Cites & Insights January 2010 1
Cites & Insights
Crawford at Large
Libraries • Policy • Technology • Media
Volume 10, Number 1: January 2010 ISSN 1534‐ 0937 Walt Crawford
Bibs & Blather
But Still They Blog:
The Liblog Landscape 2007- 2009
But Still They Blog: The Liblog Landscape 2007‐
2009 is now available– at a special early‐ bird price
through the end of the ALA 2010 Midwinter Meet‐ing
( January 19, 2010 or thereabouts). Order your
copy at www. lulu. com/ content/ 7952668; until Janu‐ary
19, 2010, it’s available for only $ 29.50 trade pa‐perback,
$ 20 PDF download. ( After Midwinter,
those prices will go up $ 5.50 and $ 5 respectively.)
This 319‐ page trade paperback provides a
sweeping look at liblogs ( blogs created by library
people but, generally, not blogs that are official
library publications), with trends, facts, figures,
graphs, and profiles for each of 521 liblogs. It con‐tinues
what I believe to be the most extensive sur‐vey
of the blogs within a given field.
What’s Here
The liblogs included here ( you’ll find the list at
walt. lishost. org/ blogs‐ in‐ the‐ liblog‐ landscape‐ 2007‐ 2009)
appear because:
They’re in English.
They began in December 2008 or earlier.
They have at least some relevance to libra‐ries
and librarianship, although that point
gets stretched in a few cases.
They had at least three posts during March‐
May 2007, 2008 or 2009.
They were available on the web in the sum‐mer
of 2009 ( even if they’d ceased).
They were known to me– either because they
were listed in the LISWiki list of blogs or the
LISZen list of blogs or because they showed up
in one of a hundred or so blogrolls I checked.
They were “ visible”– in this case, having a
Google Page Rank of at least 4 in either early
fall 2008 or early summer 2009.
Inside This Issue
Thinking About Blogging 4: Declines and Ends ............ 6
Interesting & Peculiar Products .................................... 22
My Back Pages ............................................................... 25
That final criterion was used deliberately to narrow
this study’s focus slightly from the 2007‐ 2008 study
( which continues to be available, The Liblog Land‐scape
2007‐ 2008: A Lateral Look.). I’d hoped to get
down to 400‐ 450 blogs, making analysis easier and
the book shorter. I didn’t do quite that well, al‐
Cites & Insights January 2010 2
though the list of 607 blogs from the earlier study
did come down to 480 ( there are 41 new blogs).
If you’re wondering: Only 50 liblogs were
eliminated because of their low visibility. The oth‐ers
were either non‐ English [ 19], defunct ( that is, no
longer viewable in August 2009 and with no clear
trail to a new URL or blogname) [ 15, plus three that
now require passwords], or didn’t have at least three
posts in March‐ May 2007 or March‐ May 2008
[ 37]… or, in three cases, really didn’t have any posts
that had anything at all to do with libraries.
Chapter by Chapter
If you’ve read the series of posts on Walt at Ran‐dom—
starting December 4, 2009 and ending De‐cember
14, 2009— or if you’ve already ordered the
book, you can skip this section: It essentially re‐peats
the posts, without the lists of liblog profiles.
( If you’ve already ordered the book: Thanks.)
Chapter 1: But Still They Blog
The first chapter considers what might be happen‐ing
with liblogs, changes in methodology and in‐clusion
since The Liblog Landscape 2007‐ 2008,
changes in metrics this time around, and a few
general comments on the liblogs:
Their age
Blogging platform used
Currency as of September 30, 2009– that is,
the most recent post as of that date.
The chapter ends with profiles for “ pioneers”—
liblogs that began in 2003 or earlier, often under
different names. Later chapters include profiles for
liblogs first mentioned ( in 2009 or year‐ to‐ year
changes) in that chapter and not already profiled.
Chapter 2: Rivers, Streams and Rivulets
Some blogs are rivers of posts— and if you sub‐scribe
to several, you may come to think of them as
firehoses. Others, including most liblogs, are
streams or rivulets: Writers and groups of writers
letting you know when they have something to say
that works best as a blog post.
How often do posts appear on a blog?
Until feeds and aggregators became common,
that was an important question. If you didn’t pro‐vide
a reasonably steady stream of posts, people
wouldn’t have reason to come back to your blog or
bookmark it. Few posts, few readers. Some people
advised trying to do at least one post a day. Others
offered less strenuous advice.
These days, when most readers see posts indi‐rectly,
a steady stream of posts is only important
for certain kinds of blogs. Indeed, too many posts
can work against readership, particularly if posts
appear to be for the sake of posting.
This chapter considers frequency of posts
among the 521 liblogs for 2007, 2008 and 2009—
and changes in the overall picture. The next chap‐ter
considers changes on a blog‐ by‐ blog basis, a
somewhat different consideration.
In all, 449 blogs had countable posts in
March‐ May 2007, ranging from one post to 1,161,
with a median of 25 posts ( roughly two per week).
486 blogs had countable posts in March‐ May
2008, ranging from one post to 919, with a median
of 20 posts. 434 blogs had countable posts in
March‐ May 2009, ranging from one post to 909–
with a median of 13, exactly one per week.
There’s lots more in the chapter, of course.
Chapter 3: Changes in Frequency
It’s clear from Chapter 2 that, on the whole, visible
liblogs had considerably fewer posts in 2009 than
in 2007, with fewer liblogs having any posts and
fewer posts per blog.
But blogs don’t all change in the same way.
This chapter considers changes in posting fre‐quency
on a blog‐ by‐ blog basis…
Quite a few libloggers did significantly more
blogging in 2008 than in 2007— all of [ the top
20%] and part of [ the next 20%]. The median blog
in Quintile 1 [ the top 20%] had 75% more posts.
The next year, the median increase was only 50%
and, while the entire first quintile included more
posts, the change ranged down to barely noticea‐ble
( 8%). Over the two‐ year period, the top quin‐tile
includes a number of blogs with slightly fewer
posts in 2009 than in 2007. Still, there were dozens
of blogs with more posts in each successive year.
The second quintile, representing blogs with
somewhat better year‐ to‐ year records than aver‐age,
almost exactly matches my “ relatively un‐changed”
definition (+ 20% to ‐ 20%) for 2007‐
2008, but ranges from tiny increases to losing a
quarter of posts for 2008‐ 2009— and, for the two‐year
period, includes blogs dropping four out of
ten posts over two years.
Chapter 4: The Long and Short of Blogs
Last year, it seemed reasonable to suppose that, on
the whole, liblogs would have fewer posts but long‐
Cites & Insights January 2010 3
er posts, as Twitter, FriendFeed, Facebook and oth‐ers
replaced many of the uses for very short posts.
If anything, that’s even more true in 2009,
even as a number of bloggers simply stopped blog‐ging.
One new liblog is an extreme case: In the Li‐brary
with the Lead Pipe, a group blog that’s
essentially an essay magazine done in blog form,
with each ( reviewed and edited) entry the length
of a typical magazine or journal article.
While more of the remaining libloggers seem
likely to write essays rather than quick posts, there
are still blogs for which a single sentence or two is
the norm, including link blogs and some others.
Chapter 4 begins with metrics on overall blog
length and how they’ve changed. The longest
blogs seem to get longer every year: While March‐
May 2007 tops out at 186,467 words, March‐ May
2008 jumps past the 200K mark ( 204,517 words)
and March‐ May 2009 finds one blog all the way up
to 238,351… noting that it wasn’t feasible to meas‐ure
total length of some blogs. At the same time,
the median length declined each year– from 6,216
words in 2007 to 5,536 in 2008 and 3,621 in 2009.
More interesting, however, is post length, even
if it’s only practical to measure average post
length. ( It would be interesting to measure length
distribution within each blog, but also incredibly
time‐ consuming…) Most of this very long chapter
is devoted to discussions and tables relating to av‐erage
words per post and how post length in blogs
has changed over the years– and to the largest set
of blog profiles in the book, partly because terse
blogs ( those averaging less than 100 words per
post) are profiled along with the essayists.
Chapter 5: Conversations
Is blogging publication or conversation? Yes and
sometimes. Blogging is always a form of publish‐ing—
but some posts on some blogs become con‐versations.
The conversational function varies
heavily from blog to blog, and newer tools—
particularly FriendFeed and FaceBook— may have
weakened blog conversations, with the odd result
that some extended FriendFeed conversations are
based on blog posts and might otherwise take
place on the blogs.
Some blogs don’t have comments, either be‐cause
the blogger doesn’t allow them or because the
posts don’t attract comments. There are some blogs
where I couldn’t determine the number of com‐ments—
although there are also blogs where I
couldn’t track length but could count comments.
This chapter considers overall comments for
each blog during the three‐ month study periods
( March‐ May 2007, 2008, and 2009)— but also the
more interesting metric: conversational intensity or
average comments per post. There’s an anomalous
change in the highest overall comments ( dropping
from 1,689 in 2007 and 1,219 in 2008 to 581 in 2009),
almost certainly the result of one particular blog
moving onto the inscrutable ( or at least unmeasur‐able)
LJ/ SLJ blog platform– I’d call it “ blowing a
fuse,” but that would be a cheap joke. In fact, high‐est
conversational intensity went up sharply in 2008
( from 28.9 to 53.0) and stayed up in 2009 ( 51.0), al‐though
the gap between the highest CI and the
second highest CI was huge ( second highest: 13.8
comments per post, with four others over 10).
The chapter also includes three‐ year patterns
for changes in conversational intensity. It’s hard to
draw any overall conclusions, since over the 2007‐
2009 period, roughly 40% of blogs increased sig‐nificantly
( more than 20%) in conversational in‐tensity
while another 40% decreased significantly!
Chapter 6: Standouts and Standards
Before considering patterns of change ( how blogs
change across multiple metrics), let’s look at some
standouts and standards: Blogs that are within the
same quintile either across all three key metrics
( frequency, post length and conversational inten‐sity)
or across all three years within a given metric,
and are also within the top three quintiles for the
metrics in which they show consistency.
This chapter is about consistency— falling into
the same general population across several me‐trics.
It’s not about quality, and no larger conclu‐sions
can be drawn. Think of this as a break in the
narrative. You’ll discover early on that no blog is in
the first quintile throughout— although two come
close, with consistently top rankings in two of the
three years.
Chapter 7: Patterns of Change, 2007‐ 2008
So far, the book has looked at one metric at a time
( except for chapter 6) but a blog is more than its
individual metrics. This chapter and the next look
at patterns— patterns of change from one year to
the next. Three elements make up the change pat‐tern
for a blog:
Cites & Insights January 2010 4
Change in number of posts: Were there
more posts in 2008 than in 2007, fewer, or
about the same number?
Change in post length: Was the average
post in a given blog longer in 2008 than in
2007, shorter, or about the same length?
Changes in comments per post: Was the
blog more conversational in 2008 than in
2007 ( that is, did the average post have more
comments), less conversational, or about
the same?
Table 7.1 offers a simplified view of these three
changes—“ simplified” because it breaks blogs
down into “ More” or “ Less” ( where no change at all
is counted as “ More”)— and that overstates the
significance of small changes.
For those who read last year’s study, note that
there’s one significant change this time around, for
both the simplified table and the triplets: I’m leav‐ing
out blogs that lack length metrics in either of
the two years being compared. That’s never more
than 10% of the blogs, and it means the tables can
be considerably shorter ( 24 lines rather than 36 in
the case of Tables 7.1 and 8.1) and easier to under‐stand.
Since every blog with a length metric has a
valid comment metric ( even if the comment count
is zero), that further simplifies the process. Blogs
are omitted if they have no posts in 2007 as usual—
but not if they have posts and no comments. ( Note
that a blog with zero posts in both years would be
counted as having “ more” conversational intensity
in the second year— an example of the problems
with straight up‐ down comparisons.)
That’s the start of the chapter. Most of the
chapter deals with triplets— blogs that have in‐creased
or decreased more than 20%, and those
that haven’t changed all that much. It’s a rich dis‐cussion;
I won’t attempt to provide a summary here.
Chapter 8: Patterns of Change, 2008‐ 2009
There’s one peculiarity for 2008‐ 2009 that wasn’t
present in 2007‐ 2008: Half a dozen blogs that went
from no posts to some posts— and are included
because they also had posts in 2007. Since moving
from nothing to something is an infinite increase,
these show up as having significantly more and
longer posts with significantly more conversation‐al
intensity…
If patterns of change across the landscape
were completely random, each of the fully‐indented
rows ( combinations of three metrics
changes) would have roughly 56 blogs and 1,660
posts and show 13% in each percentage column.
None of the eight patterns is close to those
figures.
Three outliers are interesting:
The most common pattern by far is the “ dis‐couraged”
pattern: Fewer, shorter posts with
less conversation. That pattern represents
125 blogs ( 28%) but only 11% of the posts.
The next most common patterns are two
with fewer posts and more conversation— 77
blogs with longer posts and 71 with shorter
posts. Combined, those represent a third of
the blogs and 28% of the posts.
The pattern with fewest blogs is the same as
for 2007‐ 2008: More posts, but shorter and
less conversational. That has 20 of the blogs
( 4%) and 564 posts ( 4%).
It’s also interesting that two‐ thirds of blogs had
( slightly) longer posts— and that a solid majority
had more conversation.
The chapter also goes through the “ better
model” of triplets. You’d need to read it and study
the tables to gather much meaning.
