As of end 2007, the blogosphere featured over 72 million bloggers; as reported by Technorati. That was more than double the almost 35 million bloggers in 2006, and nine times the 8 million tracked in 2005. Technorati reported that as of 2007 120,000 new blogs are being created every day, worldwide. Those are significant numbers. Even though recent trends point to slow or no growth in blogging, it’s reasonable to consider that there’s a great deal of content out there. Ten years in, much of this content is the product or derivative of other content. If you’re reading a lot of blogs these days, you may have to ask yourself, haven’t I heard about this before?

Perhaps the most important question is, how many times have I heard this before? It’s at that instant when one seriously considers closing their browser, or turning to another antiquated medium altogether. Perhaps those magazines they used to print back in the 80’s?

It’s a serious question noodled by serious writers, contemplated very seriously. It’s no secret that the light speed access to websites has geometrically increased reader’s choice. But it’s also no secret that the absence of an internet gatekeeper has led to some qualitative shifts in content that may not be for the better. In this bloggers opinion, quantitative trends equal a tremendous, practically inverse qualitative decline.

I’m not going “Buzz Bissinger” on the masses, though. My focus is on the seemingly repetitive and stagnant nature of subject matter expertise and currents events missives. After all, there’s only so much to sourcin’, right? They sell, we buy. In the end, that’s the headline and the rest is just stuffin’ and gravy.

So where’s the value in “value” anyway? Who cares if you’re upstream or downstream? Supply chain needs smoothing out; so what? Have we gotten so bored with our work that we have to invent new jargon just to say “buyin’ stuff right”? Are we so short of things to say that we just recycle each other’s ideas, and reshape and reform each others’ paragraphs?

It’s both a question and a challenge; the answers to which might change our approach to content, and evoke a qualitative shift all its own. Think about it. Will your next contribution to the blogosphere merely be commodity? Or are you putting something “out there” out there?
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  1. It’s no secret that the light speed access to websites has geometrically increased reader’s choice. But it’s also no secret that the absence of an internet gatekeeper has led to some qualitative shifts in content that may not be for the better.

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