see as one of the causes behind this: It’s a culture thing. Unfortunately, in this case, it is Britain’s loss.
How does one measure blogging objectively?
Number of blogs? Number of active blogs? Number of active blogs proportional to the population? I never would have thought the UK any better or worse than anyone else.
With the exception of our high-tech, socialist-wunderkind, benevolent Swedes. As the condescending point out every chance they get.
I can’t say I’ve noticed that much of a lack of British blogs, but admittedly I only really read US & UK blogs, & I obviously expect US ones to outnumber ours.
As for letting every technological innovation pass us by here in the cynical UK, were you in London 5 years ago when everyone was full of dot.com fervour? Yes, we were a few years behind the Americans, but my (perhaps wrong) impression was that no other European city had as much internet activity going on in it at the time. Certainly the cynicism you so deplore seemed completely absent for a while (& was sorely missed in many cases!).
It’s possibly due to the fallout from that period that Brits are somewhat sceptical about “so many people need X; it’s the wave of the future” claims, particularly when they come out of a business which sells X. Too many of these claims were made during the dot.com bubble period, & most of them amounted to nowt. As TJM says, many brits are using blogs as a tool, although few are extolling them as a means to make money etc.
I must say, for individuals I think blogs are excellent; easy & instant. For bigger companies, I don’t see where the major distinction between a regularly updated & well run company website & a blog lies. I suppose though, that there are many smaller companies who could benefit from a regularly updated online presence but can’t afford fancy cms systems to enable unskilled users to update their pages on a regular basis.
Thinking about it, you could pitch to independent record companies; so, so many of them have flashy websites which look very nice but contain information that’s 6 months out of date, which is no bloody use at all when you’re trying to find out whether a particular record is out yet. A blog detailing their releases & what they’re generally up to would be a much simpler & more appropriate solution.
Wow… have I just talked myself round in the course of that comment? Don’t think so really; I’m still with my fellow brits in curbing my enthusiasm, but I’m not denying that there are many areas where blogs could come in very handy, & I wish you the best with your enterprise.
/me shrugs shoulders, yawns, moves on to an article with some content
Whenever I hear yanks going on about how much more tech freindly they are you just think – mobile phones – where the US was the last developed country to catch on.
The main reason why Blogs are more powerful in the US is because the meida and newpapers are worse:- they thereofre fill gap in the market that doesnt exist so much in the UK where ranting is considered acceptable behavior whether in print or in person.
I agree with Giles. The case of mobile phones is a classic counterexample to the claim that Americans are enthusiastic technophiles. I’ve spent most of my life in Silicon Valley, and I don’t (in general) agree with the JD’s bandwagon hypothesis for American behavior. There’s plenty of may-no-new-thing-arise cynicism here, and a higher degree of disdain for technical fads than JD suggests. If the bleeding edge seems to lie in the US more often than elsewhere, I’d suggest two explanations: (1) the US is a big country; (2) the US has a more entrepreneurial culture than most other western countries. Given the number of European and Asian transplants that are here doing various things, It could be that a lot of people who would be making waves in the tech businesses in other countries, including the UK, are doing it in the US because of the more favorable business climate.
Jackie’s argument is an old wine in a new bottle. It was originally given fresh legs by Martin Wiener’s book on the ‘industrial spirit’ or lack of, published in the early 80s, that had us sliding into the third world.
Whilst I accept that the cynicism of Brits can be overdone, there is little evidence to suggest that we always remain in ‘catch-up’ phase with the rest of the world.
If there is a lag in businesses exploring the connectivity potential of the internet over the last three to four years, this lag could be explained by the structure of the telecommunications industry. After all, broadband prices for businesses have been more expensive than our European competitors, resulting in a delay concerning the implementation of these technologies, with a resultant effect on innovation and business models.
You first have to discount the effect of structural factors before using cultural attitudes as an explanation. I am wary of cultural generalisations although, as a blogger, my work is replete with such short cuts.
As Philip says, an old wine in a new bottle. It’s true, nonetheless. Brits, in general, are very cynical and unenthused by a lot of things, whereas the Americans can get overly enthusiastic about thinly sliced bread.
Perhaps, the lack of enthusiasm (in Brits) can be (mis-)read as a lack of acceptance in a technology, or whatever.
I’ll take the American Enthusiasm over the Cynical Brit, though – makes for an entertaining life.
However, it is true that it does seem hard to find an interesting (UK) blog beyond the ‘school sucks’ type (which the US has plenty of!).
Stephen J Whiteley
I agree with Giles. The case of mobile phones is a classic counterexample to the claim that Americans are enthusiastic technophiles.
America was virtually alone in the world in adopting a pricing model for mobile phones in which the owner of a mobile call pays to receive calls (and the called party pays the same as for a call to a fixed phone). The rest of the world which adopted a pricing model in which the calling pary pays the whole cost, which is greater than the cost of calling a fixed phone. The American model gave people an incentive to leave their phones switched off, which dampened the network effects of lots of people having mobile phones. Plus it created a situation where if you made a phone call you were making a financial imposition on the person you were calling, and people didn’t like that.
As to why Americans were slow in picking up mobile phone usage, I blame this pricing model almost entirely.
Re ‘cynical Brits’. Very true, the Brits are cycnical in practically evrything they do, but not in an effort to appear ‘cool’, they just hate to get involved in things.