Chapter 9: Correlations and Averages
A short chapter, and I can’t claim to have found
anything startling. It’s much less graphically inter‐esting
than the corresponding chapter in the earli‐er
book, as I chose not to prepare scatterplots
( they’re fun to do, but I didn’t find them meaning‐ful
in these cases). Let’s just say that there are no
startling correlations between pairs of metrics.
Chapter 10: Why People Blog— and How Blogs
Change
This study includes 521 blogs. What they have in
common is that each involves one or more “ library
people” as defined very loosely— people who have
some connection to the library field and write, at
least part of the time, about library‐ related issues.
How do these people blog, and how is that
changing? That’s largely what this book is about,
on an objective, quantifiable basis. I discuss qua‐litative
areas in Cites & Insights from time to time.
Why do these people blog— and how is that
changing? There are many reasons for blogging,
some more sensible than others. Here’s my quick
take on plausible and implausible reasons for
starting and maintaining liblogs, followed by some
comments from bloggers themselves…
Cites & Insights January 2010 5
The chapter begins with some reasons I be‐lieve
people blog– just a few of the many– and con‐tinues
with material from the July 2009 Cites &
Insights, followed by new material ( some of which
appear, in different form, in this issue).
Chapter 11: Stopping and Pausing
Why does a blogger pause ( which I’ll define as not
blogging for at least four months) or stop alto‐gether?
I’m certain the most common reason is
premature blogging, that is, starting a blog before
you really know whether you have much to say. I
suspect other reasons are all over the map, with
the second largest probably running out of steam
or losing interest ( or, these days, finding that say‐ing
what you have to say is easier and faster on
Twitter, FaceBook or FriendFeed).
A number of libloggers stopped between mid‐
2007 and mid‐ 2008, or at least paused for so long
that they don’t have any posts— at least 13% of those
with enough impact to make it into But Still They
Blog and probably more than that among the broad‐er
liblog population. Some returned; many didn’t.
What follows is a sampling of posts on why
people have stopped or paused blogging— or, in
some cases, the fateful final posts that don’t appear
intended to be final. Included are some “ haven’t
been blogging much lately” posts.
Chapter 12: The Rest of the Liblogs
This is the point in the book at which I should find
profound meaning from these metrics. It’s the per‐fect
opportunity for sweeping conclusions— if
there were any.
You’ve seen smaller conclusions throughout
the chapters. Yes, a fair number of bloggers have
stopped ( when has that not been true?). Yes, there
seem to be a lot fewer new fairly‐ high‐ profile lib‐logs
in 2008 than in previous years. Yes, most
bloggers are blogging somewhat less ( and very
slightly longer).
And yes, some of that can probably be traced
to FaceBook, Twitter and FriendFeed, along with
the usual reasons— fatigue, changes in life and
work, balance, boredom.
Underlying all that, liblogs still offer a broad,
varied landscape of people with interesting and
worthwhile things to say. Blogging may be dead ( if
you believe some pundits)… but still they blog.
The remaining liblogs— those that didn’t turn
up in a previous chapter— aren’t “ leftovers” by any
means. A few of these are among my personal fa‐vorites,
one or two are among those I choose not to
comment on so as to avoid snark, several have
gone by the wayside— and many just don’t have
quite enough frequency, long enough posts or
enough comments to stand out in a metric ( or had
metrics problems).
Again: metrics only measure quantity, not
quality. You need to judge quality for yourself.
Order Yours Today!
That’s it. The book is textually richer than The Lib‐log
Landscape 2007‐ 2008 and, I believe, continues
an important study that should be of interest to
every library school and many bloggers. It��s about
as transparent as research can be. The price, par‐ticularly
through January 18, 2010, is ( I believe)
unusually reasonable for a 300+‐ page trade paper‐back,
on proper book stock, representing original
research in the field.
Cites & Insights 9
Available as Paperback
Cites & Insights January 2010 6
Cites & Insights 9 ( 2009) is now available as a 434‐
page, 8.5×11, trade paperback, exclusively from Lu‐lu
at www. lulu. com/ content/ 7903887/
The volume includes all 13 issues exactly as
published ( typos and all), except that two book cov‐ers
in the January issue are in grayscale, not color.
It also includes a contents list showing the ar‐ticles
and pages in each issue, and a volume index.
The price is $ 35 for the paperback or $ 25 for a
PDF download.
The book is printed on bright‐ white 50lb. pa‐per
( my copy looks great!).
As to the cover ( a wraparound color photo–
you’re only seeing the front part here):
Taken by my wife on Molokai, years ago, on the
Kaluakakoi golf course running alongside our
room at what was then, I believe, a Sheraton at the
Ke Nani Kai resort on Molokai’s isolated west
coast. ( The hotel’s been closed for some
time… tourism on Molokai is an iffy thing.) The
only manipulation done to the picture ( scanned
from a 3×4 print) was to flip it horizontally, so
most of the tree would be on the front cover rather
than the back. Crappy type position is entirely my
responsibility.
Other C& I Book Prices Reduced
C& I 9 was originally priced at $ 50 paperback or
download, the price set for other book volumes of
Cites & Insights, set so that sales would actually
help support Cites & Insights itself. While that was
an interesting notion, it hasn’t been successful—
and I believe the trade‐ paperback volumes are
worth having, at least for library schools and quite
possibly for a few readers. So I’ve reduced the price
on Volume 9 and on the other three volumes avail‐able
as trade paperbacks to $ 35 paperback, $ 25 PDF.
Admittedly, I produce the books in the first
place because I need bound print volumes for later
reference, and doing them through Lulu yields a
much nicer finished product than doing them at
FedEx Kinko’s, for not a lot more money. ( Let’s ig‐nore
for the moment the fact that, the next‐ to‐ last
time I did a Velobound annual at Kinko’s, bringing
them a ream of bright‐ white paper to use for the
copying, they apparently screwed up and did 80%
of the book on the usual cheapest‐ available copy
paper, without telling me.)
Still, they’re great ways to have access to the C& I
archives. Volumes 6 & 7 even have special features
only available in the book version: For Volume 6, a
special preface; for Volume 7, the briefly‐ available
Cites on a Plane. For Volume 9, I did something I
should have done previously— included a table of
contents showing the essays in each issue, reformat‐ted
from the online contents page.
I’ve also reduced the prices on the other two
6x9 trade paperbacks currently available from C& I
books ( from Lulu and CreateSpace/ Amazon; the
C& I annuals may also be available via Amazon,
although that’s less certain to continue). Balanced
Libraries: Thoughts and Continuity and Change
and The Liblog Landscape 2007‐ 2008: A Lateral
Look are each available for $ 25 ( plus shipping)
trade paperback or $ 16 as PDF downloads. You’ll
find them all at stores. lulu. com/ waltcrawford and
some of them on Amazon.
Supporting Cites & Insights
Since no new sponsor has appeared for Cites & In‐sights,
I’ve restored a PayPal Donate button on the
C& I home page. If you find C& I worth enough that
you’re comfortable paying for it— that is, you think
it’s worthwhile and paying a little wouldn’t deprive
you of anything else— you might choose to donate,
either via PayPal or credit card ( the button opens a
secure link).
There’s no set amount. I’ve suggested $ 7 or $ 8
if you find one particular issue worth paying for, or
$ 50 ( or $ 25) if you’d like to support an entire vo‐lume
of C& I. ( You could also buy the PDF or hard‐copy
versions of the annual volumes, but they’ve
been lowered in price such that they’re not really a
support mechanism.)
There’s also no guilt, threat or pressure. C& I is
free. Donations are entirely voluntary.
Making it Work Perspective
Thinking about Blogging 4:
Declines and Ends
The next in this occasional series was supposed to
be “ How we blog”— and there’s quite a bit to say on
that topic. Consider this episode a detour, taken in
part to prepare two chapters for But Still They
Blog. Part of Chapter 10 and most of Chapter 11 of
that book are shorter versions of the first and
second parts of this discussion.
Blogging is dead— we’ve heard that far too
many times, including definitive pronouncements
Cites & Insights January 2010 7
from such never‐ wrong sources as Wired Maga‐zine.
If you blog for the right reasons and find it
continues to be worthwhile, you may find the
Wired eulogy heartening: It’s strong evidence that
blogging really has moved from toy to tool, from
Shiny to Useful
Blogging isn’t dead or dying, and neither are
liblogs in general— but many of them have de‐clined,
at least in frequency of posts, and a fair
number have ceased or gone missing for extended
periods. With apologies for the downbeat nature
of parts of this essay, let’s look at some of the
comments about declines and ends, intermixing
personal comments and more general claims.
Blogging in Decline
Begin more than a year ago ( blogging’s been dying
for years now) with Kathryn Greenhill’s post on
May 18, 2008 at Librarians matter: “ When should
you stop blogging?” She cites a post from Problog‐ger,
“ Should I stop blogging? 20 questions to ask
yourself” ( www. problogger. net/ archives/ 2008/ 05/ 17/
should‐ i‐ stop‐ blogging‐ 20‐ questions‐ to‐ ask‐ yourself/)
and lists the questions with her own answers. Be‐fore
that she offers other notes:
While I don’t think I have any intention of stop‐ping
Librarians Matter, I’ve noticed my posts are
slowing down as I enter my third year. I’ve been
spending more time twittering, on new work
projects, blogging elsewhere, getting slowly inter‐ested
in videoblogging– and even trying to go
walking at 6am to spend some one‐ on‐ one time
with [ her 10‐ year‐ old son].
My friend Con ( Ruminations) has been feeling in
a pickle about whether to keep up with her blog‐ging,
Morgan ( Exploded Library) has recently res‐tarted
his blog after a self‐ imposed hiatus and
Fiona ( blisspix) has decided to give up her more
personal library related blog in favour of continu‐ing
a couple of others. I’ve noticed a huge drop in
the number of new posts appearing in my aggre‐gator
from librar* blogs.
I find twitter is filling the community/ comment
space that was once filled reading and comment‐ing
on blogs…
Checking those three blogs a year later, Rumina‐tions
is still strong ( but much less frequent in 2008
and 2009 than in 2007), explodedlibrary. info is
back in 2009— and blisspix is indeed gone. Libra‐rians
matter is doing fine. The drop in the number
of posts across the field of liblogs is clear ( al‐though
not enormous) and may be a good thing. Is
Twitter replacing blogs? I’d hope not, at least for
serious issues— but it’s probably occupying time
and energy that might otherwise go into blogging,
just as FriendFeed does.
As to the questions? Go directly to either
Greenhill’s post or the Problogger post. Some of the
questions are “ pro blogging” questions—” Is the
blog earning anything?” and “ Is the Blog’s traffic
and income growing or shrinking?”— but others are
probably worthwhile, except that they all boil down
to “ Do I find it worthwhile and have something to
contribute, do others find it worthwhile, and do I
find it worthwhile enough to take the time?”
Blogs are dead; long live the blog
That’s Andrew Keen’s thoroughly clichéd title for
an April 19, 2009 post at The great seduction. For
an April 2009 post, it shows a certain lack of his‐torical
awareness as he claims “ Last year, question‐ing
the future of the iconic weblog would have had
me institutionalized.” Horsefeathers. But Keen’s
keen on showing his superior set of friends and
inside knowledge. He was in Amsterdam “ with a
thousand of my closest new media friends” and
heard “ whispered in the hallways” that the future
of blogging isn’t promising. One pundit said
“ Blogging as we know it is dead. It’s finished.”
Another— a WordPress cofounder— had an odd
alternative: He thinks blogs will become “ aggrega‐tion
points,” “ personal hubs” where we store “ all
our personal media content.” Really?
Oh, and blogging was “ invented” by Keen’s
“ dear Berkeley friend and neighbor Dave Winer”
( according to Keen, but certainly not Wikipedia)
but has been transforming itself ever since. Let’s
see: Are there more namechecks to help us under‐stand
what a bigshot Keen is? Nope, but we get
Keen’s full answer: Both of these hotshots are
right—” The old static blog is indeed dying. But it’s
being resurrected by Wordpress as a real‐ time so‐cial
media personal portal.” I can’t even parse the
first sentence: What on earth is a “ static blog”?
One that has no posts? As to the second— well,
maybe, but in that case isn’t it telling that Andrew
Keen’s blog is a subdomain of typepad. com!
Blogging
Lorcan Dempsey thought about how blogging may
be changing in a May 3, 2009 post at Lorcan
Dempsey’s weblog. He sees a distinction between
Cites & Insights January 2010 8
personal blogs and traditional media in blog form
( my wording, not his). Excerpts:
I seem to spend less time looking at blogs, library
or otherwise. I don’t know if this is just me or if it
is a general experience. The demands of work, life
and Twitter perhaps. No doubt Walt will inform us
in due course whether the volume of library blog‐ging,
at least, is up or down, whatever about the
quality or interest.
However, as soon as I say that I realise that it is
probably not true. I do look at quite a lot of things
that are sort of quasi‐ blogs/ quasi‐ news ( e. g on
Cnet) which I do not tend to think of as blogs be‐cause
they do not have a strong personal voice. I
occasionally look at some other things which are
clearly ‘ blogs’, if in some managed space. The
blogs at HarvardBusiness. org are an example, and
they seem a bit flat, as if produced to order.
[ He read an ad for an editor of the BBC Internet
Blog, very much a corporate blog.]
This prompts me to think that perhaps the word
blog has become overburdened and as a result
somewhat fuzzy in use. Sometimes we use it for
the mechanics, for a mode of delivery which has
become a useful and general web publishing me‐dium:
a stream of messages which are individually
commentable, addressible, and signed, which can
be subscribed to as a stream and which can be ag‐gregated
and mixed in various ways. Other times
we may mean this, but we are principally thinking
of the personal voice that comes through ...
