Blogging still rules!
From author and technologist, David Weinberger (@dweinberger):
Back in the early 2000s, we were reading one another’s blogs, responding to them, and linking to them. Blogging was a conversational form made solid by links.
Rather than short form posts on social media networks that lead to social relationships, blogs are different per Weinberger.
They are an individual’s place for speaking out loud, but the relationships that form around them were based on links among posts, not social networks that link among people.
……
Bloggy networks of ideas turn into social links, and that’s a good thing. An entire generation of my friendships formed because we were blogging back and forth, developing and critiquing one another’s ideas, applying them to our own circumstances and frameworks, and doing so respectfully and in good humor. But the nodes and the links in the blogosphere form around topics and ideas, not social relationships.
Blogging was a blogosphere because our writing and our links were open to everyone and had as much persistence as the fluid world of domains enables. You could start at one person’s blog post, click to another, on to another, following an idea around the world…and being predisposed to come back to any of the blogs that helped you understand something in a new way. Every link in every blog tangibly made our shared world richer and more stimulating.
Wow! Where have you been David when I have been trying to explain that Blogs are a conversation among people — a conversation that advances ideas and grows influence and word of mouth by virtue of conversing with others who share similar interests.
A conversation that as you explain exists by linking to each other’s blog posts. A conversation that can only take place by virtue of listening, as opposed to being driven by an editorial content for your “content marketing” on what you call a blog.
I blogged a couple days ago that blogging was more valuable for law students looking to get a job than publishing on the law review.
The reason? Links. Exactly what Weinberger is talking about.
A law student writing on law review does not get seen as they are not linking to anyone in their articles. No one is engaged and no one engages them.
It’s the same for lawyers who think they are blogging by showing off their smarts by writing in a silo. They’re not listening to what reporters, lawyers, and other bloggers are writing on the subject. They do not link to what others are saying on the same subject.
And then these lawyers wonder why their blog is not being read or seen, the wonder why their influence and word of mouth is not growing — go figure.
Weinberger’s pumped about the continuing role of blogging among all this other social activity on the Internet. So are others he mentions, including Seth Godin.
Read David Weinberger’s whole post. He’s a co-author of the Cluetrain Manifesto, a seminal book on how businesses would need to interact with people in a connected market place. If you ever get a chance to hear him to speak, take it, he’s great.
Weinberger is providing you the roadmap to success for law blogging.
Image courtesy of Flickr by Kristina B