Nobody Cares About Your Blog

Posted on August 8, 2008
Filed Under journalism, networked society |

A colleague from the digital media camp, Jim Breiner, tells me in an email that he cares about my blog.  Jim had just commented on a post.  Beyond how interesting he may find my notes on what I call digital stucco, Jim was making a reference–wink wink–to a phrase I’ve been using regularly in the past few years as a shorcut  to summarize my feelings about user generated content.

Now is a good time as any to expand on the idea right here. First, about the origins of the “nobody cares about your blog” phrase:  it comes from design-marketplace site cafepress.com and it was skillfully printed upon request on notebooks, T-shirts, even thongs.  I saved the thumbnail of the mouse pad, and I’m glad I did because the original design seems to have gone away even though there are still plenty of variations on the theme. 

If you were to place all the types of content available online in a continuum of relevance, blogs in general will fall towards the negative side of the axis.  Granted, there’s always Perez Hilton, but I mean in general.  That is to say that the allure of a never-ending supply of free user-generated content may make your business’ mouth watery, but watch out.  It will be hard to cluster large audiences around any particular area. And advertisers don’t want to sponsor the whole internet, not even your whole network.

So, to make the point I say ”nobody cares about your blog”–or mine for that matter, with a few dear exceptions like Jim and other loyal readers.  It is a fact of life in the new media age because we are now competing not for space or time, but attention for our very own digital stucco.

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