So, I probably spend as much or more time look‐ing
at blogs in that mechanical sense. But I prob‐ably
spend less time listening to individual,
idiosyncratic voices ...
As a writer and editor for the Library Leadership
Network, I use the broadest definition of blogs
( Dempsey’s is too narrow, since it includes com‐menting)—
but he makes a good point here. I’ve
avoided “ mainstream” blogs in almost all cases,
those without strong personal voices, but I’ve left a
few of them in my liblog studies. That may be a
mistake; maybe we really need to determine sepa‐rate
media even within the library space. ( Oh, as
for Lorcan’s shout‐ out: Yes, I’m continuing to do
that— and yes, the volume of liblog posts is down,
although not radically so.)
the halcyon days of blogging are over
That’s Morgan Wilson in a May 17, 2009 post at
explodedlibrary. info. Wilson began reading liblogs
almost a decade ago— librarian. net and The shifted
librarian— but didn’t know the word. Later, he
learned about it and started his own. Excerpts di‐rectly
related to blogging:
It was extremely liberating. Some of that was the
technology, the blogging software combined with
the rise of Google. For the first time, self‐publishing
was inexpensive, easy and viable as a
way of reaching an audience. But it wasn’t just the
technology, there was the notion that the blog was
your own platform, use it to express yourself and
say whatever the hell you want to say. After all,
most people didn’t even know about blogs.
Gradually things changed, more people started
blogging and more people started paying atten‐tion
to bloggers, and things got more serious. But
those changes were flowing on from the growth of
blogging and were to be expected…
Although I have described blogging as “ not diffi‐cult,”
publishing via [ Facebook, Twitter, Friend‐
Feed et al] is extremely easy. Although blogging
has become fairly mainstream now, the ease of use
factor of Twitter particularly has helped it become
way more mainstream.
The difference between an old fashioned blog and
somebody’s Twitter or Facebook or MySpace page
is that a blog is published for the whole world to
see, whereas it’s possible to control who can access
the newer services. This may sound fairly obvious,
but I think it’s caused a difference in how people
use these newer self‐ publication services…
I wonder, if more and more people can express
themselves via Twitter or Facebook, does that
mean that over time less people will be interested
in starting or continuing blogging?
Guessing the future is always hazardous, because
the things which cause the biggest change can
never be predicted.
But even if blogging does go into a gradual de‐cline,
in terms of its popularity or influence ( it’s
possible that if the mainstream news media con‐tinues
in its downward spiral, blog posts may gain
even more influence), I’m not worried that all of a
sudden blogging will become meaningless.
It’s interesting to consider the narrative arc of this
post, which would be impossible on the other ser‐vices
Wilson mentions. It starts with what appears
to be a downbeat statement, a modified version of
“ blogging is dying”— and winds up with a reasona‐bly
positive ending, in line with my own feelings.
It’s an interesting use of “ halcyon” ( which I hadn’t
looked up in a long time)— I believe Wilson means
“ prosperous” or “ golden,” not the first meaning in
Webster’s Ninth, “ calm, peaceful.” ( Well, first other
than sense 1, relating to the halcyon bird.) I’m
Cites & Insights January 2010 9
tempted to comment on artificial intelligences
having blue‐ green moods, but that would be silly.
Blogs falling in an empty forest
Not as silly as Douglas Quenqua’s June 5, 2009 ar‐ticle
in The New York Times Fashion & Style sec‐tion,
to be sure. He begins with a 2004 blog, where
the first post was an anti‐ Bush rant that “ generated
no comments.” “ The post generated no comments”
gets its own paragraph. Oh, and this blogger hasn’t
been blogging much, but might get back to it.
So? So we get the Technorati 2008 stuff ( which
I���ve covered before), the finding that only 5% of the
blogs Technorati has identified manage at least one
post every four months. “ Lots of people start blogs
and abandon them”— stop the presses! And when
you chat with “ retired bloggers,” you find that
they’re disappointed because the world didn’t “ beat
a path to their digital door.” Or, alternatively, make
them lots of money— the first‐ quoted inactive
blogger hoped to make big bucks through blogging.
If there’s an interesting or worthwhile section
to this story at all, it’s the opposite case: a blogger
who did draw a big audience, but was unnerved by
reader reactions and shut it down. That might be
worth exploring, but instead we get “ audience of
one” and the letdown from blogs making every‐body
famous and wealthy. One is fairly pathetic as
an example of how badly blogs are doing: An ad
executive who got a big audience, got some ad
deals that influenced his posts, then didn’t get the
big ad revenue he was expecting. Such a shame!
Oh, and the blogger who shut down her blog
because she didn’t like the reactions? She’s started
a new one that’s more impersonal— and she’s hop‐ing
for a book deal or financial independence.
John Scalzi had a bit of fun with this story in a
June 7, 2009 post at Whatever entitled “ The New
York Times: We may slide into irrelevancy but at
least we update daily.” He notes that the focus on
bloggers who quit when they find out it’s not a fast
road to fame and fortune is “ about a decade too late”:
I say this is a decade too late because I certainly
remember the grousing in 1999 or thenabouts by
folks discouraged that no one was beating a path
to their virtual doors, and I remember the news‐paper
stories about just that fact. What’s old be‐comes
new again, apparently.
1999 feels early to me, but only by two or three
years. On the other hand, I’m with Scalzi in his
comment on the abandonment of most blogs:
But again, this is no real surprise; the numbers are
larger now but the percentage of abandoned blogs
has been fairly consistent for years. The vast ma‐jority
of blogs, in fact, have nothing but the fol‐lowing
three posts:
Post One: “ Here’s my blog! This is where I’m going to
share all my thoughts about life, the universe and
everything! It’s going to be great and I can’t wait to
tell you all what I’m thinking about everything!”
Post Two: “ Hey, sorry I haven’t updated in a while
— life’s been crazy. But I’ll be back soon.”
Post Three: “ Here’s a picture of my cat.”
And then it’s done.
Scalzi notes that writing on a regular basis is
work— and he suspects many bloggers “ realize fair‐ly
quickly that they either don’t like sharing all
their thoughts to the world, or that their thoughts,
while interesting to them, appear fairly banal once
they’re typed out, and it’s better just not to post
them for the sake of posting them.” It’s hard to ar‐gue
with this statement: “ Most blogs are aban‐doned
because they should be.”
Scalzi finds the Times piece “ almost endear‐ing[
ly] anachronistic,” noting that blogs aren’t the
“ hot new kid on the block these days.” He thinks
most bloggers should move to Twitter and Face‐book…
and, to be sure, notes that most Twitter ac‐counts
have very few followers and very few updates.
It’s hard to make interesting content, whether it’s
a 670 word blog post or a 140 character tweet.
People might initially think they’re up to it, but
they find out quickly enough that they’re not.
Which, again, is perfectly fine.
The post has a mere 68 comments, which for
Whatever is on the low side. I won’t attempt to
summarize. ( Several note that many bloggers
aren’t out for fame or fortune.) Scalzi calls himself
a wordy bastard. I can sympathize.
The long tail of blogging is dying
If the Times article is anachronistic, this one’s bi‐zarre—
it’s by Charles Arthur, posted June 14, 2009
at guardian. co. uk, the online arm of The Guardian.
Blogging is dying. Actually, no, let me qualify that.
The long tail of blogging is dying. I say this with
confidence. That confidence is based on two
things: my anecdotal, but wide‐ ranging, analysis of
what and how people remark on content from this
section, and the surveys carried out by Technora‐ti—
which provides the Guardian with the feedback
data that appears on our web pages. The interesting
question is, what has replaced that blogging?
Cites & Insights January 2010 10
His anecdotal evidence? His section of the site is
getting fewer pingbacks. In other words, bloggers
aren’t talking about The Guardian’s technology
section as much, therefore, they’re not blogging.
Grandiosity, much? As for his proof from Techno‐rati,
since he links to the primary URL, I have no
idea what he’s talking about; as Scalzi notes,
there’s nothing new or particularly different about
most people abandoning their blogs. The latest
Technorati surveys show personal blogs, and blogs
in general, as being healthy.
Given Arthur’s ( misplaced) confidence that
most blogs are dying ( I can’t think of any other way
to read “ the long tail”), he says he thinks people
have “ all gone to Facebook, and especially Twitter.”
( An odd wording, like “ everybody’s swimming, and
especially riding horses,” but maybe the Queen’s
English works differently.) Ooh, ooh, and here’s
more proof: Arthur quotes the Times story.
Finally, it all comes down to Arthur’s ultimate
proof: He has 500 feeds in his reader and feeds
“ turn brown” when there’s no update within 60
days. “ More and more of the feeds I follow are
turning brown.” Is he adding new feeds? Are his
feeds in any way typical? Why does this mean any‐thing
at all for anybody but Charles Arthur? Be‐cause
he says so:
People are still reading blogs, and other content.
But for the creation of amateur content, their
heyday for the wider population has, I think, al‐ready
passed. The short head of blogging thrives.
Its long tail, though, has lapsed into desuetude.
Heyday? Maybe. “ Lapsed into desuetude”? Non‐sense.
If there really are seven million blogs being
updated reasonably frequently, that’s so far from
being either a “ short head” or “ disuse” ( I’m not edu‐cated
enough to use “ desuetude” in my own writ‐ing)
as to be absurd. Some of the ( few) comments
get that and a Technorati person cautions against
overinterpreting their reports. Hmm. A Guardian
post gets 18 comments; a Scalzi post gets 68.
The blogosphere 2.0
Laura McKenna ( not a liblogger) wrote this July 2,
2009 post at 11d ( www. apt11d. com— those are ones,
not els), coming up on her sixth year of blogging
and writing about how blogging has changed in
the past six years. Excerpts, omitting items that I
regard as wholly irrelevant to liblogs:
1. The A‐ List Doesn’t Matter Anymore. I just
read a really nice paper that came up with a new
method for determining the top 20 bloggers. The
problem is that those bloggers aren’t nearly as in‐fluential
as they used to be. Their ranks in Tech‐norati
and other lists are artificially high, because
they are on the blogrolls of millions of blogs that
were begun and quickly abandoned years ago…
Is there an A‐ list among libloggers? If so, what is
it? Do the 20 most widely‐ subscribed liblogs in
2009 have anywhere near the influence they had
in, say, 2006? I don’t believe they do— but then, I
wouldn’t even dream of naming the “ top 20” lib‐logs
in November 2009.
2. It’s all about niche blogs. If you have a partic‐ular
expertise and unique perspective, then you
can quickly gain a following…
Hasn’t that been true for a long time— with the
caveat that millions of people have unique pers‐pectives
on some topic?
3. Norms and practices. Bloggers have under‐mined
the blogosphere. Bloggers do not link to
each other as much as they used to… [ Fewer blogs
link to lots of other blogs.] Many have stopped us‐ing
blogrolls, which means less love spread
around the blogosphere…
OK, so the “ blogosphere” is in trouble. That’s fine
with me, as I never thought the term had any real
meaning. There’s no “ magazineosphere” or “ boo‐kosphere,”
why should there be a blogosphere?
4. Blogger Burn Out. Many of the top bloggers
have been absorbed into some other professional
enterprise or are burnt. It’s a lot of work to blog.
Most bloggers, and not just the A‐ listers, spend 3‐
5 hours every day blogging. That’s hard to main‐tain,
especially since there is no money in this…
“ Most bloggers… spend 3‐ 5 hours every day blog‐ging.”
Really? I flat‐ out don’t believe that.
5. Reader burn out. You all are not clicking on
the links like you used to. I’m not really sure why.
In the past, if I was linked to by a big mega blog‐ger,
it meant 10,000 new readers in one afternoon.
Now, a link by a mega blogger sends over a couple
hundred readers…
Then it hits me: even though 11d’s Google Page
Rank is the same as Walt at Random, a middling 5,
McKenna is a Big Deal: “ 10,000 new readers in one
afternoon.” Of course, I don’t get links from “ mega
bloggers,” whoever they are… and neither do most
libloggers.
8. Twitter and Facebook. I don’t really need to
explain this one…
So, blogging has changed a lot in the past six
years. It’s still an excellent medium for self‐
Cites & Insights January 2010 11
expression and professional networking, but it
will no longer make mega‐ stars. It’s actually a
good thing that the hoopla has died down. No one
should spend that much time in front of a com‐puter.
The expectations were unrealistic. Use your
blogs to target particular audiences and have a
clear mission, and you’ll get a following…
Or, for many of us, don’t look for “ a following.”
Write because you want to write, and you’re likely
to find an appropriate audience. ( The post has
seven updates, chock full of namechecks and mak‐ing
it clear that McKenna is both an old hand and
important— but none of them relevant to liblogs.
Comments, at least as far as I read, are all over the
place. Hmm. And McKenna claims 500 to 1,000
hits on an average weekday— which is interesting,
because she’s Important, I’m definitely not, yet
Walt at random currently averages 4,000 page‐views
per day ( seven days a week). On the other
hand, she gets a lot more comments.)
Finding the sweet spot
Sarah Faye Cohen thought about Twitter and the
extent to which it can undermine blogging in this
July 9, 2009 post at The sheck spot. She notes some
frequent libloggers ( although two of the three she
names aren’t that frequent these days), then draws
a contrast:
I have never been like these people. I am an occa‐sional
blogger. I, like many bloggers, mean to blog
more often. I have many blog posts I mean to
share or thoughts on our profession that I share all
the time with Andy and other co‐ workers but rare‐ly
do I find time to sit down and get it all out on
my computer. And admittedly, I feel guilty about
it. Lately, I even ask myself if I should maintain
my blog at all. This, in part, is because of Twitter.
