Monday, February 2, 2009

What's a blog's content? Why drop.io might be a new way of content creation

Why blogging is more distribution than evoltion of subjects and how drop.io may be a way out


Ok blogging is cool, and I recently translated Blogging for Dummies into German language. But to be honest: What is the main content of blogs? It's mainly comments about something people read in the mainstream media (I count techcrunch and Gizmodo as mainstream now).

I still remember the times when blogs where more about exchange: People posted useful links. Geeks were posting links to the latest update of a mainboard bios and stuff like that. Or to a picture they found on a website. In these old times the links were pointing to the original source.

Today, blog content is more recycling. People are blogging about twitter because it's cool and they look close to there stats if a google friendly and provocative headline like "Twitter is for stupid bloggers" gains enough traffic.

Ironicly that's actually what makes Twitter so succesful: It's back to the roots. 140 Letters are enough for a link, or a remark. The reply is the comment, so you don't need much more.

When blogs where growing some said the advantage was, that because of linking and comments, the content (or the topic) is growing. Let's say you start a conversation about how to plant roses, then people will comment, will give you tips, other gardeners will refer to your side and after a while the content about planting roses is getting big.

But that's not the fact anymore, in general. You will read the same story at so many pages, instead of evolution it"s just distribution.

One way out could be the concept of drop.io. If you want to know something about the latest conspiracy stories, then go to drop.io/dailysourcecode. Since Mr. Podcast Adam Curry turned into the Hero Number 1 who saves the world people are posting conspiracy stories like crazy.

It doesn't matter who is posting, there isn't even a field for Name and Emailadress. And its blocked from search engines. So it's pure content, related to the subject, no eye on search result ranking, popularity or Alexa.

If you like, send me stuff at drop.io/wanhoff

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

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