I recently started my own blog called It’s Yours To Find, mainly for fun and to share music that I come across with family and friends.  On my blog, I post a lot of different kinds of music.  Some songs you will surely hate, but you also might come across that one song that becomes your theme song for the day.  I consider my taste in music to be pretty eclectic, as I love pretty much everything such as rock, r&b, rap, alternative, indie, reggae, classical, jazz, electronic, folk, and word music.  One of the complaints about blogs these days is that they are too personalized, and you don’t necessarily get to read about anything you wouldn’t choose to in advance.  These complainers say people only write about things they care about, and you never get the other side of the story. Stumbling on things you don’t know or don’t look for helps you develop passions and interests, and I still believe even a novice blogger like myself will allow you to do that.  You can always get thoughts and different points of view through comments people leave on posts, and even links to other websites.  I still feel that blogging gives individuals the ability to stumble upon new things.

This is why I enjoy every aspect of my music site. I search for new music constantly, and at times I come across a genre or artist I would never give a chance to, and end up really enjoying it.  So while my blog consists of songs I like, the range of music is so vast that I think it works.  Although definitely a work in progress, my hope is to attract local music lovers and hopefully turn them on to music they normally wouldn’t hear on the radio.  Who knows, they might actually enjoy it.  While a blog works for what I’m trying to accomplish personally, blogs and other forms of social media are also utilized as marketing tools for major businesses.  Even still, there are people who think that blogging is a waste of time, but I hope to defend that blogs are truly an amazing invention.

The Haters

Through the invention of the internet, people can gain information and knowledge on any given subject quickly and efficiently.  As blogs developed, this gave everyone the ability to write about any subject they wanted to, and for no cost through websites such as Blogger and Wordpress.  This is freedom of speech at its best, where you are able to share you’re opinions to the entire world on any topic you see fit.  However, people such as legal scholar Cass Sunstein argue that “many people are increasingly engaged in the process of personalization, limiting their exposure to topics and points of view of their own choosing” (58).  He also argues that people should be exposed to materials they would not have chosen in advance.  This includes topics and points of view you may even find irritating, but central to democracy and even freedom itself (58).  I disagree here, because people on blogs have the ability to comment on any given post and give their point of view on the topic.  It could be in agreement, or it could be totally against what you are saying.  With this brings conversation and discussion among people who would have never met other than through that blog.  People post links to other websites to back up their statements, and this leads to that “exposure” that Sunstein says doesn’t exist on blogs.  Maybe someone on a blog you have never met can totally change your point of view on a subject.  Go on any blog and you can see this happen every hour of every day.

If you want to say that newspapers or magazines give a more “general-interest” aspect to journalism, from my own personal experiences I would have to disagree.  When reading a paper or magazine I only read certain articles I have interest in.  I skim over everything else and disregard it other than maybe reading a headline.  People will still be able to discover new things with and without blogs.  The internet gives us exposure to everything, no matter how personalized a blog may be.  Blogs are not the end of democracy. For every 10 bad blogs that are out there allowing only like-minded discussions, there are thousands that give a person the ability to learn more on a topic and hear from different points of view.  Take a blog like The Huffington Post for example, which gives news stories on a variety of topics.

The Believers

A recent Nieman Business Report stated that the ability to create relationships among users through blogs is definitely a benefit.  Even so, the report suggested “achieving this goal has yet to be shown to be very effective in maintaining or producing better overall use of the news products, which is the primary revenue source for news enterprises” (3).  In other words, relationships don’t translate into a better economic value.  I believe that anything that connects a company to its consumers can only be a good thing, as it enables trust and shows the consumer that you are real people and not just a corporate machine.  A publication titled Naked Conversations went on to say that blogging is essential to the success of a modern-day business.  There are blogs created at a rate of one per second, and at an increased rate these bloggers are talking business (2).  In Naked Conversations they explain how blogs allow you to communicate with your customers and learn from them and their needs.  Blogs show people you’re a real person and it shows authenticity. I”ll be honest, I don’t trust a lot of big companies.  I just figure they’re a bunch of rich jerks who are just trying to screw me out a more money.  But blogging allows you to put a face on  your company and show people you are human and you do genuinely care about what the consumer has to say.

Using things like RSS also allows readers to see a wide range of different blog topics; all at their fingertips.  It’s the lowest cost communications channel, so you can reach thousands to millions of people for the investment of only a few cents and some personal time (26).  Promoting your blog is also cheap and you can easily do it yourself with just a little bit of effort.  You are your own PR firm.  So it’s clear to me that blogs are not the end of the world, but in fact they’re the exact opposite.  They bring people together digitally, but with a human aspect.  They allow you to share thoughts and ideas and learn new things.  There are so many blogs out there that are great, get out there and start learning something new.

References:

Sunstein, C. (2004). Democracy and filtering. Communications of the ACM, 47(12), 57-59

Scoble, R. & Israel, S. (2006). Naked Conversations. Hoboken: John Wiley & Sons, pp. 1-62

Picard, R. (2009). Blogs, Tweets, Social Media, and the News Business. Nieman Reports

Greenburg, A. (2007). The secret strategies many “viral” videos. TechCrunch.