She’s one of those who didn’t get Twitter initially and
didn’t much care for the required terseness— but she
found good uses for it and finds herself in Twitter
“ more than I ever expected,” sometimes asking pro‐fessional
questions and getting fast responses.
Don’t get me wrong. I still read many articles, blog
posts, and journal articles that are through RSS,
references, citations, or referrals. But the point I
am making is that my input and my output is
shifting. I get information in a new way and I
share information in a new way. I tweet an awful
lot more than I blog… While I have never felt the
need to blog for others, blogging can be a lonely
endeavor while Tweeting is an amazingly com‐munal
one. Increasingly I find I work well with
both. I appreciate the quiet of my blog. I appre‐ciate
the opportunity to go back and review what
I’ve said. Even as I’ve been writing this post, I look
back at my blog and realize how long I’ve been
blogging and how much I have thought through
things here. But on Twitter, I appreciate the ability
to share without the added pressure of annotating
and reflecting, or at least doing so very briefly.
So where am I? Where does this leave me in terms
of my blog and my media? Thinking about how
they intersect and diverge more than before. Cer‐tainly
thinking about how I can use them effec‐tively
and interestingly in teaching. But also
realizing the purpose and importance they both
have for me. It does not need to be one or the oth‐er.
There is a sweet spot to be achieved…
Cohen didn’t abandon and won’t abandon her
blog— she’s blogging at roughly the same pace in
2009 as she did in 2008, down ( but not much)
from 2007. I don’t think there’s much doubt that
most of us who don’t blog for money are finding a
changing mix of social media. In my case, it’s still
not Twitter— but there’s little doubt that things
happen on FriendFeed that might otherwise hap‐pen
on my blog or even in Cites & Insights. The
last paragraph of the post is, I think, the key to the
future of blogging as one of several social media
for those who find essays worth writing:
Maybe I will keep the blog after all. I’d forgotten
how cathartic it can be. How refreshing. How
sweet.
W( h) ither blogging and the library
blogosphere?
That’s Meredith Farkas, July 22, 2009 on Informa‐tion
wants to be free. As usual, she has worthwhile
things to say— and as usual, I’m having trouble
excerpting the post. Still, I’ll try ( but, as usual, I
recommend the whole post).
I remember the first OCLC Blog Salon at ALA very
fondly. It was like fangirl overload for me… There
was such a great energy in the room — most of
the people there had just started their blogs in the
past year or two and were just discovering the
community that the library blogosphere creates.
Most of us had no idea when we started our blogs
that these individual media would connect us to
other like‐ minded individuals, giving us not only
an outlet for our thoughts, but a distributed space
in which to converse and ( to an extent) socialize.
Just like previous years, there was a blog salon at
this ALA Annual, but when I think about the ones
I attended in 2005 and 2007, this event seems to
pale in comparison. And I feel like it is symbolic
Cites & Insights January 2010 12
of what’s happened to blogging in general. And I
find that depressing.
Ah, Meredith, you didn’t attend ALA Midwinter
2009. That was a depressing blog salon— too few
people in too big a room. Summer was lighter than
some past years, but I didn’t find it depressing. ( And
I really don’t miss the earlier salons held in suites,
where you could barely hear anyone… loads of energy,
but too much for an old fogey like me.) Still…
Microblogging, what have you done to my beloved
medium??? I remember joining Twitter reluctant‐ly
( since all my friends were there) more than two
years ago and thinking that it was a fad that
wouldn’t last. I mean, who would want to be on‐line
most of the day updating what they’re doing
and reading about the minutiae of other people’s
lives? What a time suck! Well, apparently a lot of
people did, since Twitter and FriendFeed are wild‐ly
successful now. I thought, and still think, that
microblogging is great for conferences — as a
backchannel and to connect people to one anoth‐er
— but I still can’t commit to doing it enough to
really feel a part of things. And I never would have
guessed back then what a deleterious impact mi‐croblogging
would have on longer‐ form blogging.
With Twitter ( and even more easily in Friend‐
Feed) you can have the sort of discussion one
might have in the comments of a blog post, nearly
in real time. And it’s really cool, because you can
feel much closer to the people you’re conversing
with since the conversation is happening so
quickly and in a single space that everyone is on
equal footing in. But that time element is also the
problem. If a discussion went on during the work
day and you find it in the evening, it’s yesterday’s
news by then and there is often no point adding to
the conversation…
To me, this is a particular disadvantage of Twit‐ter—
if you’re not there, you’re really not there, and
it doesn’t thread conversations. FriendFeed is
tough: You can catch up, but sometimes you just
have to recognize that the parade’s gone by and
you missed it. Sometimes, that’s a good thing.
I used to spend hours a day on my RSS feeds,
reading thoughtful blog posts by really, really
smart librarians. Now, I can get through my feeds
incredibly quickly since there’s rarely anything
from the people whose blogs I used to love. It feels
to me like microblogging is more about being
clever than thoughtful. You’re only as good as your
last quip, and everyone is trying to write some‐thing
that’s poignant, provocative, and/ or funny
in the smallest number of words possible… It’s not
a knock on microblogging, but I don’t think it
can’t replace the longer, more thoughtful posts
many of us love to read in the blogosphere.
I don’t know that I ever spend hours a day, but it’s
possible. It’s certainly the case that there are sig‐nificantly
fewer posts— the universe I’m currently
studying is down 20% from 2008 to 2009, after be‐ing
down 10% from 2007 to 2008, and there are
fewer blogs in that universe. I share her concerns
about “ microblogging” ( and dislike the term, a los‐ing
battle though that is).
Microblogging isn’t a bad thing though. I think
it’s brought a lot of people even closer together. I
can see it when I go into Friend Feed— the con‐nections
my friends have to one another, even
though some of them haven’t even met in the
physical world. And it’s given people who never
blogged before a way to connect. But I actually
feel less connected to my online friends than I
used to simply because I don’t have the time to be
there as much as I’d like… [ Farkas, with teaching
and a new son, find that life gets in the way of
FriendFeed and Twitter.] It’s great for the people
who can be there a lot, but many can’t. And that’s
something that I never saw in the blogosphere be‐cause
people could be part of the community
when it suited them and wouldn’t miss a beat. It
was easy to catch up if you were on vacation for a
few weeks.
I’m wondering what I’ll do after our next serious
vacation. I’ll certainly catch up with blogs and
email. Will I simply ignore FriendFeed other than
the most recent day? Probably— and that means I’m
simply not part of the community for that time.
It really depresses me when I hear from people
that blogging is over and when I see some of my
favorite bloggers ( who are now FriendFeed and/ or
Twitter devotees) cut their blogging down signifi‐cantly
to a “ wow, I can���t believe it’s been so long
since I’ve blogged” post every once in a long while.
If it weren’t for getting pregnant and having a ba‐by,
I’d still be posting a lot, so for me, it wasn’t mi‐croblogging
that affected the quantity of posting.
This troubles me as well. Blogging isn’t dying, but I
do miss posts from some thoughtful people who I
believe are busy with Twitter and FriendFeed.
… Maybe this is the way communication is moving
and I should just get over it and get on the train.
But I really hope that both can exist ( and thrive!)
side‐ by‐ side. I hope people will find a balance be‐tween
the two. But what I’ve seen over the past
year makes me think that may not be possible and
that most people are devoting the majority of
their energies to one or the other.
Cites & Insights January 2010 13
I don’t believe it’s most people. I believe it’s a fair
number of people.
It’s not like everyone has given up blogging or
writing thoughtful posts. I still find some great
material in my aggregator from some really great
library bloggers. Maybe I’m feeling this more be‐cause
I haven’t added enough newer librarianship‐related
blogs to my aggregator, blogs from people
who are still bursting with enthusiasm about this
awesome medium…
She ends by asking for suggestions for newer blogs.
There were 39 comments ( as usual, almost all
comments come in the first few days— in this case,
38 in the first three days, one a month later). A
couple of people commented on the movement of
comments to FriendFeed. One took my silver‐lining
view in a slightly different way: “ I think di‐ehard
bloggers will still blog and this shakedown
probably means that what’s left is higher quality.”
Near the end of the thread, another said much the
same thing: “ It seems more like a natural process
of separating the wheat from the chaff in the blo‐gosphere
is playing out right now with worthwhile
and regular writers still shining while others with‐out
much to say are falling by the wayside.” I’d like
to believe that’s true…
Another commenter notes that she finds blog
posts through Twitter ( and it’s clear that Friend‐
Feed points the way to posts). This person won‐ders
whether there’s room for new libloggers and
speaks of established bloggers “ who have staked
their claim”; I’d like to think that, particularly giv‐en
the number of established bloggers who’ve cut
back, there should be plenty of room— but I look
at the small number of widely‐ read liblogs that
began in 2008, and I wonder.
Some wondered whether Twitter and Friend‐
Feed are really to blame, or whether there are other
reasons for a decline in blogging— and that’s almost
certainly the case for some people. There’s more; as
noted, this was a remarkably extensive conversation
for a liblog post in 2009. ( There were just about as
many comments on this post on FriendFeed.)
In addition to lots of comments, this post drew
a followup from Rachel Singer Gordon, posted July
25, 2009 at The liminal librarian and titled “ Mere‐dith
is more thoughtful than I.” She notes the many
comments on Farkas’ post and wonders whether
that’s because Farkas is an “ A‐ list blogger” with “ a
bajillion readers” or “ because she’s one of the few
people still writing these long, thoughtful blog
posts that she misses, and people want to be part of
that conversation?” She also notes that her non‐library
blog gets a lot more comments than limin‐al—
and she’s not sure whether that’s because she
posts more there, because of the topic or because
“ people who are into that type of blog tend read it
directly rather than on Facebook/ FriendFeed?” My
guess is that “ Yes” is a good answer. ( The post drew
four comments, including mine.)
Blogging after all these years
Michelle McLean posted this at Connecting libra‐rian
on July 29, 2009, her fourth “ blogiversary.” She
discusses the reasons she blogs, refers to Mere‐dith’s
and other posts and offers her own slant:
I’ve been thinking about blogging for a while now.
Even considered stopping altogether, but couldn’t
bring myself to do it. Although I’m not blogging
as regularly, I still feel I have something to say and
that this is one of the places I can say it.
Some of the reasons I have been blogging less, are
that I am twittering more ( most days and for most
of the day usually) and I have been more writing
away from the online, in the form of conference
papers and articles…
I’m feeling less pressure to blog too, probably be‐cause
of my increased presence on Twitter and Fa‐cebook–
now I try to blog at least once a month, if
not once a fortnight, but only when I have some‐thing
to say, not just for the sake of it. Maybe I’m
finally maturing as a blogger. :)…
Connecting Librarian was intended to be the cen‐tre
of my online presence, but it’s now one of
three main locations you will find me. It’s now be‐coming
where I do my deeper thinking, whilst
Twitter is where I have more of my interactions
and conversations and Facebook is mostly just
about connections…
… I too miss the depth of content that comes with
blogging and I have noticed a marked decrease in
the frequency of blog posts arriving in my RSS read‐er.
On the other hand however, I love the immediacy
and the contact that micro‐ blogging brings….
I think that for now, my centre is Twitter– that’s
where I spend most of my time in terms of an on‐line
presence, but I am not giving up my blog. I
still have many things to share and this is the ideal
forum for that… Be reassured that there will still
be blog posts, in the next year, although maybe
not as often as I have in the past. I still want to
blog though because I am still learning and disco‐vering
and find I still want to share all that I do,
whilst “ connecting new ideas and technologies
with library service.”
Cites & Insights January 2010 14
McLean’s blogging less than she used to— but
those posts are substantive and worthwhile, and
six good posts in a quarter are still six good posts.
Whither blogging?
That’s the question posed in this August 4, 2009
post by Jim Till at Be openly accessible or be ob‐scure
( tillje. wordpress. com). Till notes big changes
in two OA‐ related blogs, with Peter Suber curtail‐ing
his blogging at Open access news and Doro‐thea
Salo “ hanging up the keyboard” at Caveat
lector. Till, who’s specifically interested in open
access, finds himself searching FriendFeed and
Twitter for OA‐ related items. He too thinks that
the role of blogs may be evolving “ because of Twit‐ter
and FriendFeed” and notes Farkas’ post ( and
my comment).
Then he discusses a new OA journal— and the
fact that he first heard about it via FriendFeed.
“ This illustrates the advantage of short‐ form blog‐ging
as a means to disseminate news items.” May‐be
that’s right— although, unless you rely on
hashtags, Twitter’s a tricky case. If all you want to
do is point out a new journal, traditional blogging
is probably overkill.
But the post really doesn’t address the ques‐tion
raised. I don’t believe many bloggers are ar‐guing
that Twitter and FriendFeed should die or
that they can’t be useful complements or supple‐ments.
But what does that do to blogging itself?
A rejoinder to the blog backlash
Marcus Banks chose to comment on a different
aspect of blogging’s changing reputation in this
October 5, 2009 post at Marcus’ world. Which is to
say, some people still regard blogging as somehow
inferior to real writing and suggest that blogging
leads to too much sharing.
Among the criticisms of blogs are that they are ves‐sels
for meaningless public narcissism… There is
copious chaff among the wheat of the blogosphere.
