Tue, Jul 6, 2004 12:47:46 AM

Diarists versus Pundits

Mena is somewhere in between.

Mena posted about how Ben was a “tyrant” because he wouldn’t “let” her buy a banjo.

Got “I hate you” email. Why where this people in her life? People misjudged her.

Became famous and “popular” because of this post.

Blogs are about communication. Became popular when interactivity (e.g. comments) became available.

Everyone will have a weblog.

Weblogs of the future will be generations removed from the sites that shaped the medium.

Push from publishing into communication.

TypePad - for friends and families of MT - original design goal - for people who wanted to communicate

It’s not about publishing and reaching a large audience. Majority of people want to reach a much smaller audience. 10-20, not 10,000-2000

When TypePad was launched, Mena was a bit dismayed.

Ideal audience was family and friends but not on recently updated list (because they were private!). No pinging, no spidering by Google.

33% of TypePad blogs are private (no pinging)

10% are password protected.

These blogs exist for those who are intended to see them. Talk about soccer games, etc.

You put blogs on line because they are persistent and asynch,

Because it’s asynch it’s friendly in terms of personal bandwidth. You can choose when to update and read it.

Why blogs help communication?

  • Email spam out of control
  • blogs are persistent, archived, more flexible in privacy controls, more scalable for personal bandwidth

Blogs work well with email. e.g. through NewsGator

For some high-ranking managers, a blog feed is just a “special email” that the recieve once a day through NewsGator. No one here thinks what they do here is blogging, just receiving and sending email,

Blogging becomes ubiquitous when it blends in and becomes invisible.

Tools need to evolve.

Need something more fine-grained than password protection so Mena can write something important about her company AND her Back to the Future collectibles.

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