g r o t t o 1 1

Peeve Farm
Breeding peeves for show, not just to keep as pets
  Blog \Blôg\, n. [Jrg, fr. Jrg. "Web-log".
     See {Blogger, BlogSpot, LiveJournal}.]
     A stream-of-consciousness Web journal, containing
     links, commentary, and pointless drivel.


On My Blog Menu:

InstaPundit
USS Clueless
James Lileks
Little Green Footballs
As the Apple Turns
Entropicana
Cold Fury
Capitalist Lion
Red Letter Day
Eric S. Raymond
Tal G in Jerusalem
Secular Islam
Aziz Poonawalla
Corsair the Rational Pirate
.clue

« ? Blogging Brians # »





Book Plug:

Buy it and I get
money. I think.
BSD Mall




 10/6/2003 -  10/8/2003
 9/29/2003 -  10/5/2003
 9/22/2003 -  9/28/2003
 9/15/2003 -  9/21/2003
  9/8/2003 -  9/14/2003
  9/1/2003 -   9/7/2003
 8/25/2003 -  8/31/2003
 8/18/2003 -  8/24/2003
 8/11/2003 -  8/17/2003
  8/4/2003 -  8/10/2003
 7/28/2003 -   8/3/2003
 7/21/2003 -  7/27/2003
 7/14/2003 -  7/20/2003
  7/7/2003 -  7/13/2003
 6/30/2003 -   7/6/2003
 6/23/2003 -  6/29/2003
 6/16/2003 -  6/22/2003
  6/9/2003 -  6/15/2003
  6/2/2003 -   6/8/2003
 5/26/2003 -   6/1/2003
 5/19/2003 -  5/25/2003
 5/12/2003 -  5/18/2003
  5/5/2003 -  5/11/2003
 4/28/2003 -   5/4/2003
 4/21/2003 -  4/27/2003
 4/14/2003 -  4/20/2003
  4/7/2003 -  4/13/2003
 3/31/2003 -   4/6/2003
 3/24/2003 -  3/30/2003
 3/17/2003 -  3/23/2003
 3/10/2003 -  3/16/2003
  3/3/2003 -   3/9/2003
 2/24/2003 -   3/2/2003
 2/17/2003 -  2/23/2003
 2/10/2003 -  2/16/2003
  2/3/2003 -   2/9/2003
 1/27/2003 -   2/2/2003
 1/20/2003 -  1/26/2003
 1/13/2003 -  1/19/2003
  1/6/2003 -  1/12/2003
12/30/2002 -   1/5/2003
12/23/2002 - 12/29/2002
12/16/2002 - 12/22/2002
 12/9/2002 - 12/15/2002
 12/2/2002 -  12/8/2002
11/25/2002 -  12/1/2002
11/18/2002 - 11/24/2002
11/11/2002 - 11/17/2002
 11/4/2002 - 11/10/2002
10/28/2002 -  11/3/2002
10/21/2002 - 10/27/2002
10/14/2002 - 10/20/2002
 10/7/2002 - 10/13/2002
 9/30/2002 -  10/6/2002
 9/23/2002 -  9/29/2002
 9/16/2002 -  9/22/2002
  9/9/2002 -  9/15/2002
  9/2/2002 -   9/8/2002
 8/26/2002 -   9/1/2002
 8/19/2002 -  8/25/2002
 8/12/2002 -  8/18/2002
  8/5/2002 -  8/11/2002
 7/29/2002 -   8/4/2002
 7/22/2002 -  7/28/2002
 7/15/2002 -  7/21/2002
  7/8/2002 -  7/14/2002
  7/1/2002 -   7/7/2002
 6/24/2002 -  6/30/2002
 6/17/2002 -  6/23/2002
 6/10/2002 -  6/16/2002
  6/3/2002 -   6/9/2002
 5/27/2002 -   6/2/2002
 5/20/2002 -  5/26/2002
 5/13/2002 -  5/19/2002
  5/6/2002 -  5/12/2002
 4/29/2002 -   5/5/2002
 4/22/2002 -  4/28/2002
 4/15/2002 -  4/21/2002
  4/8/2002 -  4/14/2002
  4/1/2002 -   4/7/2002
 3/25/2002 -  3/31/2002
 3/18/2002 -  3/24/2002
 3/11/2002 -  3/17/2002
  3/4/2002 -  3/10/2002
 2/25/2002 -   3/3/2002
 2/18/2002 -  2/24/2002
 2/11/2002 -  2/17/2002
  2/4/2002 -  2/10/2002
 1/28/2002 -   2/3/2002
 1/21/2002 -  1/27/2002
 1/14/2002 -  1/20/2002
  1/7/2002 -  1/13/2002
12/31/2001 -   1/6/2002
12/24/2001 - 12/30/2001
12/17/2001 - 12/23/2001
Thursday, April 25, 2002
17:25 - Blog Clusters (Blusters?)
http://www.denbeste.nu/cd_log_entries/2002/04/Clustersintheweb.shtml

(top) link
It would seem that Steven den Beste has just put up his Atlas of the Blogosphere-- a model that's at least, if not fully accurate or useful for navigation, conceptually pretty realistic. His point is that blogs have formed into clusters or knots based on common interests and common themes, and from what I've seen I'd say it's pretty much true.

He also talks about how blogs have grown out of Usenet; I'd say that this is about half the story. For a long time now, Usenet has been in decline-- especially in usefulness-- from its one-time height of all-inclusive freedom. Nowadays most groups are 90% spam, and the only way I've been able to get any good out of Usenet lately is with private little newsgroup trees hosted on private, password-protected, spam-filtered servers. Usenet has turned third-world on us; the only remnant of the Old Days now is the gated communities, the heavily guarded compounds dedicated to focused interests. Time was that each university and company had its own hierarchy of newsgroups, which didn't get much traffic compared the alt. groups; now, though, one hardly dares venture out of the private servers.