But I’ve felt for years now that a thoughtful, intros‐pective
blog post is just as powerful as a well‐developed
personal essay. What is the difference?
One of my favorite books is The Art of the Person‐al
Essay. Edited by Phillip Lopate, the book was
published in 1995‐‐ well before anyone knew the
word “ blog”‐‐ and contains essays going all the way
back to ancient days…. And Michel de Montaigne
deservedly gets his own section, as he is the most
famous personal essayist who ever lived.
de Montaigne died in 1592. The desire for a public
accounting of personal business existed well be‐fore
the Web… Blogs make the impulse to share
easier to achieve, but they didn’t create it.
The obvious difference between a blog post and a
published essay is that blogs are unvetted by any‐one
except their authors. Essays must pass both
publisher and editorial scrutiny. This means the
bar for what counts as a “ good” blog should be
high. And who’s to say what counts as good?
That’s another problem.
All of these are legitimate questions about blogs,
which are still a very new form of writing. But ac‐cusing
blog platforms of inventing the desire to
over‐ share is spurious…
I’m more sensitive than most, I recognize, because
I’ve now written this blog for close to five years.
Some posts are much better than others and most
are decent but not great. The best posts I’ve writ‐ten
been very personal, and this candor has
helped others.
Would the writing have been any different if it
was printed on paper rather than etched on a
screen? I hope not. The writing is what counts, in
print or online.
Maybe this isn’t appropriate for this section; may‐be
it belongs in “ why we blog.” Banks can be very
personal in his posts— but also mixes personal and
professional in some fascinating ways. His own
blog is good evidence for the case he’s making, and
I believe it to be a strong case.
WHY THE HELL AREN’T YOU RESPONDING
TO MY BLOG POST
That’s the title, intentionally SHOUTING, of an
October 24, 2009 post by Mita Williams at New
jack librarian. It’s partly about commenting ( or the
lack thereof) and the unpredictability of com‐menting,
and offers Williams’ take on why see‐mingly
trivial posts sometimes get more
comments than substantive posts, but in giving
her take she gets into another area that certainly
changes the blogging arena:
We don’t need any more information in our lives.
For every subject upon which you can throw your
attention to, there is so much material available
that now you also have to choose which point of
view you want to go with it. And we don’t need
any more entertainment in our lives, either. Most
people have a backlog of books to read, movies to
watch, TV series to catch up on DVD or PVR, and
games that they can’t wait to play.
So we really don’t need a/ nother blog to read.
The ‘ trivial posts’ of the microblogging set, are
personal— easy to write, easy to read, and— most
Cites & Insights January 2010 15
importantly— easy to respond to. When strangers
meet, they talk about the weather. When you
meet online, you make talk about Kanye or what‐ever.
And over time, you get to know a little bit
about each other...
What people need is something that makes them
truly happy and that thing is community.
My primary response would be to caution against
generalizations. Personally, I do get to know
people through their blog posts— and I do desire
thoughtful new perspectives on areas I care about,
including points of view I don’t necessarily agree
with. I hope Williams is wrong— not about the
“ group hug” nature of much of FriendFeed and
Twitter ( she’s clearly right there), but about the
usefulness of less “ huggy” media. If she’s right,
then maybe blogging is dying— and I don’t believe
that to be the case. ( There’s only one comment, a
289‐ word one‐ paragraph anonymous thing that,
although I may agree with much of it, I’d have to
class as a rant.)
Other Voices: How Individual
Blogs Change
To get more of a sense of how blogging may be
changing or declining, let’s look at a few posts
from a mix of liblogs that seem to have changed
recently— or gone into a state of temporary de‐cline.
( I’m omitting blogs that have disappeared
for long periods; we’ll deal with those a bit later.)
Don’t just blog there— say something
That’s David Fulton in a May 17, 2009 post at
Daveman’s blog, formerly Daveman’s tech tips:
The first rule of blogging is “ have something to
say.” For the last two and a half months, I’ve been
thinking about what to say and I’ve concluded
that the purpose of this blog has changed.
Before I started my new job as site manager at Po‐laris
Library Systems, I tried to blog whenever I
ran across something that I thought would be use‐ful
or interesting to my readers. To find these tid‐bits,
I spent at least half an hour each day doing
current awareness activities; reading blogs, new‐sletters,
RSS feeds, listservs, websites, etc. Things
move fast in library technology and I felt it was
critical to keep up as best I could.
The first two weeks at Polaris were overwhelm‐ing….
[ Work details omitted.] For those first two
weeks at Polaris, I didn’t do my current awareness
at all. Partly, I didn’t need it for what I was doing
and, after working intensively with a computer all
day, I just couldn’t face one in the evening. As my
comfort level with the job has increased, I’ve
gradually been reading my information resources
more frequently. But I don’t think I’m going to rely
on them as a source for my blog posts.
In the past, I found things to blog about as a result
of my current awareness activities. Since that’s not
a big part of my current job, I’m not running into
them anymore. So the blog will change. Future
postings will not be as frequent as they used to be
and will cover other things that I’m interested in,
such as folk music, acoustic guitars, books and
who knows what else. I think so now, anyway.
This blog had declined substantially— from 27
posts in March‐ May 2007, to 14 in 2008… to two in
2009, albeit two essays rather than 14 or 27 fairly
short posts. Fulton changed focus and changed the
blog’s name. He’s still not posting a lot, but when
he does post, he has something to say.
A new flight
That was the title of Nicole S. Dettmar’s first post
at Eagle Dawg Blog in March 2008. At the time,
she had this to say:
The intended purpose of this blog is to be my
starting point for the Web 2.0 101 continuing edu‐cation
class for the Medical Library Association,
but who knows what direction the field or my stu‐dies
may take me from here.
I’ve been blogging off and on since 1996 or so…
When I first heard the term ‘ blog’ back in those
ancient days, I thought it meant a backup log of
activity on web servers so I did not consider my‐self
a blogger. I still don’t think of myself as a ‘ real’
blogger because, for the time being, I don’t have
practical deep and profound brain things inside
my head about the medical library profession
since I’m not actually in it yet. I’m full of theory as
any new graduate who is considered young by our
profession’s standards should be, but old enough
to keep quiet and observe for now without ex‐pounding
in public.
Welcome aboard for the ride!
Most “ class blogs” die. Some don’t. Dettmar, who is
now definitely part of the field, has turned this
into a solid post on medical library and other top‐ics,
averaging ten posts a month this year. She
writes with style and clearly adds a worthwhile
new voice in a category that doesn’t lack for strong
personal voices.
Losing librarianship?
One way blogs change is when the blogger’s life
changes in substantive ways— a new job, a new as‐
Cites & Insights January 2010 16
signment, a new child, a new whatever. Steve Ob‐erg’s
been doing Family man librarian since 2002,
and it’s always been as much about family life as it
was about libraries and technology. But in Septem‐ber
2008, he changed positions within a corporate
library— and on December 28 posted this:
Since my job change at the end of September, I’ve
noticed that my professional interests and reading
habits have shifted quite a bit. In particular I’ve
noticed that most of the library blogs to which I’ve
subscribed don’t seem as relevant any more. Con‐sequently
I’ve unsubscribed from most of them. I
wonder, am I losing librarianship? I’m proud to be
a librarian, don’t get me wrong. And I’m not exact‐ly
thrilled about all aspects of corporate life and
the silly pap that I sometimes need to consume as
part of that. But I do really like my new, expanded
role focusing on search and taxonomy, with the
opportunities for learning new things and ex‐panding
my horizons. As part of that I’m looking
around for other sources of information in the
blogosphere and elsewhere that will help me keep
well informed and current, and I don’t have as
much time for keeping up‐ to‐ date with purely li‐brary‐
related things.
That’s the whole post. Activity on the blog
dropped sharply— from 42 posts in March‐ May
2007 and 75 (!) in March‐ May 2008 to seven in
March‐ May 2009. In September 2009 he noted
that his group is leaving the corporate library en‐tirely,
moving to another part of the corporation.
Effectively, this blog is no longer a liblog.
Here we go! SKJ4ALA is launched
This one’s interesting: A distinct change in an estab‐lished
blog— and one that may or may not be tem‐porary.
Sara Kelly Johns has had From the inside out
since January 2006, with relatively infrequent posts
about professional associations and school libra‐rianship.
But with this post on October 2, 2009, the
blog gained a new subtitle—” Blog for SKJ4ALA
campaign”— and a distinctly new purpose.
Well, it’s public now. I am running for ALA presi‐dent,
an opportunity to represent all libraries, li‐brarians,
library workers and trustees, using the
resources and tools of ALA to have a loud voice.
School Library Journal published an announce‐ment
yesterday and I am going to be busy here in
DC at their Leadership Summit, but I will love to
hear from people with their ideas for what ALA
can do for them, how it can make a difference. I
know ALA can.
Thanks to my son Ryan for the new picture! My
baby website is up but more will be added to it
soon. I am hoping that between the blog and the
website, I will hear from a lot of people with ideas
and concerns.
Stay tuned.
Some successful ALA presidential candidates have
launched blogs that ceased at the end of their
presidential or past‐ presidential year. Some have
shifted their blogs into campaign mode and, if
successful, coverage of their years in office ( ALA
president is a big job— a later post notes that, if
she wins, she’ll retire). Frankly, I can’t imagine a
liblogger running for ALA president and not con‐verting
the blog into primarily a campaign vehicle.
All change
Sometimes a change is terse and maybe a little
mysterious, such as this July 12, 2009 post in Ian
Snowley’s library management blog:
I’m modifying this blog, to reflect some changing
professional interests. So ‘ regular readers’ please
bear with me whilst I make the changes and try to
work out a design that will accommodate the in‐formation
I want to share.
That’s it— and, so far, other than one other post on
the same day, we’re still bearing with him.
That’s just a sampling; there are many reasons
for change, some of which never turn up as posts.
Ending and Pausing
Why does a blogger pause ( which I’ll define as not
blogging for at least four months) or stop alto‐gether?
I’m fairly certain the most common reason
is premature blogging— that is, starting a blog be‐fore
you really know whether you have much to
say. I suspect other reasons are all over the map,
with the second largest probably being running
out of steam or losing interest ( or, these days, find‐ing
that what you have to say is easier and faster on
Twitter, FaceBook or FriendFeed).
A fair number of libloggers stopped over the
last couple of years. What follows is a large sam‐pling
of posts on why people have stopped or
paused blogging— or, in some cases, the fateful
final posts that don’t appear intended to be final.
Included are some “ haven’t been blogging much
lately” posts.
Info Career Trends on indefinite hiatus
That appeared May 4, 2009 on Info career trends, a
blog‐ based newsletter. Excerpts:
Cites & Insights January 2010 17
Important announcement: After the May 2009
issue, Info Career Trends will be going on hiatus
indefinitely.
But why, Rachel?
After putting out bimonthly issues for nearly 9
years, it’s time for a break. I’m finding it harder to
balance labors of love like ICT with family and
with paid projects, and need to refocus some of
my energies. Read Greg Schwartz’ post on priori‐ties
about putting his Uncontrolled Vocabulary
podcast on a similar hiatus; he pretty much says it
for me as well…
Rachel Singer Gordon keeps the site and, thus, the
archives alive and, for a couple of columns, made
sure there were ways to keep getting them. The
balance is difficult, particularly for ambitious
projects such as Info career trends ( and Cites &
Insights, for that matter).
the blog is quiet
Richard Akerman posted this on June 28, 2009 at
Science Library Pad— and it’s not about ending,
but about an extended slow period.
The blog is quiet for a number of reasons, including
* I have moved to using Twitter (@ scilib) and
FriendFeed a lot more for sharing information
* I have a new iPhone and as I discussed in my
Twitter modes posting, short‐ posting services like
Twitter are a more natural match for using on
mobile devices���
* Reason I can’t tell you which will be announced
soon
… I recognize that Twitter is a much noiser infor‐mation
channel, full of half‐ formed thoughts,
asides and insider person‐ to‐ person conversa‐tions.
The blog is still the best platform for long‐form
thoughts.
“ Quiet” isn’t gone ( Akerman had more posts in
March‐ May 2009 than March‐ May 2008), but “ gone
Twittering/ FriendFeeding” is clear enough. As of
November 4, 2009, there’s only been one ( quite
substantial) post since this one, in late August—
after a fairly steady stream through mid‐ June.
Blogger’s Block
Janie Hermann posted this on June 28, 2009 at Li‐brary
garden— a group blog on which she went
quiet for a couple of months. Excerpts:
For the last few months I have been suffering from
a writer’s block of sorts that has made it impossi‐ble
for me to write a blog post of any length or
substance. I have done other writing, just no
blogging so it is a true blogger’s block. This has
never happened to me before and I have spent the
last few weeks honestly trying to figure out the
cause is behind this blockage.
It is not a lack of ideas. I have lots of ideas for posts,
they come to me at odd moments and usually when
I am nowhere near a computer ( or even a piece of
paper and pen to jot down a quick outline). Lately,
however, when I finally sit down to write a post one
of three things seems to happen:
1. I start writing and suddenly I feel as if it has al‐ready
been said before. What seemed like a bril‐liant
blog post when I thought of it, now feels like
it is just rehashing the same conversations that we
have been having on libraryland blogs for the last
few years…
2. I start writing on a timely topic but I don’t have
time to finish and by the time I go back to polish
it off it is no longer relevant or timely…
3. I start writing and feel like I am writing too
much about MPOW and all the awesome things
we do here. This is not the intended focus of Li‐brary
Garden…
There’s more to Hermann’s post— she describes
several pieces of advice on breaking writer’s block
and uses them as the basis for a good solid post.
