Fear and loathing on the road to DLA heaven...
I regularly enjoy several xLogs (webLogs, audioBlogs, vlogs, clogs, plogs and more). However, certain aggregators tend to push us into using only one form of interaction unless we make a real effort to engage with xLog content and creators.
If we are not careful, these aggregators could end up turning into little more than information TV's, keep people on the couch. On the other hand, aggregators also have the potential to become to link us into quality conversations.
Marc Canter has spoken wide and far about the wonders of digital lifestyle aggregation, but we rarely talk about the challenges associated with it. We need to address these issues in more detail. Nothing comes free; everything has ramifications. People need to discuss both the benefits and the costs associated with the adoption of new technologies.
On the benefits side for aggregation, many folks remember the "old days" when we were bookmarking and trying to remember to visit each blog on a regular basis, depending on the output of the author. I tried to maintain daily, weekly and monthly bookmark folders and del.icio.us tag categories full of blog bookmarks. What a chore! And what a horrible (and sometimes delightful) feeling of realizing I had fallen behind on some blog that I had forgotten about or that had slipped through the cracks.
But not no mo! Now I've got RSS feeds coming outta my ears. I love it. Now I am automatically kept up to date on all my favorite blogs. I use Thunderbird and ANT mainly. RSS Digest and Feedburner are also important tools.
Then came the big wave. A flood of information began flowing through me, I felt like something out of a sci-fi book. Terminal Man. I loved it, but also could see that there was impending overload as my feeds grew into the hundreds.
Note: People who complain about too much email should not even consider newsfeed aggregators. It will only make your life worse.
Out of necessity, I adopted the newsreader's code of ruthlessly weeding out content that was not highly relevant to me. Many of the feeds had an occasional good post, but for the most past, many were just full of noise. I wanted something more after the initial "rush" of reading so many new blogs. I was not really looking for "news", especially so much news about other blogs.
Then the "zzzzzzz-list" was born.
Many of the so-called A-listers have become just mildly interesting news regenerators and commentators. Busy to become the "new" journalist, many have also become less and less personal, except for their opinions, of course. Most seem to love writing about the long-tail, but are they really trying to address any element of it? It does not seem so.
If you really want fresh and hot news, then join a mailing list. It'll blow your mind. I recently joined the videobloggers mailing list. Wow! Talk about a conversation. That deserves a separate post.
Next came ANT and I caught the videoblogging bug. Both sides. Watching and creating. More importantly: watching, reacting, communicating and creating. Even collaborating.
I love ANTs Not TV. In fact, I have almost completely stopped watching broadcast television. Ok, so I still like to watch one or two old time shows on cable, but I almost always miss them because I'm doing something else. Did someone say "get a Tivo"? That won't help me unless it comes with the extra daily viewing time necessary to watch more than I already am. In a way, Tivo achieves this remarkable feat by allowing people to skip unwanted segments. This is not the issue, however. TV is not an xLog.
The issue is that I tend to NOT "read" the vlogs that I "watch". This is generally ok for Rocketboom or Ryanne's, but Raymond deserves a good watch AND a good read as well. And if you're not careful, you'll miss one of his interesting snapshots.
Similarly for renegade, backinblakk and many others.
This is not a slight on ANT. ANT is a truly wonderful application and it provides a handy button to visit a video's associated blog and make a comment. But that's not the same as experiencing all that the creator's have to offer.
I have the same problem with new Internet Archive postings. OurMedia helps to some degree by bringing together the works posted to archive.org under the umbrella of a blog and forum based community.
So I have to make sure that people like this are in all of my aggregators.
As a result, I am now going back and reviewing many of the old vids and podcasts and finding their xLogs to see what other wonderful things they are saying or doing and, most importantly, to interact with other xBloggers.
And me, I am an xBlogger too. "x" in the sense of what xBase was to dBase. "x" as in Malcolm X, "an unknown quantity, variable". Today it is a text post, tomorrow a video and something else the next day (perhaps a greenthing).
What element of the long tail am I addressing? Above all, I am an artist and so that means to me that I must define my own nitch. Do I want others to find it interesting? Of course. Do I want to make money from it? Not necessarily. Do I want money? I want the freedoms that I think it can help me obtain. Is this xBlog a vehicle for that? It might be, but it's not what drives me. Making art from applications is what drives me at this moment. RSS, blogs and video are all just paints on the palette.
Recently, I 've been experimenting with a new kind of blog. Instead of a blog written for either a large or a small audience, these are written for the smallest audience possible (other than just yourself - a diary). I have started to create blogs for just one person.
I'm sure many others have done this. This is even a bit of a return to an old medium for me. Many years ago, I created ad-hoc web pages expressing my feelings when courting my wife.
Now I have a blog for my wife. Not about her. For her. It's not secure or protected, but it is not publicized either. From time to time I write short thoughts and post them for her to read. In this case others can read it, but they are anonymous to us.
I also write private blogs for some CEO's. In one case, I coordinate a blog that is written by several people for one person. We post items to it and produce a "personal" on-going report where the CEO can communicate and interact with the group. In this case, the CEO is not an author. They make comments.
Talk about long tail. You're own personal zine. Not just filtered and aggregated for you, but actually written with you in mind. Now that's personal service.
The point is, we are constantly experimenting with new ways to communicate and express ourselves, especially through xLogs. Aggregators, while good at blending, often remove the individual flavors of the contributors. We need to work on maintaining our interaction with content creators and not just becoming voyeurs (at least not all the time).
Shot a video. Write a poem. Paint something. Make music. Tell a story.
And then please go over and check out someone else's xLog and interact.
Addendum: Raymond is thinking about similar things.
Woops! Just got a Technorati post that renegade has also written on this topic. She shares many of the thoughts that go thoughts that go through our minds when creating content. She also shares some of the changes that have occured in her linking behavior that I have notice too (see post on just google it for a related thought).
I got this postcard at an "antiques" store in Ventura on Saturday. I definitely feel this way. 
Interesting questions about the copyrights on these things. Some of the publishers are still around and some aren't. Then, of course, there is copyright laws. I brushed up on what Wikipedia had to offer and that alone is enough to make any creative person cringe. Especially in the US. I'll never think the same of Sonny Bono again.
It's official: I just posted 
My good friend and schoolmate 
I posted a few new items on 
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