It is far easier to have a good sneer, than to get up and actually do something different or innovative, with the inherent risk that things may go pear shaped, and the enthusiastic participant made to look foolish, or, heaven forbid, having to accept the blame…
The mobile phone example describes the slow growth – and old technology – in the US perfectly, and conversely the slow takeup of internet usage in the UK, can largely be placed at the door of BT and it’s general reluctance to ‘line-share’ with other companies, along with an antiquated, and expensive pricing structure. That local calls are free in the US, had as much to do with the expansion of the internet, as anything else.
I doubt very much that the UK is as far behind the rest of the world, as the writer suggests. Could be that the Brits are just a bit more discerning, you know, – looking before they leap, enough to make cynicism seem almost a virtue…
But didn’t the telephone sort of revolutionize things? As did the myriad other technologies that are disseminated throughout our daily lives. I think it’s all the little ways blogs add up (or, er, are used) that is interesting. For instance, another commenter brought up the point that in the US blogs have been used as a counter to newspapers, which are worse here than in the UK. Although, in reading the online versions of UK papers, they seem pretty much the same quality to me.
So I blog as a physician who has a blog, not specifically about medicine, but just general things about my profession. I had a long time reader ask a general question about a biopsy ( I make it a policy not to answer specific questions, as I think there are potential dangers to doing that, but this was something I felt comfortable with over the internet) and I answered it. She and I states apart and never having met. I dunno. I just thought that was way cool.
So I guess I fall into the enthused American catergory Jackie D is blogging about.
Michael — that’s an interesting argument I’d never thought of. It sounds meritorious. I remember thinking, back in the 80s, that the pricing model used here was not a recipe for rapid progress. Philip’s and your comments lead me to conclude mobile phones weren’t the quite the right example for my argument.
This is funny: Alan Moore (as mentioned in the post) was saying yesterday how, in Finland in 1992, you went into a restaurant and the whole place rang – everyone already had their mobiles there, then. Whereas when Alan returned to the UK with his, in 1998, he was shouted at and sworn at just for using his in the street.
Well, this is getting a little off topic but…
The pricing model is/was certainly a big impediment to mobile phone adoption but the lack of universal coverage must also take a large part of the blame. When I left the U.K. in 2000, each of the four networks had coverage in the 97-99% of the population range. The last time I looked at several of the network coverage maps out here in TN last year, most of them barely covered metropolitan Nashville, the major interstates and a few towns here and there.
Part of the draw of having a mobile phone is being able to make/receive calls *anywhere*. Despite the impression given by the X-Files, a trip to the local B&Q analogue can lose you coverage (let alone wandering around in poorly lit sewer pipes). Who wants to be paying big bucks for a mobile phone then have to go looking for a payphone when you need to make a call?
Rich
I agree that pricing is probably the most important factor in explain the US telephone market – but that just makes the point – technological adoption is primarily determined by economic factors – markets, barriers, competition, laws and incomes – not “cultural openness or what ever.
I think the tech thing is more of a cultural sales issue:- I can’t count the number of times I’ve hear Americans saying that the British are useless salesmen and visa versa. If you’re selling a new product in the US it’s a common technique to sell on the basis of how technologically advanced the product is. In the UK this approach doesn’t work so well as the British have an anti intellectual streak– the only time I’ve seen it used was vorsprung dur technic i.e. in German. Selling in Britain works better by emphasizing how “neat” or cool the product is but this sales technique comes across as shallow and weak in the US. So my advice to Jackie would be change your sales pitch to fit the market – don’t expect the market to change to suit your pitch.
On the newspapers vs blogs point I think that the advantage blogs have over papers in the US is their greater diversity – to work in a newspaper inn the US you normally have to have been to journalism school which obviously imposes a certain “style” on its students. US blogs, like UK papers, are written by a wider variety of people. And I think that the proof is in the circulations – the best selling Newspaper in the US USA today would come only 3rd in the UK in terms of circulation, the next – the WSJ, 7th and the NYT 10th . And this is despite the fact that the population is 5 times larger.
“he was shouted at and sworn at just for using his in the street. ”
Isnt that an indication of relative levels of politeness?
I don’t know why I feel compelled to rebut this idea that U.S. citizens are not “enthusiastic technophiles” because we were slow to take advantage of the new cell phone technology. Maybe because the reason couldn’t be more obvious. Like Mike said earlier, “the US is a big country”. This might help to make it clear; My home state of Montana alone is 50% larger than the entire United Kingdom. While the UK has well over 600 people per sq/mile (245 sq/km) my state has 6 people per sq/mile (2 sq/km). How do you think the profit per cell tower would compare? How long do you think it takes to acquire land/permission for all those towers? I think under the circumstances we did pretty well.
Derek I don’t buy the geopgraphy argument since then Australia would still never have mobile phones. Population density only explains that pattern of roll out within a country, not the different take up rates between countries. (Interestingly Finland, which was the ground breaker has half the population density of the US).
The problem was as michael said due to the way the licenses were allocated and the pricing mechanism that gave rise to.
There are two other possibilities: one is that e-commerce in the UK has professionalised fairly rapidly with all of the attendant problems for welcoming further technological change. Their response to blogs: “How does this affect my CRM?” You’d have to wipe a generation of proud shiney graduates away who thought that they “geddit”?/!!
