Blogosphere Transience

Just a talk about blogs. It's pretty long though - if you're just into it for the business aspect, you can skip the next 3 or so paragraphs.

So, I can't sleep again... and I decided I'd go through my bookmarks and catch up on some anime blogs (there's more than you'd think, but I only follow a few, mainly due to how often they update and by how much I respect their writing ability). Anyways, the mark of a good anime blogger tends to be how often they update - the good ones update it daily, so you're checking back often.

Over my years of fandom, I've picked up a few blogs that I particularly enjoy, (note, I'm not sure how NSFW that last one is on any given day, so you've been warned. It's never too explicit, but the content depends on which staff member is writing on a given day). Of note, 2 of them are actually "Team" blogs, picking up new members to stay fresh / update so often, though the main writers have been around as long as I can remember.

Unfortunately, that also means there are some harsh goodbyes sometimes. Blogs that I used to follow often suddenly stop updating, and posts just dry up to once every few months (if at all). In this genre of blogs, it's understandable - they always have the same reason for doing it, too. Real life gets in the way, they grow up, and they just don't have time anymore to watch anime.

It's a bit harsh to be losing your childhood like that, though - I guess for most people where I live, it's like suddenly being too old to watch Saturday morning cartoons and Disney Movies; we all hit that point, but it doesn't mean it's not depressing. And considering how big a fan I am of some of these blogs, it feels like I'm losing touch with somebody I was close friends with - maybe closer friends with than many "friends" I know in real life.

I guess this is a business blog, and not a place to get depressed over the ephemeral, so let's find some applicability, shall we? Out of this, I'd like to think that there are 2 things that stand out, for a business sense: One, closing down a blog can be an emotional thing - same goes for a website, webcomic, forum, etc... so if you build something and it gains some popularity, be careful about shutting it down, as it may hurt your brand equity in ways you can't quite measure. Second, and more important from a business sense, is that, despite all the blogs I read, these stood out, and I kept checking them even months after they stop actively updating. And I'm not the only one: If you check out the new posts on Derailed by Darry, they have hundreds of comments, despite only being updated once in like 2 months. That's loyalty - so how was it achieved? Constant updates, uniqueness that nobody else offered (his subject matter is weird, even among the weirdness that is in all anime blogs), and a talent for writing (people would read even through remarkably long posts that don't really cover anything).

He's stated in the past that his style feels like Bill Simmons, (which somebody pointed out to him - he had no idea who that was originally but concedes the styles are somewhat similar). But Bill Simmons gets paid by ESPN to do this; probably because Bill Simmons was on the forefront of the internet. He's stated that he "Bet on the internet" early, when it was just starting, and because of that, he managed to land his dream job. Jason (the writer on Derailed by Darry) started after that, and it kind of depresses me that, after 7 years of doing his blog, he's ending it without getting some sort of job offer from ADV or something. He's had a few companies approach him to promote a DVD for them or something, but was never hired like Bill Simmons was for ESPN.

It's got me thinking (and here we go on a tangent that is close but not exactly about the same thing I was just talking about) - with the flood of blogs out there now, even if he got famous in his own field, there's simply not a lot of places where independent blogging gets noticed. That also leads me to a conclusion - that corporate blogs don't work if the company is small - it doesn't particularly get any attention. Corporate blogs don't work if the company is too big, either - they're just blags as far as people are concerned, and nobody takes them seriously. So, what it comes down to is... blogs don't particularly "help" businesses anymore. Not like they used to. Before, when the internet was new and fresh, maybe, but now, the shields are up - people are more cynical than ever, and unless your blog hits the sweet spot in regards to content, company size and background, and update frequency, it's really just more trouble than it's worth to build any sort of following (in a business sense, anyways). It seems like, while first movers may screw up doing things online, at the same time, they're the ones that build a following if it goes right - people late to the party are simply shut out.

So companies can't just be hopping onto bandwagons, setting up Facebook and Twitter accounts in the hopes that people still care - they need to do something new, and something fresh. This poses an interesting problem for marketers; normal advertising won't work, and anything "new" you come with has ONE chance, before the shine wears off and it's back to the drawing board. While this means that there's likely a lot of burnout happening, I'd like to think that means there's always room for a fresh influx of people, and for people who have constant creativity - I don't know if companies have figured this out yet, though. If they have, they're going to need to explain the crummy Facebook advertising to me. Srsly.