On blogging
I recently read this Internet Anxiety Disorder post in Library Stuff and this Internet Anxiety Disorder post in Bibliotheke.

These two posts about what blogging is and isn't and how timing is involved made me think. This is one quote from the second post:

Blogging is largely viewed as the act or writing about what going on now, as in right now. You’ve missed the train if you wait a day or two to comment on piece of news

And a quote from the first, in response to the second.

Every blog post, IMO, is a piece of news. This one is a commentary, which is also news, just not "breaking news", to which William is probably referring. Many comments on my posts come many days (even weeks) after the initial post. It's also not (for me) about 'blog or die'. It's about 'blog and share.

This post really made me think. The one thing I kept coming back to is that the audience is always changing. Every blog post is a piece of news, especially if a new person is reading something for the first time. If you are writing in a controlled enviornment, where everyone knows the same background information, then it would be true that waiting a few days to announce new news means that it is old news.

But the internet is full of new people every day. If a new blogger sees something that is useful to them, then it is beneficial and worthy. Even if that piece of news or information was months or years old to a person that had been around.

Both of these posts were written in library blogs, mainly referring to libraries and librarians. I don't know if librarians are different because they are supposed to be in the know and aware of the technology out there. But they aren't. People in general are just starting to blog (even when some have been at it for years and years) and that includes librarians.

And everyone is to benefit when a piece of news is announced or a beneficial site is mentioned or system is explained. Even if that news or site or system is old. Because someone new has never heard of it.

Yesterday I was talking to my sister and we were talking about this guy that we know who blogs a lot but has no RSS feed. I asked her to tell him next time to add an RSS feed to his blog. She asked, "What is RSS?"

So she would benefit from a blog post explaining the basics.

And then yesterday I saw this post about how to use bloglines. I thought about all of those who are benefitted by this explanation. Perhaps those who had not ever heard of bloglines. Or those who just didn't understand how to use it and needed the step by step guide. This was old news to some people and new news to others.

Also there are times when you are not ready for new knowledge because you haven't been prepared for it. Sometimes it takes a level of previous knowledge to get something. I read an article once about Technorati and I just didn't understand the big deal. Then I kept reading about other cool things and I later came back to that same article. And suddenly the light came on and it all made sense. Old news was news to me.

Technorati Tags: internet anxiety disorder, information overload, blogging, bloglines, RSS
- posted by Alicia @ 8:22 PM