Alternatively, network effects are magnified within a continental community and are marginalised in smaller centralised economies. The British economy dos tend to revolve around London, like it or not. In the short term, this may prevent technological clustering on a virtual or a geographic scale. In the long term, this may be enhanced.
What is clear: most Brits are not cynical (that requires a halfway decent education system); some tend to adopt technologies with enthusiasm (boffins, gadget magazines, amateur science and other such, rich, existing traditions); tech is considered cool for certain lifestyles (where would the chavs be without their mobile phone?)
Still, you couldn’t call a group of chavs a smart mob, or could you?
Derek writes:
“I think under the circumstances we did pretty well.”
I don’t – then again, I also don’t believe the relatively poor adoption of mobile phones in the USA was due to some essential technophobia. The problem, as so often, was caused by corporate greed and stupidity. As for coverage in the USA, I can only say it seems pretty pathetic. And, I’m afraid, comparisons with the UK aren’t relevant. There are extremely large tracts of Asia where coverage is pretty good and much of Scandinavia is far from densely populated. What happened was that, having cocked-up the pricing and suffered a consequently poor take-up, the networks were then unwilling to pay for expanded coverage. Poor choices of technology didn’t help, either. Call it a self-fulfilling prophecy. Bad choices made for bad take up, which led to yet more poor choices….
Back on topic, I’m afraid I’m with those who find it hard to get too excited about blogs, but I don’t believe it’s because I’m British. They have their uses (in all sorts of areas beyond entertainment) and no doubt they’ll find their level. But compared with, say, VOIP, and the other things that will flow as speeds increase? Now that is going to shake some monkeys out of the trees.
Meanwhile, a lot of what is claimed for blogs actually predates them. Bulletin boards and discussion groups were both active and useful long before most had access to the Internet and it is the arrival of that, rather than blogs per se that is going to have proved the real revolution of our time – blogs are just one of the vehicles riding on it.
Giles, Alan Moore is a man of impeccable manners and mild, non-shouty voice. You wouldn’t know that, but seriously – I do remember the same hostility towards mobiles when I was fresh off the boat here at a similar time, and even now I know far too many Brits who wear it as a badge of honour that they don’t own a mobile and will never be one of the common filth who do. Bully for them.
Hmm, my post wasn’t a complaint about sales; it was an observation on the lag of the UK market in areas of technological and business changes that are moving with great force in many parts of the rest of the world.
As far as tBBC having a “sales pitch”, I would not say that we do. We tell it like it is, even if it means advising a company not to have a blog. The concept of developing a one-size-fits-all “pitch” makes my skin crawl. We talk to a company and find ou what their needs and challenges are, who they want to talk to, where they are coming from, where they are and where they are heading. Then we tell them – if applicable – how using the network effect of blogs could help them. So yes, our very first consideration is the particular circumstances of our “market” – one client at a time. Long may it ever be so.
Sorry for expanding on my tangent, GCooper, point taken. I guess I have to admit it took awhile to convince mom the dinner hour call should come on the new suitcase cell phone instead of the CB.
Jackie I think youre mistaking rudness for technophobia. People object to mobile phones for all sorts of snobbish reasons but that doesnt mean that they’re hostile to tech.
Look at the graph here:-
http://www.nokiaventurepartners.com/q204_newsletter/article_8.html
On every product SMS to TV British mobile phone users are more “technophilic) than US users currently are.
Derek writes:
“Sorry for expanding on my tangent, GCooper, point taken. I guess I have to admit it took awhile to convince mom the dinner hour call should come on the new suitcase cell phone instead of the CB. ”
A point well made and well taken. The miserable way the UK attempted to suppress CB radio was a disgrace.
Mercifully, by the time mobile/cell technology came along we had learned the regulatory lesson.
My impression, though, is that what went wrong in the States with cellphones wasn’t so much regulation as corporate wrong-headedness.
Which, I suppose, means we screwed-up with CB due to government stupidity, while you lost out on mobiles due to its corporate equivalent.
Jackie D writes:
“Hmm, my post wasn’t a complaint about sales; it was an observation on the lag of the UK market in areas of technological and business changes that are moving with great force in many parts of the rest of the world. ”
Which, let’s be fair, doesn’t necessarily mean the UK is wrong.
Italy, famously, regarded the Y2K “bug” as a load of over-hyped crap. And Italy was right.
Blogs aren’t that – but I still doubt they are quite what some seem to be claiming.
One problem with doctrinaire libertarians is that many are willing to sacrifice the good things in life, in favor of new technology.
This trait is about as maddening as the left’s desire to progress at all costs, defining “progress” as moving forward, even then a sharp drop off a steep cliff is the only thing that lies on that path.
I resisted a cell phone for the longest time, knowing that it would tether me to work, to telephones, to irritating clients, and to people I frankly didn’t want to talk to. I’ve had one now for the last several years, and frankly, it’s a 24 hour tether.
About 2 years ago (speaking of Yank backward-ness) I got a Blackberry. I suppose everybody “over there” carries a Blackberry or Blueberry, huh? We’re prolly way behind on that, and wireless tech… So the Blackberry allows me to be tethered to my desktop, even if I’m out hiking in the BlueRidge mountains, or fishing on the Chesapeake. Yay. Great. If something important happens at work, I can tell my buddy to turn the boat around, I need to get to shore and drive home to D.C. to get to work on my Sunday morning…
It’s a mistake to reject Tolkien’s profoundly conservative viewpoint of technology, as something that has great potential to destroy the natural beauty of life, and to disrupt our natural rhythms. There is a reason we have a romantic notion of falling asleep next to a stream under a tree in the sun, and it has something to do with putting the plough or the cell phone or the bluetooth-linked laptop aside, and just being in something like a natural, unharried state for a while.