( And she’s been back since.) I’m including this part‐ly
because I believe she includes three reasons some
blogs disappear: Some people do run out of blogga‐ble
ideas, some find that their own focus is no long‐er
the blog’s focus— and some people do feel,
rightly or wrongly, that it’s all been said before.
Catching up
That’s Steve Lawson in a July 3, 2009 post at See
also… Portions:
So. I haven’t been around here much lately. I’m
not sure if you noticed. I’d understand if you
didn’t. The whole “ blog” thing has seemed a bit
underwhelming lately, no? Caveat Lector is dead
and I’m not feeling so hot myself. Or something.
One of the reasons I haven’t written much here in
the past few months is that I have been working
on writing a book… The ego boost from having
someone say “ would you like to write a book?”
doesn’t quite make up for the months of inertia,
self‐ doubt, and ever‐ growing dread as the sound
of the deadlines wooshing by starts to drown out
the Muse of Library Science whispering in my ear.
I have also been busy fighting off depression. I
have been prone to mood swings and so on since I
was an adolescent, and the blues have been get‐ting
harder for me to shake…
You may be asking yourself ( as, indeed, I am ask‐ing
myself) “ why is he telling us this?” And I’m
Cites & Insights January 2010 18
not sure. I don’t think I have ever deleted a post
after publishing it, and this could be the first.
But I guess I’m trying to say that even though I
have neglected this blog ( along with many other
things) I’m not quite ready to give up on it. I have
things I want to write, some about libraries, some
about other things. So this blog may be a bit more
personal or a bit more random. I sort of miss the
days before Twitter and FriendFeed where blog‐ging
and commenting was the primary way to
communicate publicly on the web.
And I hope that the things that have kept me away
from blogging are turning around…
Writing a book is a great reason ( reason, not
excuse!) for a “ blogcation”— and unless you’re
blogging about the blues, it’s hard ( and maybe in‐advisable)
to blog too much when you’re down.
But also note the penultimate paragraph—
Lawson, who uses FriendFeed as effectively as any‐body
I know, sees something missing there as well.
I think. If you don’t read See also… ( why don’t
you?), Lawson’s back with reasonably frequent and
usually thought‐ provoking posts.
Well hello, blog
Frankly, I was never aware that Iris Jastram hadn’t
been blogging as much in June 2009, but that’s what
she says in this July 3, 2009 Pegasus librarian post.
Popping over here… brought me up against a so‐bering
realization, though: I posted once last
month. Once. And that was a post I’d outlined
weeks ahead of time. I’ve had dry spells before,
but never like this.
It crossed my mind that maybe I should just put
this thing out of its misery, but I don’t think I’m
ready to follow in CavLec’s footsteps yet. So here I
am again, and here’s a bit of what I’ve been up to
since last I thought much about blogging….
[ Summarizing; Busy spring term. Two family mar‐riages
and a graduation in one month. And…]
Then I took two weeks off of work to do as much
of Nothing At All as I could. In case you missed it,
that was TWO WHOLE WEEKS off. In a row.
Bliss. During that time, I became a big fan of sit‐ting
on the porch with a book, a laptop, and some
iced tea….
It’s been a weird few months in which many indi‐vidual
good things happened but the whole felt
kind of awful. I was tired. I am tired. But I think
things are starting to turn around. And while I’m
not sure how frequently I’ll post or what I’ll write
about, it’s nice to see this space sitting here and
waiting for me.
It’s true that Jastram had only one post in June,
and substantially fewer in March‐ May 2009 than
in previous springs. “ Life happens”: The only rea‐son
you need for a pause in blogging. And in this
case it was definitely a pause— the blog’s been
back to a healthy pace of worthwhile posts begin‐ning
in July 2009 and continuing since.
My year long blogcation
Andrew Whitis posted this on July 6, 2009 at li‐brary+
instruction+ technology. Excerpts:
For the record, I am not dead. I have been on a
blogcation… or maybe that is a blog‐ sabbatical… or
maybe life just got busy and my use of alternate
communication channels increased.
I’ve read a couple of posts over the last few days
from other librarians feeling guilty about not
tending to their blog as they would like. I didn’t
intentionally plan on taking a year off. Like most
of you, a lot of my communication has dispersed
into various social media streams. You know the
obvious culprits… Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter,
FriendFeed, Flickr, and del. icio. us. I did consider
abandoning this blog, until I noticed that my site
visit stats show that people are still tripping across
content. The stats indicate that people are mostly
“ reading” the posts written about conference ses‐sions.
I guess I will keep the blog up for awhile
and see if I can get into another posting groove ( if
only to buck the dead and dying blog trend that
not many people are blogging about but lament‐ing
on those other social channels).
In case you are curious, here is what I did during
my year long blogcation…
Quick summary: Job interview; ALA Annual; big
work project; award; successful job interview and
new position; sold a house and moved to the new
position with no downtime; accepted into a men‐toring
program; applied for a team workshop; pur‐chased
a house; rebuilt the new library’s website;
Midwinter; and more projects and conferences… in
other words, a very busy year.
I really do plan on getting back into writing mode.
There is a lot more I would like to write about the
Learning Spaces & Technology workshop and my
experiences from our learning commons project.
Since then? Two posts in July 2009, nothing since.
Not clearly “ the curse of the I’m Back post,” but
we shall see…
It’s like talking to the wall
Mark Lindner on July 13, 2009 at habitually prob‐ing
generalist. Bits & pieces:
Cites & Insights January 2010 19
Seems I don’t have much to say anymore. We’ve all
read of the death of blogging. The move to Friend‐feed
and Twitter. XYZ.
None of those are entirely true. I have plenty to
say and a fair bit to talk about… But there are other
things that I have chosen to give my time to.
Summary: Big work projects— and a renewed posi‐tion.
Big life changes. Personal honors.
There are going to be a few changes around here
soon. Does that mean I may finally start posting
again? I can’t really say…
… I like having this space in case I do want to share
and get around to doing so. It’s nice to know it is
here waiting on me.
Perhaps I should note that the July 13 post was on
Off the Mark; Lindner changed the name ( again) a
bit later, and explained why. ( He swapped tagline
and name.) The blog’s still not enormously active,
but Lindner does have things to say; he’ll return.
library ( mon) day in the life.
This July 27, 2009 post by char booth at info‐mational
is notionally a “ day in the life” post but in‐cludes
booth’s thoughts about a decline in posting:
After reading Meridith Farkas’ excellent post ( see
above) on the the blogging/ tweeting thoughtful‐ness
v. frequency relationship, I was motivated to
reflect for a bit on my own recent blog/ microblog
habits. I have begun to engage more regularly with
Twitter (@ charbooth) and find that it leads
people to my blog posts via alternate routes, and I
definitely ascribe to the notion that the relative
ease/ timeliness of microblogging reduces the
amount of insubstantial blog posting I do by tak‐ing
care of the quick/ dirty job of sharing insta‐thoughts/
quips/ finds. I appreciate the format‐based
separation it seems to be creating between
lengthier and shorter reflection in professional
discourse, and I also find that ( particularly in the
case of trending) Twitter generates a short/ long‐form
feedback loop that is strangely satisfying to
follow. Last but not least, Twitter finally achieves
what I always wanted my various feed readers, etc.
to, of floating interesting items I do and don’t al‐ready
follow to the top of the library blog morass
in real time. While I might blog only slightly less
because of tweeting, I’m absolutely following the
conversation more. For me, all of the above are
examples of the “ balance” Meridith hopes will de‐velop
between these media.
The real reason I post to info‐ mational less often
these days because a) I’m writing so ferociously on
other projects, and b) it’s that summer zombie ( as
in half‐ dead) zone in academic libraries where so
much and so little always seems to be happening
at the same time…
No further comment needed.
Twittermonster
So is Twitter the great blog killer? For some
people, probably— such as Tara Murray, who post‐ed
this on July 29, 2009 at DIY Librarian:
Six months ago, I tentatively signed up for a Twit‐ter
account and started posting a few things. I fig‐ured
I’d use it occasionally during conferences but
that would be it.
Well. This blog has been silent for nearly two
months, and I think Twitter is at least partly to
blame. I keeping posting to Twitter about things
I’d like to write blog posts about later… and then I
just never seem to get to the blog posts. I’m also
not reading as many other blogs– but I am reading
a lot of librarians’ posts on Facebook and Twitter.
Rather than get all apologetic, I decided to add a
Twitter widget to my blog sidebar. I do intend to
continue writing somewhat longer commentary on
this blog, but the reality is that most of my current
chatter is on Twitter– so please do follow me there.
That post would almost fit on Facebook, but not
quite. ( Personally, I hate Twitter widgets because I
dislike any moving elements on a text page— but
aggregators remove that aggravation.) Murray’s
still blogging now and then— and none of the
posts chatter.
A return to blogging?
From 75 in 2007 to 25 in 2008 to 0 in 2009: Those
are the March‐ May post figures for Jennifer Ma‐caulay’s
Life as I know it. This August 1, 2009 post
explains why ( omitting some detail):
Over the past year, blogging has been a nonexis‐tent
priority in my life. The major reason for this
is that school wiped me out– sapped me of almost
everything that I had to give. Working as a sys‐tems
librarian full‐ time and attending library
school meant that almost every waking thought
that I had was about libraries… Once I finished
my schooling and realized that I needed some
space, I started looking for ways to take more time
for me. Given the amount of time and effort that
blogging takes, I decided to let it go. And you
know, it did help.
Oddly enough, I have missed blogging– quite a bit.
I can’t say that I am surprised by this fact. This
was always a place where I worked through my
own thoughts about library‐ related issues. When
blogging, I found that I paid more attention to
things that were happening in the library world. I
Cites & Insights January 2010 20
thought about them more consciously– and I ad‐mit
that I cared about them more. Since allowing
myself to take a break, I have noticed that I pay
less attention to things that are happening in the
wider library sphere. I am much more narrowly
focused in scope. This isn’t bad. It was probably a
good thing. I think that I needed to narrow my fo‐cus
in order to make it through the past year…
I believe that things have leveled out a bit ( or I
have just become used to how things now are). I’m
starting to care more about what is going on in the
greater library world. So will I return to blogging?
I hope so. I have been thinking about it for the
past six months…
Macaulay specifically didn’t promise to return—
and apparently needed a few more months ( as of
December 13, 2009, this is the most recent post).
brief break from blogging because
Chrystie Hill’s Libraries build communities blog is
primarily an adjunct to her book— but even topical
blogs and bloggers sometimes need breaks, as this
August 4, 2009 post notes:
I’m on a brief break from blogging because I just
had a wedding and have yet to find my way back
to normal life where one reads, writes, blogs, and
generally keeps up with colleagues in library land.
It has even been hard keeping up with my day job,
but oh so glorious to be spending big chunks of
energy on the personal ( and not the work). My
mom tells me that you get to be a bride for a year
( really? how weird!), but I don’t suppose I’ll be
gone that long… I agree with Meredith that when
we’re not here, I miss us.
I’m going to spend the next few weeks dusting off
and clearing out my reader in preparation for
some kind of comeback…
She’s back, sort of, primarily posting reviews of the
new book. Doesn’t getting married earn you a few
months’ devotion to something more important
than blogging? I’d certainly think so.
the interior
This one’s particularly interesting because it’s on a
supplemental blog, explodedlibrary bunker, which
you’d expect to go quiet for months at a time ( as it
does). Morgan Wilson muses about flying across
Australia over the outback, which is much emptier
( and flatter) than America’s interior.
I want to make it clear, that the interior of Aus‐tralia
seemed emptier is not a bad thing. Actually,
seeing all that emptiness was a profound expe‐rience.
I wouldn’t want it to be any different.
It’s been almost 3 months since I met L and my
life changed. Sad to say, my blogging and writing
has been one of the things which has suffered dur‐ing
this time. But I will not blame that on L, there
have been other reasons for this. But in general I
only have time for so many big things in my life,
it’s basically a trinity. Before I didn’t have a rela‐tionship,
so my life basically consisted of work,
recreation and blogging. Now things are closer to
this: work, relationship, recreation.
It will be interesting during this month when L is
away travelling in the USA and Europe. It is an
opportunity to reset things, get back into the ha‐bit
of blogging, so that when she returns, I’ll con‐tinue
blogging— which will probably mean less
gaming, which is ok.
I should ask myself why this happened. Blogging is
more work than reading or playing computer
games, but it’s not as draining as work, and I do feel
good about it afterwards. I should remember this.
Then there have been other disruptive things, such
as moving house and different role at work, which
have made it difficult for me to blog lately.
One of the characteristics of my blogging is that is
that it is prone to prolonged droughts. That said,
every so often the conditions are right and I do
blog more actively. I am reminded of the dry ri‐verbeds
I saw on my flight over central Australia.
Most of the time they look quite dead, but when
there’s rain, they are full of life.
That last paragraph says a lot about the ongoing
health of liblogs, in a time of apparent decline.
Some people— most of those who’ve maintained
liblogs for any length of time— do have things to
say that make sense to say in blog form, and while
the rivers can run dry, they do come back to life.
Auf Wiedersehen, Adieu!
Eva, the “ bigeneration librarian,” posted this on
October 15, 2008:
So here’s the scuttlebutt:
I love this blog and writing it has been an amazing
experience! But as my lack of posting in the last
month and a half points out, my current pursuit
of other projects leaves me little time to focus on
this blog. So I have decided to give it a rest for a
while. I can’t say whether I will come back to it at
some time in the future, but I will not rule it out:)
So it’s pip‐ pip‐ cheerio for now, and thank you all
for reading!
