I have just been watching the December 3 edition of The Daily Show with John Stewart. His guest was Arianna Huffington, the co-founder of the Huffington Post. She was there to promote her book The Huffington Post Complete Guide to Blogging (which is authored by may, so is probably more a wiki then a blog - but you may wish to contest this interpretation).
However, her interview was interesting and amusing. Her view that blogs are the first draft of history seemed to make sense. And that blogs are best when they are fresh and unexpurgated. Write about your passions she says - your hidden passions even.
Stewart, quite rightly, points the fact that he has no need of blogging because he has an audience for his television show. Hard to argue with that. But for the rest of us the unmediated blogosphere gives us access to an audience which might otherwise not know we existed - if indeed we can find an audience online. Huffington says 50,000 new blogs are started every day. At that rate there will be more blogs than readers.
Then there are blogs like ThoughtSpurs, which simply record the trivial, the absurd and, yes, the thought provoking. In the years I have been adding to the archive I have covered terrain that I might otherwise have simply forgotten and in this respect I, like many others, may simply be my own audience (or, in the words of Neil Roberts) - the audient.
When my copy of the book arrives from Fishpond (NZ) I will deliver a full review.
If you are closer to the US the Amazon edition is here.
This from the, as yet, solitary review (5 stars) on Amazon:
The "Complete Guide to Blogging" is A FANTASTIC BOOK! Though it's hard for me to whittle down my list of favorite chapters to a choice few, I'll GIVE IT A TRY anyway:
3. You Can't Be Too Angry: "Think of something that makes you irrationally furious. If what results is something you'd never say to someone's face for fear of getting the living s**t kicked out of you, then IT'S PERFECT BLOGGING MATERIAL!!!!"
7. These. Are. Four. Sentences.
11. No Barriers to Entry: "Why be a low-paid hack banging out endless copy when you CAN DO IT FOR FREE?"
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