We as libertarians ought to think about the culture we’re trying to create before we go crowing about the new tech. Nanotech, for instance, is leading us down the road towards ever more feasible RFID implants. Just as we embrace the freedom of cellphones (which now tie us to our desks) we will embrace RFID chips which allow us to leave the cash and driver’s license and medical records behind. But will the new technology really free us, or enslave us in other ways? Libertarians, many of whom are suffering from advanced technophilia, should pause before chasing down the road after this stuff.
And yes, I really do know whereof I speak. I recently enjoyed a week up in the lovely Lakes District, where glory be, I couldn’t get any cell or Blackberry reception. I had occasion to think about this as I walked down the “racetrack” – and decided all in all, I’d be fine without all this electronic tethering.
And as for blogs as tech – the very large firm where I work is experimenting with access-controlled blogs hosted on remote web sites as a workgrouping tool. It shows a lot of promise so far in the beta version I’m testing – our secure intranet is otherwise unaccesible from home, so this will allow us to work from anywhere, and telecommute more often. My only worry being that this feature will stretch our workdays into the weekends more often… It merits more thought, to be sure.
Giles writes: “US blogs, like UK papers, are written by a wider variety of people. And I think that the proof is in the circulations – the best selling Newspaper in the US USA today would come only 3rd in the UK in terms of circulation, the next – the WSJ, 7th and the NYT 10th.”
On the contrary, Giles. US papers are written by a vastly greater variety of people than UK papers, as the US industry is much more diffuse, diverse, less monolithic.
The salient fact about the UK industry is that its major papers are meant to be national papers and they all eminate from London. In the US there are a large number of regional papers (Baltimore Sun, LA Times), thousands upon thousands of local papers, one national paper (USA Today), one national financial paper, and 1 semi-national paper, the NYT (which is really more of an regional paper that’s got above itself).
Most Americans get their information from one regional paper and one local paper. Locals carry primarily local, but a smattering of national news; regionals carry regional and metropolitian news, a lot of national news, and a bit of international news; and nationals carry primarily national, but a substantial amout of international news as well (particularly my fav, WSJ). (Note: this may be part of the reason many Americans have little interest in international affairs — but is this cause or effect?)
Brits are all reading the same stuff — whatever’s in the national papers (of which there are relatively few). Americans are exposed to a greater variety of news and views. The circulation figures you cite are evidence of that.
I am not sure about the cynicism thesis, Jackie. Generalisations are dangerous. There is one key reason why blogging has not perhaps taken off in Britain to the extent it has in the US — we Britis have a raucous tabloid print press and satirical tradition that to a certain extent mirrors the talk-radio phenomenon of the US.
American newspapers are as dull as ditchwater. Give me the Telegraph or even the Guardian if you want a good laugh.
There is a grain of truth about British cynicism, as could be witnessed in the sneering coverage in certain quarters about Burt Rutan’s SpaceshipOne heroics. But hey, don’t slag we Brits off too much, Jackie, particularly if you happen to reside in this country. It is bad manners!!
If British tabs and US talkers perform basically the same function in each respective country, then we are back where we started. There is still the question of why blogs have taken off in the US and not in the UK.
Neither medium addresses the need blogs fulfill: Blogs are the only medium in which amateurs can orchestrate the discussion, where both writers and readers are active, essential parts of the debate. Because no element of the system is passive, the result is a discursive, ever-evolving, no-holds-barred, discussion of whatever we as a whole find interesting.
A talker’s audience is slightly less passive than a tab’s; but still, it is a difference of degree rather than kind.
I have no idea if Jackie has the answer, but the question remains.
India has a very vibrant, very active blogging scene.
Well, blogs won’t cure cancer, that’s for sure – what claims do you question?
Anyway, the big deal is not blogs but the network effect which they enable to take place so efficiently, quickly, and on such a widespread basis. The network effect is as old as time; blogs are just the best thing right now for maximising it, thanks to the interconnectedness of the blogosphere.
I wasn’t slagging anyone off, just making observations about the culture in Britain. I even acknowledged that it must be annoying to hear it from a Brit (it is always okay for a Brit to have a bit of a go at his countrymen), and emphasised that I was generalising. And I referred to British cynicism as “usually charming” (which I think it is). Short of restricting my speech in case I might offend someone, I don’t know how I could have made it any clearer that I wasn’t trying to be nasty, but instead observing a sad complacency and ignorance in British business.
Roll-out of broadband probably has a lot to do with the spread of a blog culture. In this, the UK has been consistently behind France, for example. In France, broadband has largely (but not solely) been spearheaded by France Telecom, a mostly publicly-owned company. What that tells us I don’t know.
Jackie, I was not being too hard on you — I actually agree with you on the bad effects of cynicism. Bear in mind that the UK is the fourth largest economy in the world, by some measures, with about a quarter of the US population, so plainly we Bertie Woosters are doing something right. Rgds.
Why is it complacent or ignorant?
