Expert Spotting
I am constantly amazed by the number of experts who are available to discuss blogging, new media, social networking and that strange and untamable beast, the Internet. They are wheeled out across the mainstream media channels to provide some insight or a "POV" on where all this technology is leading "us". Yet it is unclear exactly who "us" and where the insight comes from. So from now on, I am on the lookout for social media/blogging experts -- if you find one, please comment or email me and let me know so I can add them to my list.
The inaugural expert I would like to introduce you to is Australian and has written this piece in the Sydney Morning Herald, talking about the "Lost Art of Blogging". In the article, Graeme Philipson laments that out of the Top 25,000 blogs (9,000 of which are in English), only 75 blogs originate in Australia. Various reasons are provided for the poor showing including the following insight by Ross Dawson:
... one key reason is lack of bandwidth in Australia, and of its high cost
Now I know that Ross Dawson has a blog so that is at least a start -- and from the look of his archive, he has been at it far longer than I. But to link low uptake of blogging to bandwidth seems ludicrous. Bloggers would or perhaps should know that blogging is a low bandwidth activity -- unless you start to embed YouTube videos and so on. It certainly has not been an impediment to the very successful Mack Collier.
But the last word on blogging expertise rests with Graeme, who says:
I don't blog. Can't see the point, when I write this column and others. I also rarely read them - the letters page of this newspaper and the many emails I receive is for me more than enough exposure to the unfiltered opinion of the common man.
Enough said.
Update: David Koopmans follows up with this post ... AND Chris Newlan explains that bloggers may be bad for the newspaper business!
