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April 15, 2004

Losing the human voice?

Blogs were something special because they allow the author to write with a personal voices - and indeed that's always been one of the main "selling points" when comparing blogs to traditional marketing media. But now that blogs are mainstream, your blog gets aggregated into "meta-blogs" (when will we see the first PlanetPlanetBlog?) and every month more eyeballs rush to read your blog - don't you feel you should start cutting the personal injections? Or at least you start thinking more about what you write - because of the high number of comments and/or email you're likely to get? Isn't that a Bad Thing?

Posted by Matthew at April 15, 2004 03:49 PM

Comments

Currently, I'm not a prolific 'blogger' but it is my hope that I will not change my style, or 'the sound of my voice'. However, I feel you do have a point and only hope it doesn't come to pass. I would be greatly disappointed to have the blogsphere turn into the trade mags - all saying the same thing in the same monotone voice.

Cheers...

Mel

Posted by: Mel Riffe at April 15, 2004 05:04 PM

You can still write good content for a popular blog and not loose your voice. Heck I write enough reviews and articles over at All About N-Gage and definitly still have my voice. Who else could get Terry Wogan into a review of the new Nokia N-Gage QD? (http://www.allaboutsymbian.com/devices/viewarticle.php?id=68)

Posted by: Ewan at April 15, 2004 05:35 PM

When you start worrying about becoming "mainstream" and needing to edit blog entries so that they better appeal to the masses you should probably stop blogging and leave it to the "professionsals". Just raising this issue reveals a degree of insecurity/vanity about maintaining a public posting of thoughts and opinions.

Posted by: Marc at April 15, 2004 07:38 PM

I find it interesting that people feel the need to inject flat out criticism into the comments when you touch a nerve. I am not saying that anybody here did that, but someone once told me that they were sick about hearing about a certain topic. My response? It is my blog, and if you don't like what I talk about read someone else's. I do find it fun to have my blog aggregated into a larger "meta-blog", but I usually do it by only sharing a category. When you are reading about components you don't want to hear about what I am doing in a tournament. It at least helps things keep on point.

Posted by: Berin Loritsch at April 20, 2004 07:22 PM