Metablogging

I read two blogs today that posed questions about the act of blogging. In Little About Little, the blogger wonders about the etiquette of blogging:

Is there blogging etiquette?
And if there is, who made the rules? I just read my blog and found, much to my delight, comments on several of the entries. It was great. I want to say thank you, and I certainly now will comment more often because I know how it feels to be acknowledged on some level. But it would be interesting and fun to find or formulate an etiquette.

And in Decisions and Revisions, Sara asks about the future of blogging:

will videos replace much of the writing in blogs? Will the attitude be: If you can show it, why bother writing it out?

The first comment got me to thinking about some writing I've done for my job on emergence. At work I've focused on how the unrelated efforts of each individual in the workplace contribute to the success of all of us.

Is the same true in the blogosphere? Will the etiquette of blogging emerge simply as a result of all of us blogging, reading other blogs, and commenting on blogs? I think so. But I think it isn't the etiquette, but rather, the etiquettes. Plural. Blogs are so varied by topic and style. I love some. I'm bored with others. Some are political. Some are porn. Some are funny. And each genre seems to have its own etiquette emerging as a natural by-product of the blogs themselves. And I like that type of etiquette. It comes from the users rather than an authority. And in that way, it is the style that is most pleasing and beneficial to the users of those blogs. And that, in my thinking, will be the etiquette that serves the blogosphere best.

As someone who loves to read and write, Sara's question is more troubling to me. YouTube (GoogleTube?) and other video sites are surely popular and fun. Vlogs are visual and compelling at times. But will that mean the death of the written blog? I hope not! And I have faith that it won't happen. For a couple of reasons. First of all, television and movies and VCR's and DVD's offer high quality entertainment, but it didn't mean the end of the publishing industry. Borders and Barnes & Noble didn't chain their doors. People love a good read. Secondly, some of us love words and love to write. I took a long time for me to start blogging. But I know I would never start videotaping my entries. As the old saying goes, I have a face made for radio. But more importantly, it just doesn't appeal to me in the same way. I like the act of composing and linking and quoting and putting my ideas down on 'paper'. I don't have that same good feeling inside with video. So Sara, as long as there are good blogs out there like your blog, I think the readers and writers of the world will have plenty of good things to read.