As part of his keynote speech during Shop.org, Barry Diller essentially gave blogging the thumbs down as both a phenomenon as well as a marketing channel. He jokingly pointed out that the bloggers are not people and that 99.999% of blogs are pretty much worthless. Essentially he argued that writing is hard and it takes special talent to create a “voice” and since most people do not have that talent, most blogs suck. Giving blogging its due, Barry went on to say that as a purveyor of facts to the masses in cases where time is extremely sensitive, blogs do have an important but small role in the landscape of publishing.

What Barry Diller said is hard to refute since I know I’ve never been a good writer and that my blog is and will never be massively consumed. However, I think Barry and the general public do not really know what blogging is. Most people seem to think the dominant form of blogging is similar to theonion.com, Gawker.com, BoingBoing, or even this particular blog, but they are wrong. I hate to beat this point to death, but as I wrote before, most form of blogging is not some guy massaging his own ego by espousing his random ideas in the hopes gaining some audience where there is none (read me ). Most bloggers do not need a “voice” (or good spelling or grammar for that matter) because they are not blogging for the masses. Instead they are writing for their circle of friends and family to keep them updated on their lives without having to spam everyone with an obviously impersonal email. Sometimes they are hoping to make some friends along the way that share their love of music or lifestyle. This is what blogging really is, not some glorified way to make a name for yourself but simple new way to communicate your thoughts and life happenings to a not too distant circle of friends.

I don’t blame Barry, he is mostly right after all. Most blogs are 99.999% useless to the general population. All the blogger cares about are the .0001% of people who are in his virtual or physical social circle that do think it’s useful.