Usedcarsalesman.com is getting in to its third calendar year of existence and
Usedcarsalesman has a few things he wants you to “buy” (
ha ha) about the “State of Blogging” in general (Since he has more than a couple of issues to discuss related to Blogging,
Usedcarsalesman is going to cover these in two separate posts - this week is “Part I,” next week is “Part II”).
To start things off,
Usedcarsalesman notes a recent comment from the consultants and analysts at
The Gartner Group: “… Blogging (content) contributions will peak in the first half of 2007.” What does
Usedcarsalesman think about this supposed "peak" in content contribution to blogs in 2007?
Well, Usedcarsalesman was, at first, somewhat indifferent to the aforementioned Gartner "insight;" but, minutes later, and after considering whether this report really meant anything to him,
Usedcarsalesman still found himself fervently bullish on his own continued endearment to blogging!
Whether there are only a few B
loggers or a hundred million,
Usedcarsalesman will still dig blogging or “on-line, periodic self-publishing” or whatever you want to call it. Although only beginning to blog in the latter half of 2004,
Usedcarsalesman had technically been writing in a format similar to his
Usedcarsalesman.com Blog for seven years prior to 2004, dating back to the beginning of 1996. However, his pre-blog opinions were confined to notes in hand-written journals (“notes” which might actually be fun to scan or transcribe and post as kind of a ’96-04 blog build-up ). But, in 2004
Usedcarsalesman agreed that the new electronic blogging world was right for him, that blogging was a better way to write in a journal - you could work on it at any time, from any computer terminal connected to the I
nternet, people all over could read and comment, etc. And, it provided a nice
pre-fab, web-page format - no pesky web developers to pay, not so much HTML to slog through yourself -perfect for people who had something they wanted to consistently communicate with the world, but didn't want to sit through an
e-commerce sales pitch or some no-sense-of-history, '90s-era, Investment Banker-born, .com hype to do so. This made web publishing a little more amenable to a wine and cheese, liberally-educated, Mensa-geek like
Usedcarsalesman, who chose to skip junior-high BASIC programming classes in favor of being outdoors.
Obviously, in doing
Usedcarsalesman.com,
Usedcarsalesman has never exhibited the behaviors of other “amped-up” B
loggers who have keyed something personal or otherwise in to their blogs every 15 minutes to keep readers constantly delivering “hits.” At best, 'Used' has written in this blog once a week for a few hours - sometimes posts came every two weeks or even once a month or not for several months. And,
Usedcarsalesman never could figure out how other B
loggers kept posting "crap" 4 times an hour and managed to somehow convince themselves they didn't have their nose in front of a computer or a
PDA all day. Doing that would burn out “Used,” too. So,
Usedcarsalesman followed and continues to follow a basic, boring editorial format. But, hey, it’s the kind of format that might allow
Usedcarsalesman to stick around after the more prolific, 4x per hour B
loggers have been sucked away in a supposed tidal-
withdrawal of B
loggers from Blogging in 2007.
Blogging has been and still is a good thing for
Usedcarsalesman. It has allowed him to dabble in editorializing without actually being a professional editor. Does this mean
Usedcarsalesman has, when Blogging, somehow found himself transplanted to the society Karl Marx mentioned some 160+ years ago in
The German Ideology (1845):"In Communist society, where nobody has one exclusive sphere of activity but each can become accomplished in any branch he wishes, society regulates the general production and thus makes it possible for me to do one thing today and another tomorrow, to hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticize after dinner, just as I have a mind, without ever becoming hunter, fisherman, herdsman or critic.?"Not exactly. The problem is that when you do something enough (like I said, we are getting in to three calendar years for
Usedcarsalesman.com) you ultimately develop a mind to self-devote exclusively to this “sphere of activity” (and a second field, too, in
Usedcarsalesman’s case). And, now that the “peak" is maybe here, perhaps the world's most serious, grizzled B
loggers will group together, gain support and devote themselves to Blogging as a legitimate, money-making, capitalist field of endeavor. And, perhaps professional reporters and editors (non-B
loggers who work for traditional print media outlets that also publish on-line) will depart from work at these traditional news outlets in favor of Blogging - the potential financial advantages of this departure,
Usedcarsalesman will discuss in the "State of Blogging, 2007 (Part II)," next week.