There’s no such thing as a blogger
May 19th, 2008 |
A blog is a tool. There is no such thing as “a blogger,” or someone who can be rationally defined by their ability to use a blog, no more so than there are “wordists,” people who define themselves based on their ability to use MS Word. The number of people who blog is now so large, and the things they blog about and the reasons they use blogs so diverse, that classifying someone as a blogger doesn’t makes sense.
This wasn’t always the case. When things are new, early adopters may refer to themselves as users of a certain communications tool or medium, though this phenomenon has been quite pronounced in social media. Witness “I am a blogger.” “I am a podcaster,” etc.
A-List blogger? Who are the A-List Wordists? There are none. There are obviously thousands of important and influential writers throughout history, and there continue to be, but they are not known as tabletists, papyrists, typewriterists, etc. And there’s the rub. The maniacal focus on mastering the tool is a distraction from the larger obligation of using the tool to express something useful, informative, inspiring or amusing.
To test whether a statement is mere toolery, try a simple word substitution. For “What is your blogging strategy?” substitute any established communications tool. “What is your MS Word strategy?” or better still, throw in a household object. “What is your spatula strategy?”
An interesting relationship soon becomes clear. The more commonplace and widely adopted something is, the sillier it sounds in that construct. When a communications tool is new, or not widely used and understood, we talk about it as if it were a strategy. Later, it becomes a tactic or a tool.
In other words, during the early phases of adoption, we talk about things in irrational terms.
So, for a communications tool, what is early adoption? Microsoft estimates there are “500 million Office users worldwide.” Presumably, all of them use Word. That’s a half billion people, or with a global population of around 6.6B, around 13% of people on the planet. In the early adoption stage? Nope.
What about blogs? Technorati’s April, 2007 State of the Blogosphere (the latest I could find) says there were 70 million blogs, growing at 120,000 a day. At a constant growth rate, there would be around 114 million today.
And TwitDir estimates there are 1,639,607 Twitter users. Much as many of us on Twitter would like to think we are early adopters (read: elite, ahead of the game, cool geeks, the in crowd, technologists), it’s probably no longer true.
Is there really any point, anymore, to referring to someone as a blogger? Or are bloggers perhaps better referred to as business people, musicians, artists, students, writers, poets, critics, or whatever else they actually are, as opposed to what communications tool they have chosen to use?
| Sphere This |
Sure there is. To some extent, the medium is the message, and content follows form.
There is precedent for this. Am I guitarist or a musician? Or a “musical communicator”?
Bloggers are a subset of writers, and it’s just as easy and useful to group them together as it is “poets”. Sure, the forms and topics covered are incredibly diverse, and yet there are a few distinguishing traits that clearly separate them from the larger group.
Comment by Scott Allen — May 19, 2008 @ 12:45 pm
Nice post Joel!
I agree with the fact that once a “tool” becomes widely adopted by the masses you can’t keep on refering to yourself as merely a user of the tool hence the large diversity of niches coverd by it.
When something is new, like blogging was way back when, you can use a generic term like “blogging” to describe yourself because the word encompasses a niche in itself. Back then, at least for me (and probably for a lot of other people), bloggers were people simply writing diaries using an online tool called a blog.
Hope that made some sense.
Comment by Alex Drewniak — May 19, 2008 @ 1:10 pm
Scott, I disagree: playing music on a guitar is different from playing it on a piano. (I play both, for the record.) Writing poetry is different from writing prose; poetry has different rules.
Writing in a blog, however, does not have different rules from writing on a pad of paper or writing in MS Word. Saying that you’re a “blogger” just tells someone where you’re writing, but doesn’t give the listener an idea of any essential qualities of your writing.
Nicely written, Joel.
Comment by Chris Anthony — May 19, 2008 @ 4:07 pm
Joel, you make excellent points as always. I respectfully submit that it’s still okay to call oneself a blogger rather than just a writer, because it’s a particular type of writing. A novelist is also a writer, but they write novels just as a blogger writes blog posts. I’m a bit of a jack-of-all-trades when it comes to writing. I’m not exclusively a blogger. I do write differently when blogging than when penning a news release or technical article for work, or when writing in my journal, or when composing a love note to my husband or a letter to my Mom or email to friends. I think blogging is a style of writing somewhat unique to the online medium, so it makes sense that some writers identify themselves that way.
