And now, for something completely different… In the last four years since I started blogging, the world of blogs has evolved beyond recognition. So I decided to offer a peek into the other corners of the blogosphere far from Samizdata’s illuminating glow. This, however, does not suggest that these blogs are unenlightened.
As the first in an intermittent series of interesting blogs, let me present something which will strike many as an odd choice on my part.
Baukjen & Vanessa’s Diary is a blog that blurs the dividing line between what is a commercial blog and a what is a private blog. The company Isabella Oliver designs stylish maternity clothes and the two principals behind that venture set up a blog that both chronicles events germane to their company and as well as elements of their private lives. This makes quite a lot of sense as spending time engaging potential customers in a conversational manner can be a much better way of getting people’s interest than interruptive advertising, which I often think is a waste of money, particularly on-line… and blogs are nothing if not about engaging people if you have a story to tell or opinions to share.
I also find this approach interesting as it helps to break down the notion that private and professional lives are perforce completely separate things. I have always suspected that if people saw trade and commerce as the social activities they are, they might be less willing to see them as something to be regulated politically. Blogs… they are not just for geeks anymore.
Any excuse to stick up a picture of a pretty woman, eh? Actually it was the first time my better half pointed out an article on Samizdata to me!
I think the blurring of the public and the private realms is one of the key effects of blogging.
My previous posting here, yesterday, about my own blogging difficulties, illustrates this. Was I advertising for help from people in general, or just yelling rather publicly at my friends? Making a scene, as they say. Who can say? In any case what happened is that after I had “publicised” my woes, my firends – including you Perry, many thanks – rallied round, as did two Samizdata readers, including Kim du Toit. Is Kim du Toit, a frequent commenter and linker to here, a member of the public, from where I sit, or a friend? I have never met him, yet he certainly behaved in a most friendly way. If I ever do meet him, I will greet him very warmly.
In the age of mass media, in fact of mass production generally, there is a vast gulf between those who make the product, and those who merely consume it. The product is concocted and made in private, and then mass marketed to the public in public. The new media change all that.
In my opinion this is one of the central problems now affecting the car industry. They insist on this palaver of a huge “public” launch. And then they discover all kinds of problems that a less secretive attitude to start with would have identified months or years earlier.
This blurring gained a lot of momentum with the arrival of the photocopier. The photocopier made very short “print” runs convenient for the first time. Is making twenty copies of something and circulating it among your friends “publication” or not? Maybe not. But how about fifty? A hundred? The printing press wants to print lots, i.e. to publish. The photocopier doesn’t care.
And the printing press also wants to print lots of the same advert. Which means that making lots of the exact same thing also makes sense.
But electronic communication – blogs in particular but only as part of the larger trend – does away with that huge cultural chasm between friends and people in general. There is now a continuum.
Old Jack Tar, Perry is a great man precisely because he can come up with excuses to put up lovely photos like this!
vanessa and i were really pleased to read your comments on our blog. it was really interesting to read how its perceived… exactly as we had hoped for. thank you for mentioning us!