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Jul 2 2009, 11:44 am by Megan McArdle

When Blogs Were Young

Laura at 11D has an absolutely terrific post up about how the blogosphere has changed over the last six or seven years.  The upshot is that it's a lot harder to make it big in the blogosphere, while the old A-listers are burning out.  Blogging more than a thousand words a day, every day, is mentally exhausting, and if you aren't getting paid for it, eventually, your life intrudes.

Back in the day, new bloggers were emerging all the time.  Now it's happening much more slowly, and the old bloggers have gravitated to various professional positions. Is the new media revolution over?

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Comments (2)

Anal_yst

I can attest to this first-hand; maintaining a full time job and trying to write/blog/etc is not an easy task. Doing it for free makes it even more so.

Those who do it full time get my respect also though, as being spot-on and entertaining with such frequency is extremely difficult! That's one of the good parts about being part time (or unpaid); no real publish or perish pressure.

brad

No, it just emerged from its infancy. She makes a few key points:

Niche matters
"good stuff is being written all the time, and it isn't bubbling to the top."
"You all are not clicking on the links like you used to"...Facebook and Twitter.

And one she didn't mention -- RSS

The keys to the kingdom being niche expertise and a trusted voice, the ability to filter through the abundance of content and provide "good stuff" (great editors/programmers will be greatly rewarded), the distribution model is at least as important as the production model.