Comment by Lara Kretler — May 19, 2008 @ 5:18 pm
Joel, Joel, Joel. A person who keeps a diary is called a diarist. A person who writes a blog is called a blogger. What’s the big deal? You say, “The number of people who blog …” Hmm, blog as a verb. Thought you said it was a tool, not an activity.
Comment by Alster — May 19, 2008 @ 6:21 pm
[...] The rest of the post is well worth a read. [...]
Pingback by Bloggers no longer exist — The Local — May 19, 2008 @ 8:34 pm
I used to think “blogging” was a subset of all other writing but I think it may be a superset because people write in all styles online. I would define “blogging” as publishing any type of media in an online format that enables others to leave a response on the same page. It is a two-way publishing platform.
BTW when I left the Financial Times to “blog” people called me a blogger I said I was still a journalist - I’m just using a blogging platform to publish my work.
Comment by Tom Foremski — May 19, 2008 @ 9:23 pm
I refer to myself as a diarist. Whether it’s on paper or online, it’s my point of view from where I sit. And I wonder how many people drop their blogs after a few posts?
:O) ophelia
Comment by Ophelia Chong — May 23, 2008 @ 2:03 am
I have to disagree. Words can be used as tools, and as we have seen, many people have been able to use their words to make a profit, much like a tradeskill. So, yes, people can be called Bloggers.
Comment by Jason Orkin — May 23, 2008 @ 12:05 pm
My particular problem with term “blogger” is often *mistaken* for “writer” or even worse “journalist.” Joel is trying to further the discussion about the use of the word. A bold post. Thanks!
Comment by BarbaraKB — May 23, 2008 @ 12:16 pm
[...] Joel Postman states ‘there’s no such thing as a blogger.’ He argues that because the blogosphere is bombarded with a diverse crowd of users and [...]
Pingback by Goodness Gracious, Great Blogs of Fire! » The Buzz Bin — May 27, 2008 @ 5:16 am
I’ve never thought of myself as a “proper blogger” I always thought of people that managed to get paid to blog as “bloggers”. Blogging has always been something I did mostly for myself and whoever else managed to stumble upon my posts.
I think this is a really interesting viewpoint you have here.
Comment by Dataceptionist — June 2, 2008 @ 10:56 pm
It’s a good post and it raises some really good points, though I’d say that you’re trying to split hairs on the issue. A blog is a tool, and the sooner people realize that the tool can be manipulated in several different ways, the better.
We love labels though; it’s what makes us who we are. Otherwise we wouldn’t have journalists, reporters, authors, poets, etc. They use the tools, or rules in their cases, to achieve a style and convey a message. There are a lot of people who have a blog, but there are only a few that really get what it means to use it as a tool, infusing audio, video, pictures and links when needed to help aid a story.
If it was as simple as calling everyone writers, we wouldn’t have seen this post over on bloggerheads.tv/NYTimes today.
Bloggingheads: Are Blogs Bad for us?, The New York Times, 6.3.2008 . Unfortunately, I have a feeling that folks may never truly be satisfied…
Comment by Andre Natta — June 3, 2008 @ 3:35 pm
Andre,
I appreciate your comment and yes, I’m splitting hairs. I do think, for example, that a journalist who files reports via a blog, is a journalist first. A lot of the tension between traditional journalism, blogging, and public relations comes from the idea that somehow being online (a blogger vs. a reporter) changes the rules. By going one level deeper, below “blogger,” it is easier to understand who someone is, why they are writing, and what standards, if any, exist for their writing.
Despite my contrarian stance on this I still find myself using the term “blogger” to describe people. There’s no escaping it in some contexts. I am pleased to see all of the discussion the post has generated, which was of course the intent of taking such a stand.
Joel
Comment by joel — June 3, 2008 @ 3:43 pm