Mark Bernstein - The Social Physics of Weblogs - BlogTalk 2.0
Why are blogs interesting? -written by amateurs
- there are millions, there weren’t before -people hard to study -networks and links hard to study -society - transformation of society not journalism Webloggers want money -learned from 19th century nothing is outside the economy Webloggers want friends It’s ok to write a blog that only your mother reads (Dan Bricklin) -fine to have intimate communication for a few people Ten Tips for a better weblog
- make good friends, find good enemies, write for a reason, use your archives (link!!!!), etc How do we know that these are the right tips?
- blog research!
- doing it in the context of the academy and convince the academy that weblogs matter -why not conduct research that matters to blogs? -research<->real weblogs<->software -research of real blogs is technorati and feedster -don’t reach for the obvious (18 students from a class for an example)
- be wary of Hawthorne effect Lots of interesting approaches -closely read long-term weblogs e.g. Winer, Blood, Hall, Hourihan (use linguistic studies, literature) -how do observables change (quantity) -why are blogs abandoned Does better writing make a better weblog?
- not abandoned -large audience (pagerank) -influence -novices are not more interesting than everybody else, just easier to study What do blogs cost? -cost a lot of time, software -labor is the main cost but labor matters Can this be right?
- terrible investment
- terrible income (minimum wage)
- indirect compensation is the one that helps Could alter the software to make it cheaper and easier to make money We need Ethnography to deal with the flame wars
- add comments and trackbacks? wrong direction? attack rules of civility, lead to flame wars? Blogrolls -sharing flow, friends, networks Internet is bits
- no mystical nature
- should know how blogs have resisted broadcast so we can replicate it Fiction and authenticity
- Eastgate does hypertext fiction Do we tell the truth on blogs? -everything on Mark’s blog is true but carefully selected Hypertextuality is the meme of blogs this year! -trends: reclaiming archives -need to find a way to make it easy to put things in categories and engage our archives in the conversation