Blogs do nothing that usenet has not been doing for many years, and in many senses blogs are no more than usenet with with an HTTP front end. It’s a tool – nothing more, nothing less – to aid communication in a disorganised manner, and as such it is only one of several (usenet, mail groups, BBSes, informal meetings, verbal discussion groups, etc). It doesn’t do anything new, or original. Bloggers just do what people always do – talk – and do it in a slight refinement of an electronic method that’s been around for a long time.
As for this idea that it somehow facilitates the idea of a the market as a conversation, hmm, I dunno. I actually work in industry, and neither my company, nor its competitors, suppliers or clients do anything particularly new in the way of “conversation”, although of course like any company they are more or less susceptible to the latest management fad – usually quickly forgotten when another one comes along.
They all seem to do what companies have always done – try to sell the minimum that clients want at the maximum price sustainable by the market. You don’t need blogs to do this. And since it’s pretty likely that companies will always do this kind of thing, this being more or less the point of the company, I guess they’ll pretty much always do it in the same basic way they’ve done it for a couple of centuries now.
Cynical enough?
EG
Usenet, mailing lists, fan sites, e-zines, BBSs, personal sites, corporate sites, blogs…taken in the aggregate, the internet’s facility for multicasting information is one of the most important things that has happened to our species. Ever.
However, the blogger’s narrow evangelism and smug self-regard is tedious in the extreme. The blog is not a unique or especially powerful ingredient in the recipe.
After all, “blogger” simply means “I have something to say, but I can’t be arsed to learn HTML.”
After all, “blogger” simply means “I have something to say, but I can’t be arsed to learn HTML.”
This is hilarious. How about “I have something to say, and I know that it makes sense to use a tool that allows for easy and fast dissemination of that information instead of hand coding, updating and uploading multiple files via FTP every time I have something to say”? Jesus, do you people grow and grind your own wheat to make flour for bread, too?
To claim that blogs are not unique, and to say that they do nothing new or original, betrays what must be a literally total ignorance of how blogs work. For more information, check out All About Blogs(Link). But I guess that’s why tBBC can make a living doing what we do: There is a lot of ignorance out there about blogs and what is possible with them, even amongst people who use them every day.
Jackie I was wondering about France and fat-pipes. The last time I was there in 2000, there were only 5 t-1 lines (ie to the internet outside of the country) in all of France. There were at the times something like 10 with a mile of my flat in London. Have the French done anything about broadband? Surely if you want your web-site to be seen and useful, it helps if people can get to it in good time.
Blogs are used for many different things. There are some of us who use our blogs not only as a way to express opinions but a crucial aspect of marketing my various endeavors (as well the rest of the Dodgeblogium crew). Never mind the fact that a blog allows a writer or journalist to keep and improve writing skills. With comments a writer with traffic can get reactions from readers to his posts, this is most useful for stylistic and skill development.
There are many who are trying to figure out blogs raison d’etre. Like plenty of other aspects of modern life, this is difficult as there are as many reasons for having a blog as there are blogs.
I think the British have not necessarily jumped on the blog band-wagon because of lack of access to broadband and lack of a personal justification for broadband. BT has done its best to make sure they can do everything to hinder competition in this area.
So what, specifically, do they do that cannot be done by usenet, BBS, online magazines, mailing groups, etc?
EG
Cynicism? Not one iota, of course.
How about a minority of one expressing their views, comments, commentary… without needing to be a technogeek? Who the hell uses ‘usenet’?
The blog emphasizes content over medium. I’m not interested in the opinion some geek holed up in a basement reconfiguring the linux server 5 hours a day. I want to hear from the factory workers, housewives, fishermen, politicians [sic], financial analysts, soldiers, activists, the list goes on.
These are the people that have really no interest in computers and the technology they use, and quite rightly so. In the same way I don’t really care how my car engine works as long as it does when I want it to.
SJW
Usenet is the internet news system, known by some as “newsgroups”. It’s used by several million people every day all over the world, and has been for well over a decade.
Such is even more the case with usenet, which is generally text with encoded binary data where this is posted. The same could be said of mailing list groups, where generally the data is text without the distracting snazzy graphics typical of the blog – and graphics emphasise style over substance, whatever may be said about them reinforcing a substantive point.
But presumably you are nonethless aware of the fact that there are different types of engine, some more efficient, some less, some cheaper, some more expensive, etc.? So there are different types of internet services for data dissemination, some older than others. Then again, some people think “the internet” is the web, when in fact the web is only part of the internet.
EG
To claim that blogs are not unique, and to say that they do nothing new or original, betrays what must be a literally total ignorance of how blogs work.
Next year, I’ll mark my 20th anniversary arguing with strangers on the internet. I’ve used every technology available, each in its appointed hour. Blogging software is a modern hybrid of older technologies that helped people past the messy task of coding their personal web space and bulletin board software that allowed people to interact.
I’ve spent weary years attending meetings where bright-eyed consultants oversold the benefits of technologies from SGML to content management to portals. I am not so much ignorant as I am fatigued.
All of the technologies I’ve worked with have had real benefits. Not one of them has had all the benefits promised. A few of them didn’t have benefits that equalled what they cost the company to implement.
Thank God I don’t have to learn html. Goodness. This is the thing that always infuriates me about the techy types. There’s a whole world out there, boys and girls, and it don’t revolve around you. I don’t want to learn html because I want to focus on medicine and the content of my blog. So maybe blogs are not revolutionary, but by making self-publishing a no brainer you are providing an incredible resource to people. I thought it made a difference who owned the printing press?
