RSSWho are you writing for?
Put together on August 1, 2007 5:52 pm by Thomas
1 Comment
A friend (and co-author of this blog) recently introduced me to Seth Godin’s blog. It is quite an interesting read but I wasn’t particularly intrigued until I run into this:
The mistake most blogs and books make: they are about the writer, not the reader.
My disagreement with this statement started building inside of me and since I wasn’t able to leave a comment, I’ll leave a trackback.
Let me first say that, as far as books are concerned, it might be true (as long as the book is not historical or a biography). Fiction books should indeed be about the reader, not the writer, although they naturally draw upon the writer’s experiences.
But blogs?
Blogs are, by definition, about the writer. If they weren’t, they would be called newspapers, magazines, or just “websitesâ€. In a blog the writer is talking about himself, and it only makes sense that much of it is not interesting to anyone else, except perhaps his friends and family.
Blogs are being used for a variety of purposes. Many of them are just normal websites masquerading as blogs, simply because the term “blog†carries more hype. Because of that, one day when we say blog we might be referring to something completely different than we do today (words evolve). But for the time being, blogs are about the writer, and being boring is not a mistake.
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One Response to “Who are you writing for?”
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Ι couldn’t agree more. On top of that, I have to say that during a short research of mine (when I was writing my master’s thesis in which I had to compare different ways of internet communication) I found out that communication researches have come up with something like this:
what is precious about blogs in communication terms is exactly the fact that people write about things that concern themselves. Due to this, they tend to use informal language, say things both good and bad about a subject/product/whatever. Their subjects, however personal they might be, always have “spine” that can be traced -more or less similar- in many people’s lives. This integrated with the everyday language of them and their personal way of seeing things, generate in the readers point of view, a “sympathetic ear”. People tend to exaggerate less in their criticism and embrace a more productive way of looking at a certain subject. They also see a “subject” through anotherone’s eyes which is always a bonus.