SIGN MY GUESTBOOK

[substitute]

Tonight at work I was watching the NBA finals and saw their scrolling marquee invite viewers to visit the NBA's Official Weblog.

Two ghastly companies whose websites I visited last week had Company Weblogs.

marm0t has been invited to a Business Blogging Conference.

O'Reilly has gone kookoo for cocoapuffs over "blogging" and is issuing a "Blogging Hacks" book.

People are going into the business of being Blogging Consultants and Blogging Trainers.

A few unpleasant inevitables can now be said to have occurred, namely:

• Blogging as self-promotion has now become blogging as corporate promotion
  
  
• The usual idiotic blatherati have grabbed on to "blogging" as a reason to go to parties and be cool, and because they're hooked up, it's being promoted as a business venture to generate more parties.
  
  
• The result will be that this engaging and amusing hobby will now become a wasteland of pathetic astroturf instead of a wasteland of juvenile yawping with occasional dots of entertaining intelligence.
  

Grumpy McBitterpants, over and out :-)

Comments

[feedle.livejournal.com]

The good part is that there will always be hobbyist-oriented blogs. Let 'em have their slick, polished blog sites. We'll still be here, journaling our lives in LJ and other systems. Like most commercial websites, they'll just become rusting billboards alongside this Information Superhighway, mere curiosities while people get to where they really want to go.

Blather, wince, repeat.