hmm. this "blogging" stuff ...

(Before you start, I couldn't make this entry 140 characters or less!)

I read a lot of online content - from all the big names, doggdot, Gigaom, Techcrunch, El Reg, and so on. I've just been doing a bit of surfing based on some names that fell out of one of the big sites, so I tracked down the applicable personal site and had a look at it.

It appears that the site I visited was another "bloggers co-op" where some obviously savvy people had decided to pool their efforts. Maybe I caught them on a bad day, but to be honest, i wasn't very impressed. (hey, this is only my second entry myself, so maybe i should quit gobbing off at this point, but i will press on regardless).

I think the main problem with "blogging" (what a horrendous name for a technology that is), is that to make someone read an entry, the title has to have a good "hook" - it is the first thing that catches the readers interest. It also seems to contain 97% of the relevent information.

For example: "Company X is going to buy Company Y for PQ squillion dollars"

Ok, so far, so good. I click on the above title, and then i'm presented with 'n' paragraphs of waffle
on why it's/not a good idea in the author's (or his mate down the pub/in a hedge fund) opinion.

Now "Twitter" (http://twitter.com) , I really like. It restricts you to 140 characters, so you can't waffle with it (well you could try I suppose, but you won't get very far).

However, you *can* get an awful lot of useful information into 140 characters. (or, you can list the contents of your sandwich box and thermos flask in 140 characters too, probably - and people do do things like that on twitter)

Personally, I don't have hours on end to spend wade through huge personal tomes (like this entry i'm bashing in now *blush*), and to be brutally frank, I don't *really* care what the "bloggers" opinion actually is, but the *facts* that they are reporting (usually in the title) interest me a *lot*, and the blogger who reports the most facts the most speedily is definitely going to get me "throwing up the horns" in reverence when I hear her/his name being mentioned.


Anyway according to this blog entry I read, Google (alledgedly) are allegedly buying Feedburner (allegedly) (insert all necessary legal disclaimers at this point) for a lot of money (alledgedly). That's all I need to know. I know what feedburner does and I know what google does. I don't really need read someones prediction that "maybe they will start stuffing adverts into rss feeds" - Because in this case it's patently obvious!

For example: Chocolate manufacturer buys major Biscuit baking company - "the author suspects that maybe this will pave the way for a new line in chocolate-covered biscuits?" Well, "Stap me vitals!" I say - I'd never've worked that out without the "bloggers" acute insight.

Maybe I'm being a bit harsh, but the people who break this sort of news "company x buying company y" etc are obviously brainier, better-connected people than me - however I'm not a *complete* moron, and the prediction of "revolutionary 'chocolate covered biscuits' or other chocolate/baked confection hybrid technology that we've yet to imagine being just around the corner" are pointless and devalue the posting.(Why not just say, "see subject line" ? - all the *useful* content is in it after all)

The point for this prolonged rant ? Well, I'm just back from my holidays, and have had to read my backlog (AKA "catch-up" - another hackneyed over-used management-cliche that belongs to the check shirt, cuff-links, but no tie wearing brigade - Yes, you know who you are ;) of email and favourite tech site content. maybe next time i should settle with just reading the email subject lines and the raw xml from the RSS feeds, then I wouldn't work myself up into such a froth.

Bright Blessings to you and yours ...

tape-monkey