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The InsiderOne Daily Report |
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Monday, March 26, 2001
This 'Blog' Thing InsiderOne's Michael Goldberg writes: OK, it's about time we talked about this "blog" thing. You know, where folks are constantly self-publishing short (and sometimes even shorter) items about themselves, their lives, or stuff that they've found on the Web that they love and think you might be interested in too. The advent of essentially painless Web publishing is an amazing and wonderful thing. It's truly democratic. Anyone can publish to a global audience, whenever they want! The voice of the people can, finally, really be heard. The high walls erected decades ago by what became huge media conglomerates — first newspapers, then radio and television — may not have come tumbling down yet, but at least now there are huge holes in them. An online newspaper? A Net radio station? Video clips? Photos? Original art? If you want to share it with the world, you can, and you don't need Conde Nast or ABC or Hearst Corp. to do it. Sure, there's a lot of junk out there. But most of what's on network, cable and satellite television is junk too, however slickly or not-so-slickly produced. If plenty of stuff online would be better off staying in a journal or diary, so what? It doesn't matter. No one's making anyone read the not-ready-for-publication material. Unlike the network and cable TV business, however, the Web isn't a good-ol'-boys' club where you need billions of dollars to get a seat at the table. You can have your own site now for less than $10 a month — talk about access! Part of the fun, from a reader perspective, is seeking out the blog and blog-style sites created by folks you can relate to in some way. Some of these "pages" are just great. There's plenty of good stuff over at The Biscuit City Road Fan Club (hey, I mean they love insiderone.net, how wrong is that?) — some excellent album recommendations and links to all kinds of worthy music sites. I also like what's going on at Glorious Noise, where Jake and his friends discuss whatever strikes their fancy. The other day they were all excited about the Idlewild/ Brassy show at Chicago's Double Door. Plus there's always links to a bunch of cool, free, legal MP3 files and music-news headlines. So let millions of personal sites bloom! We knew, back in the early '90s, that a revolution was taking place online. Seven or so years later, no one really has a clue where this is headed. Let the suits struggle with the seemingly age-old question "how you gonna make money with that?"; all I can see is a world where more and more folks can communicate with one another. The InsiderOne Daily Report appears weekdays at 9 AM PST, except when it doesn't. Michael Goldberg is the president of insiderone.net. He founded Addicted To Noise in 1994. |