Open Blogosphere

An interesting effect is being seen in the blogosphere. ROI is beginning to take its toll on the community of bloggers.

Recently I took some heat, very little heat, for uttering (twittering actually)

#Conversation is time expensive. Only those monetizing it can afford it.

Then Huge MacLeod of gapingvoid declared (twittered actually) ...

@armano The truth is, I'm too freaking busy to keep the Blogosphere happy, all the time, day in day out, for years on end. 11:54 AM April 03, 2008 from web in reply to Armano

Sorry, Gang, I just don't think I can do the "Blogosphere" thing any more. Gonna do something else. Already doing it, actually. 11:44 AM April 03, 2008 from web

... today I read Doc Searls, he says

... Blogging today ain’t what it was when Dave started it, and when I followed in his footsteps. The kind of writing we both try to do — what I once called “making and changing minds” (including our own) — is an ever more narrowing slice of the whole, even if the amount of it is still going up.

So I want something new. Something for which the making of money is at most a secondary or lower priority. Not sure what that should be, but I am sure, if it ever happens, it won’t be called blogging.

"...Making and changing minds..." is the very heart of conversation. Open and free sharing of view points and perspectives. Engaged, often heated exchanges of opinions laced with supporting facts and figures. Gentle consoling graced with empathetic affirmations. Fond remembrances. Touching eulogies. And too, just a bit, of breaking news.

The the teeter-totter turned - all marketing (monitizing) became conversation. The cart was now before the horse. Fortunes were made and lost at the turn of a ...blogged... phrase. Readers became our currency. Blogrolls displayed the stuffed heads of our trophy prey - the untold a-list secret: "You blogroll me and I will scratch you back."

"So now I want something new."

Doc, I don't know you to say "Hello" on the street should we pass but what "new something" do you, would you want? Ennumereate the 'New' somethings that have come and gone since you started blogging. Go have a look at YASNS.
This is an attempt to document just social networks. Note their prolific rise in the time frame you site. Further I would acknowledge in the same breath how quickly they have become passee, just how soon the rock came tumbling back down the hill.

[Side note: I find it interesting that there is no mention, as of this writing, on the YASNS site of The Well. Probably one of the original SNSs. Also there are no mentions of Internet Relay Chat, MMORPGS, or howard rheingold's Brainstorms (one of the original walled-gardens.)]

So here is the dilemna I face. I don't have the time to follow every twittered tweet. I cannot afford the inanities of who had what for breakfast or where so-n-so is staying today and whether the wireless access is any good. Call it 'sour grapes' but I cannot stand the thought of another shiny-sparkly-friendly-river-book that will fill up with the tired, the poor, yearning to be ... to belong to the next shiny-sparkly-fried...

I can afford and do relish the few minutes each day when I can sit with my RSS reader and drink in the fine steeped brew of the internet.

As to the conversation let me leave you with this thought. Do not respond to this post - do not leave me a comment. Instead, take the time to let your day dribble, trickle, flow, meander, gush, or even flood from you finger tips into your own weblog. Let me find you there.