Curious Christian

Reflections on culture, nature, and spirituality from a Christian perspective

What are blogs still good for?

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Matt Stone

2011-07-14

What are blogs still good for? It’s a question I ask myself as the web evolves. Navneet Alang suggests that, while Facebook has taken over comment sharing and Twitter has overtaken link listing, blogs are still perfectly suited for specialist communities and longer thought-provoking writing. It’s about quality not quantity. Mark Schaefer points out that about 70 percent of all tweets link back to a blog so “content publishing through blogs is important”.

I think blogging is all about knowing your niche. As this blog has evolved I find it’s become more and more focussed on what it means to follow Jesus in a multireligious, multicultural and multimedia world. Whereas in the past I’d share all sorts of Christian news and amusing anecdotes, these days I’m far more ruthless about sticking to these niche topics. How is media evolving? How is culture evolving? How, especially, is religion evolving? Where is God in all this? How do I respond in a Christ like way? I share less links, less trivia, I focus more on original content, hopefully better quality content.

I wonder where this is all going. TV didn’t kill cinema, it forced cinemas to focus on their strengths: spectacle. The strength of blogs, for me, is that they provide an easily accessible outlet for exploring narrower interests in more depth. So I don’t try to engage everyone, I focus on the thinkers, the artists, the explorers, the innovators.

Tags Blogging

6 responses to “What are blogs still good for?”

Andrew Park

2011-07-14

Precisely. What you’ve said above is exactly what I seek in a blog site. It really illustrates why this website is such a good one.
TOA (from Tall Oversized Aussie)to distinguish from TSK Andrew. Good to see TSK post on the previous blog.
The focus on thinkers, artists, explorers and innovators will generate good substance as well as creativity from “beyond the box”, alterity, othersidedness as well as intelligent critiue and diversity.

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Steve Hayes

2011-07-19

A nice thought to mark the centenary of the birth of Marshall McLuhan.

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David Edmisten

2011-07-20

Interesting perspective. I’ve always hoped to appeal to a broad audience that wants more out of the Bible, but you have me thinking…

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Matt Stone

2011-07-20

Steve, you make me sound more thoughtful than I actually was. That was completely unintentional with Marshall McLuhan, honestly! I’ve been channelling him the last month for personal reasons alone. Call it synchronicity.

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Matt Stone

2011-07-20

David, I’d recommend taking a gander at this map and observing Blogspot and WordPress in comparison to Facebook:
http://www.gearfuse.com/the-2010-social-networking-world-map/ It suggests the online action is not with reflective, in depth conversation period. I suspect this is true even within Christian circles, so even “wanting more out of the Bible” may be a narrower topic than it appears at first glance.
But more, even within blogging circles I see the blogs that tend to do best tend to be “narrowcasting” in some way shape or form. To be heard you must differentiate yourself from the crowd, develop a distinctive voice. Are you saying something that cannot be found on a hundred … or hundred thousand … other websites? So when it comes to Bible blogging I would ask, what do you see as your strengths, as your most distinctive contribution to bible-centred conversation?

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Lucy J

2011-07-25

Speaking of McLuhan, here’s an interesting link which discusses technological vision/visionaries, comparing the imagined uses with the actual uses etc.
http://www.abc.net.au/rn/futuretense/stories/2011/3267627.htm
I am seriously thinking about boycotting Facebook! What is this new “Facebook email” crap? I thought invisible ubiquity was God’s domain…

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