But then again, self-publishing using a web page drafted and coded with, say, Microsoft Word and posting it with simple GUI FTP clients is no more difficult than establishing and maintaining a blog. And you don’t have to learn HTML to do it, either. Writing down your idea and clicking a button to post it to the world is basically how usenet works as well, so nothing new here at all.
I’m not saying blogs aren’t useful, but they aren’t anything new or unique, and they don’t enable you to do anything that was previously impossible or even particularly difficult. Frankly, if you can send email you can participate in usenet discussions, if you can format a letter you can create a web page – it’s not hard and requires no high geekiness factor.
Obviously, you have to expect someone who sells blogs for a living to be somewhat evangelical about their merits. However, you need to filter out the hype and faddishness, and then you will see that the blog is a useful tool but not a new one. There are only so many ways you can design a spanner.
The blog is a tool, no more. The internet in general is a box of tools available almost anywhere at low cost, and it is this box full of tools that is far more important (and possibly in the long term even revolutionary) than any one tool within it.
EG
I’m with Euan Gray and S. Weasel on this one. Until someone can explain to me in what respect blogs are anything significantly different from what has gone before, I’ll continue to regard them as just another tool – a fun tool, useful, potentially profitable for some, but certainly not a revolution, the failure to adopt which justifies accusations of Ludditism.
As for suggesting it is ignorance that prevents people seeing the blinding light, I’m afraid I’m another pre-Internet comms veteran who finds this a bit rich.
Hmmmm. You have beat me down with your logic and reason. I give. Blogs are ho-hum. But, what’s the difference between a PC and all the computers that came before that?
Yes, it’s only a tool. But there’s also marketing, the right tool coming out at the right time to the right people……
Ok, I’ve accepted your premise that blogs are a big fat nothing.
And yet, my non-tech friends who don’t know anything computery are all interested in blogs and what they can do with them. I never heard them mention the other tools that are supposedly just as good, except as a joke: Oh, chat rooms. What are you doing on those? They are for losers who just can’t get a date (or something to that effect)!
And as for this if you can format a letter you can create a web page – that’s the genius of things like typepad (don’t laugh, tech people, and also, what is formating a letter 🙂 ?) They take the fear of technology away from the technophobes and make it seem easy. Even if the other things you mention are just as easy to use, I didn’t know about them and had no idea how to set them up. If you just go to these sites like typepad, they help you and have people answer your stupid non-techy questions and make it seem doable. So maybe, I am actually arguing your point after all. It’s all just marketing. But that kind of marketing makes a difference.
“the US industry is much more diffuse, diverse, less monolithic”
Sure PHG but most US blogs discuss national issues and as you mention there’s only one national paper. Ergo at that level there’s a bigger gap.
It’s cheap. Other than that, the x86 clone computer (which is what most people mean when they talk about PCs) is flawed, inefficient, wedded to an obsolete architecture largely because of the huge installed base of obsolescent and poorly-written operating system software. The Macintosh is from a purely technical point of view rather more advanced and much more elegant, but it’s more expensive. In its day, the old Commodore Amiga was streets ahead of the 386 PC of the same time, but again was relatively expensive and suffered from a “games machine” image. But the big plus, coming from its cheapness, is that the x86 PC represents a de facto standard. Admittedly, this is technically less of an issue than before, in no small part because of the rise of more advanced operating systems such as Linux and BSD, but it is nevertheless a significant practical advantage.
Depends what you want to do with them. IRC chat rooms are frequently used for less than altogether salubrious ends, but they also have uses for real time remote discussion on more serious topics and can be useful for tech support as well. Usenet is very useful for, well, news distribution as well as wide distribution of software (both legally and illegally), lengthy discussions of the type you might have on blogs, and, of course, porn.
Maybe you should have a look around the political and technical groups on usenet, and I suspect you’d be rather surprised and the breadth and depth of discussion that goes on there. You’ll also be dismayed, no doubt, by the shallow and petty nature of some of it, not to mention rhe proliferation of junk postings. Moderated groups are generally more informative.
In fact, I’m damned if I can see the qualitative difference between a political blog like Samizdata and a moderated political group on usenet. Other than the pretty HTML interface on the blog, is there really any difference?
EG
Sorry for taking so long to respond to these comments: I was talking to a company that wants to use blogs as a way of creating a developers’ network with its industry peers, as a way to package their competence and success with current customers for future customers and those same industry peers, and to manage knowledge within teams of employees.
I’ve supplied the link that explains what sets blogs apart from forums, chat rooms, Usenet, etc, so if you’re too lazy to read and learn, it’s not really an efficient use of my time to try to inform the resisting. But in the simplest possible terms:
Permalinks enable discreet chunks of information to be linked to and disseminated efficiently and widely across the network (4 million+ blogs and growing at a rate of 15k per day, according to Technorati.com).
Blogs are built on databases, which makes for easy searching (of any kind of information, including product searches).
Blog CMS software (Expression Engine and Movable Type being the two best, I’d say) are scalable and enable community as a basic function. (If you don’t see the value of blog comments over a messageboard, again, read the link I posted above. Forums and usenet are chaotic and give equal weight to each remark posted; blog comments maintain the integrity and weight of the initial post. People can hijack the comments as much as you allow them to do, but the original post remains untouched.)
