Picking up on yesterday
Posted on December 19, 2007
Filed Under What's New |
Yesterday I was figuring out in my own mind why I never seem to escape the corporate agenda in social media. It got me thinking in the early hours what types of bloggers are out there and what their strategy or orientation is. Most social situations can be understood if you can categorise and give them structure.
First I was thinking there are three types of influential bloggers. Then I was thinking no there are four. And soon it began sounding like the Spanish Inquisition sketch.
So, for now I’ll stick with three. There are bloggers who blog to influence a given area; there are bloggers who blog to mediate networks; and there are bloggers who blog to inquire.
The first type of blogger would be, for example, a Chris Macdonald type of blogger. I’ve taken a look over Chris’s blog lately because I’ve been researching business ethics for a client. Or maybe a Bruce Weinstein, again strong on ethics or in the more general sense reporter bloggers like Mathew.
The second type would be the Robert Scoble and Shel Israel type blogger. These are classic bloggers who know that pesonal influence is tied to connectivity. My friend and photographer Donncha fits the bill too as do Damien and Tom.
BLoggers whose first purpose is to inquire into what’s happening around us would be fewer on the ground but maybe a Nick Carr.
Now, when it came to thinking up type four and then type five I was thinking yes there are bloggers who are just out there just having fun but they creep onto my radar so often I couldn’t come up with names. And then there are blogs that are obsessed with product - the gadget, fashion and shoe type blogs which are busy replacing the allure of glossy mags.
Why it strikes me as important to work out what types of bloggers are out there is because I sense you can then understand this amorphous world just a little better. The better bloggers work hard but they never forget their agendas, a lesson I’m hoping to learn, in the process clarifying in my mind what will really replace newspapers and coalesce into a social force. What I’m half convinced of is the first of these blogs types is genearlly weakened by numbers rather than strengthened by them, the second is all about numbers, in the nicest possible sense i.e. big networks, and the last is very low in numbers and perhaps ineffectual because of that.
Comments
One Response to “Picking up on yesterday”
Leave a Reply
Thank you for mentioning my work!