But there was a place for people to go: Web discussion boards. UltimateBB and VBulletin and Ikonboard and their ilk have provided a medium that's a lot more attractive especially to the young newcomers to the Internet-- those who may well not even be aware that Usenet exists. Columns at pro news sites have discussion boards. Static websites have discussion boards. Blogs have discussion boards. While this medium has certain advantages over Usenet ("avatar" images, a more visible and permanent topic-threading structure, the ability to edit and delete posts, and much tighter integration into websites whose content supports them), it obviously also has some major drawbacks. For one, Web servers aren't terribly well suited to this kind of thing. You have to have a database back-end of some type, you have to render HTML, you have to spew out large-content pages over limited amounts of bandwidth, and if people start role-playing, it chews up your CPU something fierce. Usenet was a beautiful example of the old military Internet, with its distributed, fail-safe network structure and its constant stream of update chatter which guaranteed widespread availability for only a small cost in latency. Now, we have extreme centralization and bandwidth-intensiveness-- which is what the Net seems to be gravitating towards. It's all about content and branding now, not performance and reliability. And for today's Web generation, that's all okay.

Blogs are the next step beyond discussion boards. They leverage discussion boards in order to promote community interaction, but the structure is all quite different-- there's now a "Star of the Show", an emcee who provides all the "real" content; the discussion boards are only there as a courtesy and an afterthought. Some blogs put comments inline and give them top billing. Some provide access to the boards through links off the posts. Some (like myself) don't have discussion boards at all. Cross-blog discussion from author to author, interestingly, seems to take place mostly in good ol' direct e-mail, rather than in the discussion forums anyway. So the blog model is a good deal less democratic and more of a potential power trip for the blog owner; but the good news is, starting one's own blog is pretty dang easy.

I had for a while intended to put up my own hierarchy of blog types, based on my own perfunctory observations-- from what I could tell, there were four basic types:
  1. The "daily journal" style blog. One post per day, in editorial-column style, with a good neatly-tied-up structure and a point to be made. You know who I'm talking about here.
  2. The link blog. Mostly links to articles, some commentary, but the real content is the links. Lots of 'em.
  3. The essay blog. Most posts are big, long, and thoughtful.
  4. The LiveJournal. I've found these mostly to be what (as den Beste notes) calls itself the A/N crowd-- mostly kids posting injokes, dishing with their friends, posting quiz-meme result graphics, and banging out stream-of-consciousness gibberish loudly trying to prove how weird they are.

I'm not sure where I fit in this-- somewhere between 2 and 4, with a little of each. Den Beste seems to have pegged me as exemplary of a postulated "Mac-lovers' Cluster", which I suppose shouldn't surprise me-- though it was by no means my intention when I first started this thing. (I figured I would spend most of my time talking about Tolkien, cars, motorcycles, and movies.) But I guess there's a lesson in that; blogs grow in the telling, as it were, and can take on a life of their own regardless of the author's intent.

What is it about blogs that has made them suddenly the medium of choice for airing one's views? I think it's that there is a major, fundamental difference between two kinds of people who post on the Net: those who have a need to dominate a forum, and those who are content merely to contribute to it. I'm not implying that there's anything wrong with this-- just that I'm sure it's true. Usenet and web-boards both provided the ability for one or two people to rise to the top of the lists and become known as THE poster, the Big Cheese of the forum. They would have single-digit member numbers and a post-frequency tag like "Honor Charter Big Kahuna Member" (as opposed to everybody else's "N00b Whiny Peon Junior Member"). The whole structure of the system would revolve around them-- but not de jure, just de facto.

Hence blogs: a way for opinionated people like me to guarantee their supremacy at the peak of the discussions, the control over the whole shebang. There's no way for someone in the forums to hijack it and take over. And that lets the blog owner do all kinds of fun stuff, which can be good or bad.

In fact, now that I think about it, it all reminds me rather uncomfortably of that classic Life of Brian scene with all the raving nutters standing on pedestals preaching about Armageddon and trying to attract crowds of onlookers like barkers at a midway. (In fact, I feel not unlike Brian in that scene: "Uhh... don't judge other people, or else you might get judged too!" "Who, me? Oh, thank you very much!") I'm also reminded of the loonies in the plaza up at Berkeley, like Paul of the Pillar-- I heard tales of him from my friends who went off to college a couple of years before I did, back in the early 90s; Paul had a sign and a pillar, and he would stand on it and yell, or smoke, or just stand there looking serene. It didn't matter to him, as long as people knew he was there: he was Paul of the Pillar. Dot com.

As for cross-linking-- I have no idea who links to me. I've never checked the logs. I'm totally in the dark as to how many people read this thing, and frankly I kinda like it that way. (Though I must admit it's sort of unnerving when I get e-mails from old high-school friends responding to some recent inflammatory post as though to imply that he had been reading it all along and I only just now went over the line, or when I get mail out of the blue from some "A-list" blogger who found his or her way here God only knows how.) I also don't know, therefore, how many people find other sites through the links on this page; but considering how much back-tracing exploration that emerges, startled, here, can only be happening as a result of people poring over referrer logs, I guess I can infer that traffic must be heavier than I'd thought.

I can also infer that the clusters den Beste talks about, while they're definitely a good illustration of how things tend to be structured, are extremely porous and malleable. And that's one thing about the blog world that I think is pretty cool.

Back to Top


© Brian Tiemann