The ease of use of blog CMS packages means that sites can be more quickly, easily and frequently updated. Not only do search engines love frequently and recently updated pages, but so do people: If a site appears never to be updated, chances are that – no matter how pretty or technologically brilliant it might be – visitors will not return. Why be a one visit wonder when you can be dynamic and achieve return visits from a huge audience on a daily basis? Unless you do not have anyone to talk to – customers, potential customers, industry peers – there is no business logic in maintaining a morgue site.
Blogs used internally – project teams or entire corporations – are an effective way of knowledge management and expertise development. (Personally speaking, we have seen this firsthand at tBBC, where our team members are spread across several countries: We do not need to hold a face to face meeting in order to get up to speed on what’s going on in our industry, with our clients, new developments, etc. As companies are increasingly using distributed teams, it is a big advantage for all parties to come to face to face meetings ready to work, not needing vast quantities of time to catch up.
Blogs can be used to quickly and widely dissemination during times of crisis – either PR crisis or, as in a recent case of a wildfire in the west, during a natural disaster. (This is highly exploitable to certain companies: During the power outages in NE America in August 2003, IT consulting firm Gartner had its Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery analyst team publish a blog with insight and advice from team members. This increased readership of Gartner’s analyst research reports and translated into increased credibility and sales.)
I could go on, but I don’t think anyone who has held fast to their position that forums, chat rooms, Usenet and traditional brochure sites can do all of the above is likely to climb down now. Keep repeating it, though, and you just might convince yourself.
(NB Still waiting to hear what these oft-mentioned “promises” are about blogs, and who is making them. Anyone whinging about these “promises” care to detail one or two?)
“Package their competence and success”? Eep! I haven’t heard such a load of marketinglish since…the Digital Asset Management presentation I sat through last week, actually.
I mean, what is a “permalink” but “a consistent file naming convention, then we don’t move stuff” really? Blog software is a bulletin board application with a certain feature set and good PR. It may be a feature set that is particularly popular or well suited to certain uses, but I don’t see anything on your list of capabilities that isn’t equally true of, say, the venerable political bulletin board Free Republic. (If they licensed their proprietary software).
Not counting those capabilities I couldn’t quite comprehend, like “enable community as a basic function. “
Ok, last time I comment on this thread 🙂
I checked out a usenet forum and free republic. Ya’ll are right: it’s the same type of set up. Except. They are ugly, ugly, ugly. I would never spend my time reading something like that looked like that. Yuck But, I suppose they could be changed to be more attractive, so there you go. I’m wrong. You’re right, s weasel and others. Still love my blog, though.
Utterly wrong. Blogs are ‘network enabled’ websites and thus completely different both from Usenet (which are ‘walled gardens’) and also materially different from 99% of regular websites, which are little more than on-line pamphlets.
Blogs per se are not what are remarkable; it is the blogosphere that is the basis for the developing Internet v 2.0. My guess in that within 5 years or so, ‘blogs’ might disappear as a category because blogs will essentially be the world wide web.
The ability to diffuse information ‘outside the domain’ is what makes blogs (and whatever blogs develop into) so special and why they are the only meaningful ‘social software’. It is all about linking and throwing around permalinked discrete chunks of information. Usenet and forums are flat Pepsi compared to that but I am happy to wait a few years and then quote some of the comments I read earlier as examples of how people cannot see what it right in front of their faces 🙂
Man, I really wish someone had written Blogs for Dummies, because this shit is not difficult.
Someone better tell the ASI that they could be running their entire website on bulletin board software instead of powering the whole damn thing with blog software(Link). What is the name of this bulletin board software that allows any textual element of a web presence (fixed content/’static’ to the naked eye pages, e-commerce, digital publications, etc) to be updated as easily as making a blog post, allowing organisations to fire their webmasters and control their own content?
I mean, what is a “permalink” but “a consistent file naming convention, then we don’t move stuff” really?
If you cannot see the difference between posting content to the web (any element of a site, not just the bit called a blog) as easily as one might type an email, and it instantly being published and archived with a URL – rather than hard coding the page, uploading it via FTP, linking to it on an index page, etc – then I cannot help you.
Internet is a network, blogs are optimised nodes, which bring out many more aspects of the network. Website failed to do that… Everything else is just details. Sigh.
Oh, and the fact that anyone can publish on-line without any coding skillz. That’s kinda important.
One of the downsides of blogging is the time that it takes. The blogosphere is predominantly a voluntarist movement. Do we have stats on churn rate, dropping out etc.?
This would give an indication of the importance of blogs as opposed to other activities.
We now have blog fatigue, blogged out, dead blogs etc.
Even Steve Den Beste has gone….
If you cannot see the difference between posting content to the web (any element of a site, not just the bit called a blog) as easily as one might type an email, and it instantly being published and archived with a URL – rather than hard coding the page, uploading it via FTP, linking to it on an index page, etc – then I cannot help you.
If you think blogging software was the first or is the only fill-out-a-form-and-hit-enter approach to online content, I cannot help you, either.
Never send a marketing droid to blow smoke up a geek’s ass.
“If you cannot see the difference between posting content to the web (any element of a site, not just the bit called a blog) as easily as one might type an email, and it instantly being published and archived with a URL – rather than hard coding the page, uploading it via FTP, linking to it on an index page, etc – then I cannot help you. ”
In other words, it’s an incremental improvement on existing technology. Another way of posting an opinion or information on the ‘net. It is merely an easier way of doing it.
