The Essence of Blogging

I had an interesting conversation with Aron the other day regarding the direction in which he wanted to take his blog. He worried that most of his best material would come about as a result of negative experiences and so he’s consciously avoiding turning his site into a complaints blog. I imagine that, as he writes more, he’ll get his literary feet under himself and discover vast and sundry things to pontificate upon, some of which is certain to be complaints-oriented. *grin*
However, that conversation sparked something in my mind and I began to really and truly ponder the question that haunts most beginning bloggers: What kind of content, exactly, do I want to fill my blog with? Sometimes it helps to take a look at your surroundings and get a feel for what you’re getting yourself into.
There has been a good deal of discussion around the blogosphere regarding just how to categorize various bloggers. If we’re working on the binary black/white, GOP/Dem, chocolate/peanut butter model, then many would describe two primary kinds of bloggers: linkers and thinkers. Linkers tend to post links to other blog posts or news items that have caught their eye, usually with a minimum of commentary. You could place Glenn Reynolds, Dave Barry’s blog, and LGF into this category. Thinkers tend to use news stories and other people’s posts as jumping-off points for “essays” of varying length and intellectual depth. Bill Whittle, Steven DenBeste and Porphyrogenitus are probably the most oft-cited in this category, although now that Victor Davis Hanson has an official blog and is no longer confined to writing columns on NRO, I think it’s safe to include him as well.
It’s also vital to point out that each of these vast, sweeping categories is fairly dependant upon the other for its continued existence. Linkers are dependent upon network effects in order to serve their purpose; that is to say, linkers primary value comes from their ability to direct large amounts of traffic to the comments of thinkers. Glenn Reynolds is the virtual kingmaker of the righty blogging scene. If your blog shows up on Instapundit, you know you’re in for some hits. However, if the DenBeste’s of the world weren’t busy churning out bytes of commentary, GR would be left linking to Yahoo! news feeds and his collection of Tennessee pictures. It’s a highly symbiotic relationship and one that is critical to understand, at least if you’re concerned with blogging as more than a part-time hobby.
Onwards and upwards, though. What of those that fall outside those narrow bounds, you might readily ask. While the concept of placing all blogs within the categories mentioned above does have a rhyming merit to it, it doesn’t really give the whole story. What about humor bloggers? The indispensible Frank J. and Scrappleface would probably laugh at being called “thinkers”, but under our narrow definitions, that’s what they are. Could you rationally place many people’s blogs about their cats into one of the two categories?
Perhaps a better set of terms would be content producers and content aggregators. However, these terms also fail to capture the true root of the issue just as much as L&T. Slashdot, Fark and Kuro5hin all serve as content aggregators and have a measure of user interaction and blog look-alike features (though at least /. and K5 both are far older than the term “blog” itself and so could be regarded as proto-blogs, of a sort), but I doubt you could find many willing to refer to them as “blogs”.
I rather like the Blog Yellow Pages that the Commissar threw together. It takes some steps towards associating variouis warbloggers with further, far more descriptive categories.
I think that, in the end, I’ve been guilty of a bit too much linking and not enough thinking when it comes to my blog (I’m also guilty of not regularly updaing the site with new content *grin*) and so, with that in mind, I do believe I shall endeavor to be far more Thinker, far less Linker, with perhaps some random childhood stories or Presbyterian jokes thrown in for good measure.