When life and work get in the way, you can take an
unannounced pause— or you can let people know
that you may never be back.
Cites & Insights January 2010 21
Time for a change… The Brewin’ Librarian’s
blog is officially closing up shop.
That’s Matt Hamiton on October 3, 2009 at The
brewin’ librarian, and the title almost says it all.
I’ve been thinking about this for a while, and I’ve
decided it’s time to officially close up shop on this
particular blog. I’ve had some personal challenges
in my life for the last 6 months that have kept me
busy when not working and I’ve neglected to con‐tinue
to post. More importantly, I feel that I’m in a
much different place in my career and in the li‐brary
world now than when I started this blog and
it’s time to acknowledge that shift. I feel like it’s
almost not fair to those who’ve subscribed and/ or
linked to this blog to pretend as if this is a viable
project for me still.
However, instead of no longer writing I do in fact
plan to begin writing more very soon. So look for a
new project to be revealed in the coming weeks
that reflects a new perspective and purpose. It
may be a team blog, it may take a different form
altogether…
There was an earlier post that discussed life
changes that had interfered with blogging; this
post put a formal end to this blog.
Posts moved
Wireless libraries, a topical blog on WLANs, may
have outlived its usefulness, and on February 11,
2009, Bill Drew moved all the posts over to his
primary blog ( BabyBoomer librarian) and left a
placeholder to prevent the blogspot name from
being used by someone else.
Virtual libraries interact update
The final post at virtual libraries interact appeared
December 30, 2008. In part:
Long time readers of our blog will remember that
we started the Virtual Libraries Interact blog back
in late 2006 as a sister site to our blog.
Unfortunately due to a number of reasons the Vir‐tual
Libraries Interact blog has been languishing
for a while and no new posts have been added.
It with some regret, and a tinge of sadness, that we
have decided to merge the Virtual Libraries Inte‐ract
blog into the main blog. Do not worry, all of
the content has been imported into the Libraries
Interact blog.
Soaked up and squeezed out
Mark Rabnett went missing for a year at Shelved in
the W’s— and the returning post, on June 1, 2009,
noted his reasons ( family illness, new job), noted
his return to writing— and decided it was time to
change blogs. The shift was apparently just the
tonic needed, as the new blog ( Gossypiboma) has
seen a bunch of substantive, essay‐ length posts.
I am still alive! ( Final blog post)
Jill Stover signed off on October 22, 2008 with this
post at Library marketing – Thinking outside the
book. She’d been missing since February 2008—
new job, wedding, more— and eventually came to
a realization:
While on my little ‘ break,’ I realized that I couldn’t
devote the kind of time I need to make this blog
good while also giving my best effort to my home
and work lives. In the quest for work‐ life balance,
this blog and some related projects had to give.
Ultimately, I think this blog served the purpose I
had in mind for it. I was able to share some of the
things I learned about marketing so that it might
help others make their libraries a bit better. The
content that is here is still useful, I think…
Permanent hiatus
Short and to the point ( you’re not required to tell
people why you’re shutting down), from Teri Vogel
on SD Librarian— the first post since December 31,
2007 and the last post ( June 12, 2008):
This blog is no longer being updated. Feel free to
unsubscribe from the RSS feed.
reinvention
As noted elsewhere, “ I’m back!” posts can be iffy
things. digital. brarian, formerly ‘ Brary web diva,
went quiet from September 6, 2008 to January 6,
2009 and again from then until this post appeared
on July 8, 2009:
Hello subscribers,
I know it’s been a while since I last posted any‐thing
significant, but my time and energy was fo‐cused
on my MLIS.
You may have noticed the name of this blog has
changed. ( formerly ‘ Brary Web Diva)
I left the URLs and feeds unchanged so as not to
break a lot of other weblinks about the various posts.
I plan to do some conference blogging while at
ALA, wifi permitting.
Of course, it’s only been six months… this may be
another pause, not an ending.
del. icio. us and general update
Most of this August 9, 2008 post at omg tuna is
kewl is about delicious and libraries— but it leads
off with this fateful paragraph:
[ For those of you who have been waiting with
bated breath for my next post, as an FYI, I turned
Cites & Insights January 2010 22
all Luddite and canceled my home internet access.
That means I only have my phone for home web
access, meaning I won’t be typing lengthy posts
very much anymore. Since I’ve been feeling like I
have very little to say anyway— writing burnout, I
think— I dare say you aren’t missing much.]
When it’s over, it’s over
Sometimes blogs end because the end was
planned from the beginning. So, for example, 101
tips for school librarians ( 101tips. wordpress. com)
posted # 101 on April 18, 2008. The project was
complete and the blog has remained as a resource.
Alternatively, the venue may change. Beth Gal‐laway’s
May 18, 2008 post at Game on: Gaming in li‐braries
announced that she’d been invited to blog for
ALA, and apparently the other contributors to this
group blog chose not to carry on. ( The ALA blog has
since gone dark, at least at the URL provided.)
LibraryChange was an adjunct to Library 2.0: A
guide to participatory library services— and the
supplemental information apparently wasn’t
needed after April 2007 ( the final post, October
27, 2007, actually mentions a book signing).
In the case of Library 2.0: an academic’s pers‐pective,
the blogger ( Laura B. Cohen) retired and
so did the blog. It began as an experiment; it
ended ( but remains available as content).
“ jess” at Library Talk posted “ So…” on November
2, 2007, noting that the blog— planned as “ a com‐munity
place for ‘ library talk’”— never came together
as hoped. Given this person’s eight other blogs, this
one went quiet, presumably permanently.
Library Zen by Garrett Hungerford was always
primarily an adjunct to his LISZEN searchable re‐pository
of library‐ related blogs. The October 26,
2007 post announced a new LISZEN design, and
nothing more has apparently been needed since.
Second Life Research Journal concluded on Ju‐ly
5, 2008 with “ Talking, looking, flying, search‐ing,”
when Margaret Ostrander— who began the
blog as part of a library grad school research
project— noted the conclusion of the project.
And some just disappear…
There’s no reason a blogger must tell you they’re
shutting down temporarily or permanently; in fact,
I’ve tended to prefer not announcing lapses ( unless
there’s a specific reason to). So, for example:
The most recent post at booktruck. org ap‐peared
January 17, 2008 and offered a brief
note and pointer on an article of interest.
washtublibrarian’s last post, on March 9,
2008, discussed the blogger’s new volunteer
work as part of the Project Gutenberg “ Dis‐tributed
Proofreaders” team.
The final post ( to date) on Travels with the
state librarian— and the only post after Jan‐uary
22, 2008— appeared December 16, 2008
with the title “ The yearly post ;)” and this
text: “ I apologize for my posting gaps to any
who follow this blog!”
After a final conference report in June 2007,
Texadata’s complete set of 2008 posts ( all
the first full week of March 2008) consisted
of… four recipes.
Slow library was a group blog with an inter‐esting
premise— but after what appeared to
be a solid start in November 2006, it simply
stopped with a September 18, 2007 post, a
review of my book Balanced Libraries.
Christopher Kupec’s weblog shows a brief
item on “ Overdrive for Mac,” dated Decem‐ber
26, 2008, as its most recent post.
Josh Boyer discussed “ revealing libraries”—
live streams of library research transactions,
if you could deal with privacy issues— in a
December 17, 2008 post at The horseless li‐brary:
The first post since August 2008, the
last one as of November 5, 2009.
The February 28, 2008 post on Data ob‐sessed
discussed a Slate piece on public li‐braries.
Nothing since.
September 26, 2007, InfoPill: A post on
“ push and pull.” 27 months and counting…
Conclusions?
Blogs conclude, sometimes quietly, sometimes for
stated reasons, sometimes because there’s no
longer the specific need. For most people who’ve
started liblogs, kept them going for at least six
months to a year, and found enough readers and
links to attain a moderate Google Page Rank, how‐ever,
the final word is the title of my new book:
But Still They Blog.
Interesting & Peculiar Products
Choosing the Right Laptop
The August 2009 PC World has an interesting fea‐ture,
“ The Laptop Compatibility Quiz: Find your
Cites & Insights January 2010 23
perfect portable.” It breaks users down into perso‐nas:
average Joe, corporate raider, jet‐ setter, stu‐dent,
and gamer. For each persona, the article
recommends appropriate criteria and offers a few
recommendations. Briefly:
Average Joe: Any Core 2 Duo or Turion X2
Ultra Dual‐ core CPU should do, along with
3 GB RAM, 13 to 16 inch display, a DVD
burner— but they also recommend either
discrete graphics or at least a slot for a sepa‐rate
processor. ( Really? Am I missing out?)
Picks: Gateway UC7807u ( under $ 800), with
the $ 800 HP Pavilion dv3 as an alternative.
Corporate Raider: Same CPU recommen‐dations,
but they say get 4GB RAM and 64‐
bit Vista ( this was August, remember), a
screen with 1366x768 resolution but no
need for discrete graphics— and weight be‐tween
4 and 5 pounds. They suggest The
$ 1,400 Lenovo ThinkPad T400.
Jet‐ Setter: An ultraportable, of course, and
once again they say 4GB instead of 3GB.
Since it’s an ultraportable, you’re probably
not going to see more than a 13.3” 1280x800
pixel screen. It should weigh less than 4
pounds. Recommended: The $ 2,057 Lenovo
ThinkPad X300.
Student: A netbook, which generally means
the Intel Atom with 1GB RAM, barely passa‐ble
integrated graphics, usually a 1024x600
pixel screen and less than three pounds.
Picks: the Asus Eee PC1000HE or 1008HA
( around $ 400) or, if you have more money,
the $ 749 HP Pavilion dv2.
Gamer: Xenon Quad Core or maybe the
fastest Core 2 Duo around; 4GB or more;
discrete graphics with at least 512MB of dis‐play
memory, maybe a double graphics card;
ideally a 1920x1200 pixel 17 or 18.4” screen, a
Blu‐ ray drive— and about 15 pounds weight.
They suggest the $ 4,500 Eurocom D901C
Phantom‐ X or Asus’ $ 2,200 W90.
Fixing the Ratings
I probably need to find some general‐ interest PC
magazines in addition to PC World ( sorry, but I
can’t be bothered with the digital remnants of PC
Magazine) or drop most of this section entirely—
but meanwhile, PC World has fixed one of the rat‐ings
issues that used to drive me crazy. To wit,
price is no longer a factor in calculating PCW Rat‐ings
for products. Those ratings will depend on
performance, design and features.
That should mean that we won’t get photo
printers offering “ good” output coming out higher
than ones offering “ superior” output, just because
they’re cheaper. As the editor notes, buyers take
price into account already; factoring it into the rat‐ings
number gives it too much importance.
They’ve also abandoned the “ exactly one Best
Buy logo per roundup” approach. Now, they’ll put
the logo on any product that appears to be a bar‐gain—
which could mean none ( as in the all‐ in‐ one
roundup noted elsewhere in this section) or several.
One Terabyte, No Spin
One terabyte hard disks are old news; you can buy
them for less than $ 100 ( at least on Black Friday)
and you can buy 2TB disks these days. But these
are old technology— electromechanical devices
with spinning disks and read‐ write heads: Pretty
much like a 78RPM turntable from the turn of the
century, albeit a little more modern.
As we all know ( based on industry gurus), hard
disks disappeared years ago, replaced by solid‐ state
memory. And, according to PC World October
2009, you should be able to buy a serious solid‐ state
drive right about now, the OCZ 1TB Colossus SSD
Drive. It weighs less than a pound ( 14oz.) and fits
into a standard 3.5” drive bay. It should have read
speeds up to 250MB/ s ( that’s megabytes) and write
speeds of 220MB/ s. The writeup doesn’t say much
about total cycles, a bane of solid‐ state drives used
for long periods of time as actual hard disk re‐placement.
There’s one other little issue: It should
go for $ 2,200. ( An even smaller and even faster 1TB
solid‐ state drive goes for $ 3,000.)
The Real Cost of Smartphones
Mark Sullivan has an interesting Consumer Watch
article in the October 2009 PC World: “ How Much
Does a Smartphone Really Cost?” The magazine
tried to figure out total cost of ownership over a two‐year
contract, including the kind of unlimited talk,
text and data plans you’d almost certainly want.
For an iPhone 3GS 16GB, necessarily on AT& T,
the two‐ year total would be $ 3,836, or about $ 160 per
month. Turns out that, for any typical BlackBerry
model or a Nokia E71x, the total’s also right around
$ 3,800 ( e. g., $ 3,764.75 for the BlackBerry Tour 9630
Cites & Insights January 2010 24
on Verizon, or $ 157 a month). But there are lower‐priced
options: the Palm Pre on Sprint comes out at
$ 2,635.75 ($ 110/ month), largely because Sprint’s
Simply Everything plan is considerably cheaper than
Verizon’s and AT& T’s unlimited plans.
The Range of Audiophile
Equipment
I kvetch about claims for absurdly expensive audio
equipment fairly often in MY BACK PAGES—
complaining not because the prices are so high
( what someone else wants to pay for exclusivity, ar‐tistic
design or just to flaunt their wealth is their
business) but because of claims that the prices are
justified by actual audible performance differenc‐es—
and sometimes that anything beneath a certain
very high threshold really isn’t audiophile quality.
