3 ways to improve: a personal perspective
• Increase the # of serious, analytical, investigative posts
• Legitimize blogging: from users with free time to users with smth to say
• Make the blogosphere more accessible/useful to journalists and other professionals
Observations?
• In 24 hours: from virtually nowhere to MSM • Increase visibility/popularity of one’s blog by
thousands of times• Establish connections to top blogs• Hard work pays off quickly; visibility cycle is
very short• Incentives to post go up tremendously, as
better posts lead to better visibility
But…
• You are still pretty much invisible to other bloggers
• There is no way for them to express whether they like or dislike your post
• They can’t easily share it with others• Very few of them use RSS, i.e. most of them
don’t actively search for info on selected topics, but rather read whatever is on minsk_by
Implications?
• Low incentives to post in general• Even lower incentives to write long, analytical posts• As a result, most bloggers write for the people in
their “friend list” on LiveJournal not even hoping to get global audience
• Many of them just write password-protect posts—which is almost unheard of in the West
Results?
Blogging culture that thrives on short and often very personal posts at the cost of longer and more controversial pieces offering social commentary
Busy people and professionals might be discouraged from blogging, since no matter how good their arguments are, they are given equal treatment by the rest of the LiveJournal mob
Hypothesis
As more content-meritocracy is introduced to the .by blogosphere, it will a) have better/deeper posts b) become more appealing to serious people
Other benefits
The more blogging and content-sharing tools are localized, the easier it will be for journalists, bloggers, and other professionals to take full advantage of the blogosphere!!!