In passing, I can’t help thinking that if your original complaint (that British companies are slow to take advantage of blogging) is true, then the use of language like: “.. way of creating a developers’ network with its industry peers, as a way to package their competence and success with current customers for future customers and those same industry peers….” might hold a clue. As someone else pointed out, phrases like “package their competence and success” are warning signs to those who have weathered previous hypestorms.
It’s only talk, after all: (Elephant talk)
Alternatively, others might quote the same stuff as examples of how another bunch of enthusiasts got carried away by their own hype. All the marketing phrases and semi-literate management-speak don’t obscure the fact that the blog is no more than a minor refinement of something that has already been possible for well over a decade – it is essentially unsenet mark 2, complete with pretty interface and neat archiving. It is NOT revolutionary, amazing, the answer to a maiden’s prayers or anything which is miraculously going to change the way business works.
Nor for that matter is the whole Cluetrain “manifesto”, which seems to be something of a building block for the blog marketer but which amounts to no more than 95 vague statements which, when they aren’t stating the bleedin’ obvious, could have been lifted from a collection of management consultants’ non sequiturs.
Incidentally, what the hell is a website that *isn’t* “network enabled”, other than code on a disconnected computer? The entire internet is “network enabled”, that’s rather the point of the whole bloody thing.
EG
Web-logs have been around for a long time. Blogspot and its imitators merely made it easier for the technowary to use them. Blogs and blogging is not dead by a long shot, they are indeed evolving as we speak into something even the wise men on this blog might not even envision.
I know of at least two different organisations that are trying to take the blogging concept both front and back end to the next level of usability, security and adaptability.
Wrong again. The simple fact that you can link to discrete chunks rather than just a top URL is what makes all the difference. That is what makes the blogosphere quite different qualitatively. What you are saying is what I always hear from ‘technicals’ who cannot see the emergent property of something because all you can see is the sum of its technical parts.
In my humble opinion, blogging is a fine way to communicate – between peers, – it does not seem to work as well in the corporate environment. Its appeal is in the freewheeling, minimal structure, where vitually anything goes, and there is little fear of reprisal, other than name calling.
When used as an internal communication channel, in any sort of management structure, the fear of unfavourable ‘come-back’, has a stultifying effect on any two-way flow of ideas, very similar to the weekly ‘team meeting’. not forgetting the permanent record aspect either.
It also falls short when used as a marketing tool, becoming no more than a glorified FAQ’s page, or an expensive support tool, and is unlikely to encourage extra sales.
I have five clients who use the ‘blog’ format in a corporate environment, and the general consensus is that it sounds wonderful, but like so much in IT , it falls a little short in practice.
My clients who are ‘giving it a try’, are all IT enthuiasts, and thought that the idea behind blogging may have benefit for their particular businesses.
One of the drawbacks seems to be that maintenance duties occupy a lot of time, far more than normal IT Administrator duties. The need being for personel who are IT, management and product savvy, usually someone pretty high in the pecking order.
Like so much in IT, it’s a great idea, – now, what can we do with it? it is, after all, just another tool, it ain’t no spreadsheet or e-mail type of ‘killer ap’.
You can do this with non-blog web pages too, of course.
This doesn’t tell you anything?
Maybe, but I can also see the hype, the meaningless marketing-speak, the pat management phrases, and so on. Working within a large corporation, I also share ernest young’s view that it is far from an ideal discussion medium in that environment and will inevitably suffer from self-censorship just as email does, and for the same reasons. From the same corporate experience, I get somewhat cynical when anything is touted as revolutionary, world-changing, a shift in the business paradigm, and so on. Especially when the touter is the one flogging the product or service. I have seen so many of these things, not just in IT but in quality, safety, general management. They come, they are adopted, six months later they are forgotten when another “revolutionary” product/service/idea comes along. A blog is a tool, that’s all. It isn’t going to change the world, business or private.
Sometimes you have so many revolutions you turn full circle, back to where you started.
EG
” The simple fact that you can link to discrete chunks rather than just a top URL is what makes all the difference”
mm… because of course it’s not possible to for instance, link to a particular story on the BBC news site.
Half the blog entries I read are links to precisely that; a discrete chunk of information on a website, be it amazon.com, a news site or just someone’s photos. Who on earth only links to top url’s in this day & age? A few years ago it was admittedly common practise for publishers to insist that all links led to the front page, but most have now realised that restricting access in that way is bad for your site.
It’s a shame, Euan, that you can’t get excited about blogging. It may very well be a ‘tool’, and a different one at that, but it’s a pretty darned impressive tool. An unregulated medium, that is expressive and giving, generating a community where none exists: it’s a shame your cynicism appears to prevent you from taking part (or, perhaps you are…).
Oh, and ‘usenet’? Not exactly ‘expressive’ is it? Usenet (can you say ‘Gramophone’?) or Newsgroups are typically ‘take’ by their nature (although they do have their own ‘community’ – exciting, isn’t it) the blogosphere is more giving, and appeals to a broader base of voyeristic need, as well as a participatory need.
Is there a difference between information and content? Yes, these are all tools to do a job, but very different ones: the ‘blogosphere’ is not just a better hammer, although one can use is as such. Sometimes the content on a blog is just too good to pass up.
How, specifically?
EG