That makes The Abso! ute Sound’s Editors’
Choice Awards issues somewhat refreshing ( even
though the magazine’s disdain for any instrument
testing is an ongoing annoyance). The magazine
doesn’t categorize items in various grades, except
for a special super‐ expensive subcategory; instead,
everything must meet one criterion: “ Would one
of [ the full‐ time editorial staff] buy the product
with our own money or recommend that product
to a close friend or relative?”
So it’s interesting to see the range of prices for
gear considered high‐ end. The most recent Awards
roundup was September 2009. Let’s see what you
can put together:
Budget System: PSB Alpha B1 speakers,
$ 279/ pair. ( Want more bass? Add a PSB
SubSeries 5i for $ 549.) Oppo DV‐ 980H
CD/ DVD/ DVD‐ Audio/ SACD player, $ 169.
( Want LPs? Add the Pro‐ Ject Debut III for
$ 349, cartridge included.) NAD C315BEE in‐tegrated
amplifier, $ 349. ( For LP, you might
need to add a Parasound Zphono phonos‐tage,
$ 150.) Cables ( assuming good‐ quality
“ no‐ name” cables won’t work): Transparent
Audio The Link interconnect, $ 85 for one
meter, and Paul Speltz “ Anti‐ Cable” Speaker
Cable, $ 160 for two 8’ cables. Total: $ 1,042
for CD/ SACD/ DVD playback with no sub‐woofer
( add $ 230 for Blu‐ ray playback) or
$ 2,290 with turntable and subwoofer ( and
bumping receiver to a more powerful unit
that’s $ 100 more).
Expensive System: MBL 101 X‐ tremes,
$ 250,000/ pair. Solution 740 CD player,
$ 60,000. Clearaudio Statement turntable &
arm, $ 150,000, plus Clearaudio Goldfinger
V2 cartridge, $ 10,000. Krell Evolution Two
preamp, $ 50,000. ( Unclear whether you’d al‐so
want an Audio Tekne TEA‐ 2000 phonos‐tage,
$ 12,000.) Solution 700 amplifiers,
$ 115,000 each ( monoblocks: two required).
Cables: TARA Labs Zero Gold interconnect,
$ 14,900 for one meter, and MIT Oracle MA
Speaker Cable, $ 49,800 for two 8’ cables.
Total: I can’t imagine anyone at this price
level who isn’t also in love with vinyl, but a
CD‐ only system ( note: SACD and DVD‐Audio
playback not supported) would be a
mere $ 654,700. Adding LP playback brings
that up to $ 826,700.
I am absolutely certain that the $ 654,700 system
will sound better than the $ 1,042 system, to almost
anyone who listens to music seriously. If you add
the subwoofer to the budget system and maybe
notch it up to the more powerful NAD C325BEE
($ 449 instead of $ 349), bringing the non‐ LP total
up to $ 1,691, I suspect a serious music listener
could still easily tell the difference— but I’m less
certain most of us would be terribly concerned
about it. Is the high‐ end system worth 387 times as
much ( without vinyl) or 361 times as much ( with
vinyl and, for the cheap system, subwoofer)? Cer‐tainly
for those who choose it— but it’s less clear
that, speakers possibly excepted, sound quality
could be the primary reason. And, for those of us
here on earth, even in the Bay Area you can buy a
pretty nice house for the difference. ( Admission:
My current music system is a $ 50 MP3 player and
$ 40 Sennheiser headphones— which I might up‐grade
to $ 80 Grado SR60i headphones, also in the
Editors’ Choice Awards).
Editors’ Choices and Group Reviews
PC World tests point‐ and‐ shoot digital cameras in
the $ 200 range in the July 2009 issue— but “$ 200
range” is a broad description. The Best Buy is the
$ 250 Panasonic Lumix DMC‐ FS25, a 12‐ megapixel
camera with 5x optical zoom and very good image
quality. Second place— also with very good image
quality, but shorter battery life— is the Nikon
Coolpix L20 at $ 130. It offers a mere 10 megapixels
( more than enough for most photographers) and
Cites & Insights January 2010 25
3.6x optical zoom. You can, to be sure, buy two
Nikons for the price of one Panasonic ( plus $ 10).
Realistically, this review covers three price ranges:
$ 120‐$ 130 ( four cameras), $ 180‐$ 200 ( five cameras),
and $ 250 ( one outlier). ( The Nikon sold for $ 130 in
July; in December 2009, it’s going for $ 100.)
The August 2009 PC World rounds up security
suites and comes up with an unexpected Best Buy:
G Data Internet Security 2010, cheap ($ 30 and $ 30
per year), great detection rate, good behavioral
detection, fast and eking out a slight lead over
Norton Internet Security 2009.
Want freebies? The October 2009 PC World
evaluates nine free security programs. Avira Anti‐
Vir Personal and Alwil Avast Antivirus Home Edi‐tion
both come out with “ Superior” performance
scores, with the Avira edging out the Alwil. You
might also look for Microsoft Security Essentials
when it emerges from beta— it was slow but well‐designed
and effective.
Looking at all‐ in‐ one PCs ( yes, there are a lot
of those these days), the September 2009 PC
World gives the $ 1,149 Lenovo IdeaCentre A600 its
top score for units with screens 20 inches or larger;
it comes with a 21.5” screen, a 2.13GHz Core 2 Dup
CPU, 4GB RAM, one terabyte of storage, a Blu‐ ray
drive and such extras as an HDTV tuner and
2megapixel webcam— but it’s a crappy gaming
machine. For smaller‐ screen units, the highest rat‐ing
goes to Dell’s $ 944 Studio One 19, with an 18.5”
touchscreen, 2.5GHz Pentium dual‐ core ( a step
down from Core 2 Duo), 4GB RAM, 320GB storage
and dual‐ format DVD burner—“ better than a
budget all‐ in‐ one but not quite high‐ end either.”
My Back Pages
Apple Apologists
I understand Apple fanbois. OK, maybe “ under‐stand”
is too strong a word, but I can appreciate
fanatical brand loyalty. But when consultants and
industry gurus serve as apologists for one compa‐ny,
it’s a little out of hand.
The well‐ read among you may already be
thinking “ Tim Bajarin” (“ Steven Levy” would be
another good response, but he’s a “ journalist” not
an industry hotshot). And, indeed, here he is in an
October 2009 PC World report explaining why it’s
wholly appropriate for Apple to make sure you can’t
sync your iTunes library with a Palm Pre, going out
of its way to change the iTunes software so it
would break the synch. Bajarin: “ Apple’s ease‐ of‐use
is only guaranteed to work within the Apple
ecosystem. As soon as you go outside of that, you
really do start making things much more difficult
for the mainstream consumer.” Which is, of
course, why you can’t use iTunes on Windows PCs.
( What’s that? You can use iTunes on Windows— in
fact, it’s almost certainly the case that most iTunes
customers use Windows?) In other words, Bajarin
is saying it’s appropriate for Apple to make it im‐possible
to mix and match, no matter how know‐ledgeable
the consumer is— because mainstream
consumers might be confused. Wow.
Buying Friends by the Thousands
I received an emailed press release from Nightside
Media on December 7, 2009. Honest to FSM or
Gaia ( as you prefer), I couldn’t make this stuff up,
although I am obscuring the name of the sad little
business:
LONELY THIS CHRISTMAS? YOUR FRIENDS
CAN NOW BE BOUGHT
Despite the fact that the Internet has made con‐necting
with people infinitely easier, there will
still be millions of lonely souls around the globe
this holiday season. But if you were one of the
Christmas‐ forlorn, would you consider buying
friends to ease the pain?
If this sounds funny, it may interest you to know
that people online are already buying friends in
their thousands.
Social media traders [ XX] have been selling fans and
friends on Facebook for some time now, and despite
the fact the service is aimed at businesses who use
social media in order to market their products and
services to potential clients, they say it will definitely
be used by others this holiday season.
“ We intended our services for businesses though
to our surprise it wasn't just business who took
advantage of them.” Said [ XX] CEO Leon Hill.
“ We found that a fair percentage of clients were
simply people who wanted to look that much
more important in the world of social media.”
According to [ XX], the number of people buying
friends aren't small either.
“ We took tens of thousands of dollars in sales the
first two days our Facebook service was operation‐al
and we estimate that around ten to fifteen per‐cent
of all sales are non‐ business‐ related.”
Cites & Insights January 2010 26
“ Not only that but we've noticed this number in‐creasing
slowly the closer we get to Christmas. It
seems there are a lot of lonely folk out there will‐ing
to connect with people in any way possible.”
Said Hill. “ We expect the service will see even
more people investing cash in friends this holiday
season.”
[ XX]’ s services have thus far received a mixed re‐sponse
including much controversy such as the
recent cease and desist notice the company re‐ceived
from Facebook.
Friends can be purchased in packages starting at
1,000 from the [ XX] website at [ a URL that I’m not
about to repeat here].
Funny? No. Pathetic? Yes. You can certainly buy
companionship ( the legality of doing so varies
from place to place), but buying friends? By the
thousands?
If your motive is “ to look that much more im‐portant
in the world of social media,” that’s tawdry
and pathetic. If you have some idea that “ friends”
such as this will be anything other than annoyed,
that’s also pathetic. I do find it interesting that a
press release for a company mentions a cease &
desist order from Facebook. Let’s say I’m not plan‐ning
to respond…
Addendum: After writing this up, I followed
the email’s instructions for removing my name
from the PR list— as usual, an unsubscribe mes‐sage.
For every legitimate PR firm, that message
yields a link that then says I’m unsubscribed—
although sometimes it feels as though there are
thousands of such “ PR firms” at the same USMail
address. In this case, though, the email response
was immediately rejected— which is a really good
indication of the upstanding nature of Nightside
Media and its clients.
Disappearing Technologies
I’m never quite sure whether various “ top 10” or
“ trends” lists should go in TRENDS & QUICK TAKES,
here— or nowhere at all. But where Faux News is
concerned, inclusion in T& QT would imply taking
them more seriously than they deserve. The origi‐nal
piece is entitled “ Gadget Graveyard: 10 Tech‐nologies
About to Go Extinct” and appeared on
April 15, 2009, just two weeks later than it should
have. Maybe these three paragraphs tell you all you
need to know:
Each of those marvels [ typewriters, Walkmen,
long phone cords— long phone cords?] was a won‐der
of its time. Now each is obsolete, a once‐outstanding
advancement made laughable when
compared to the contact‐ lens camera or Japan's
soon‐ to‐ be feasible moon‐ walking robot.
We don't even realize something's obsolete until
we realize we haven't seen it in a while — a floppy
disk stashed in the back of a desk drawer, or an
unused videocassette propping up a table.
" These technologies are dying out because a more
flexible way of doing things now exists to replace
them," explains Mike Knuepfel, a recent Stanford
graduate with a degree in product design. " Bulky
CDs are replaced by MP3s and streaming files,
newspapers can be read online, you need to carry
film for cameras, and a house phone is another
thing to worry about. People want to be mobile
and flexible."
The killer sentence comes just before the list itself:
“ 10 technological dinosaurs that recently went
extinct, or will be before you know it.” ( Grammar?
Faux News is TV; what’s an extra “ be” among
friends?) So what do we have? Faux News’ items; a
little of the snark comes from Angel Rivera’s April
17, 2009 post about this list and is labeled as such.
Landline phones: Goners. After all, most
college kids in dorms won’t know how to re‐spond
if you “ ask to use a landline.” ( Heck, I
wouldn’t know how to respond to that…) Ri‐vera
offers a grumble about telemarketers
( unlike him, we find that Do Not Call works
pretty well) and keeping them bottled up
through caller ID. I would also note all the
bundles of DSL and landline and, for those
of us who ever have power failures that
could be widespread enough to affect cell
towers, the fact that landline phones don’t
need AC. The numbers and projections I’ve
seen say that about 12 million U. S. house‐holds
currently have cell‐ only service, a
number possibly projected to rise to 26 mil‐lion
by 2012. That still leaves 78% of all U. S.
households with landline service. ( Will lan‐dline
phones eventually disappear? Possibly,
but not “ before you know it” or in the next
few years.)
Floppy disks: I’ll give them this one— but
when you say old microdiskettes “ make
great coasters,” you’ve lost me. They’re terri‐ble
coasters, since they’re nonabsorbent. ( I
would note that, quite apart from underw‐helming
capacity, the death of diskettes was
Cites & Insights January 2010 27
aided considerably by several years of disk‐ette
drives so cheaply made that your
chances of reading a diskette written on
your own PC were not very high.)
Wristwatches: Since we all have cell phones
and iPods and they’re always on, you never
need one and “ virtually every appliance in
your home” ( the writer includes coffeemak‐ers,
refrigerators and DVD players) has a
clock. ( Really? Wow, are we Luddites: None
of these appliances in our house has a visible
clock, although the microwaves and electric
range do.) “ No one wears a wristwatch any‐more,
unless he or she grew up with one.”
For something that’s extinct, watches sure
do seem to be on sale in a lot of stores and
advertised frequently— possibly because the
concept that “ if you don’t use it as a teenag‐er,
it’s dead for everyone” hasn’t quite taken
over. ( Rivera uses a pocket watch. Me? A
Timex. You know, one of those expensive
bling devices you wear just to show how
wealthy you are.)
VHS tape and VCRs: They died in 2006;
you didn’t get the message? Well… yes,
they’re dead as playback mechanisms for
new movies, and it’s hard to imagine anyone
buying a new VCR as a primary device, but
there are quite a few combined DVD/ VCR
units being advertised, so someone sees a
market. We still use an S‐ VHS VCR ( as this
is written), because we haven’t gotten
around to digita
