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Weblog Snob

by Sean Hackbarth

Call me a weblog snob. When someone like J.B. Van Hollen is running for statewide office and their weblog is on BlogSpot I think a few things: 1) they haven’t thought much about weblogs and wanted to get something up to make it appear they “get it;” 2) they’re too cheap to integrate the weblog with the rest of their website which means they either have money problems or care more about tv and radio ads than an online strategy.

There are a few big-time webloggers who have used BlogSpot for a long time. With my experience using it as a member of the Badger Blog Alliance I have to think Google has set it up so they don’t have the same problems as ordinary, peon webloggers. Free places like BlogSpot are good ways to get your feet wet in the wild world of weblogging but serious people should move far away from it as fast as possible.

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This entry was posted on Saturday, February 25th, 2006 at 10:03 pm and is filed under Weblogging. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

12 Responses to “Weblog Snob”

1

You’re such a snob :-)

2

I wonder if Althouse has an opinion on this . . .

3

I wonder if Althouse has an opinion on this . . .

4

I wonder if I’ll ever learn to trust that first instance of hitting “post.”

5

OTOH, maybe JB’s just being prudent. The campaign’s only going to last so long…why tie up $$ in IT resources when the best known formula for getting votes is meet/greet?

6

Isn’t Bucher using Blogspot as well?

7

Actually, they moved it in to their own site:
http://www.bucherforag.org/Home.aspx where they aren’t compelled to update it as often.

I think that was smart because, seriously, how often do you want a politician writing a blog while they’re running for office?

As for blogspot, I like blogger - except when it goes down. I think a poltical campaign has to take into account the occasional blogger outages. It’s one thing if it happens to scribblers like us. But Van Hollen or anyone else would certainly want to avoid what happened to that Brookfield alderman whose site went down the day before and the day of the election.

If I were running a political campaign, I think I would go with the free Wordpress site instead, or even go the premium route. Who cares if you can’t tinker with the template? Get it up quick and dirty and let it run.

Oh, yes, you’re a snob.

8

Van Hollen has the site, all they need to do is drop Word Press, P-Machine or one of the many other blogging software packages in, set up the database and let it run.

Off topic, but I still don’t understand why Mark Belling doesn’t do the same thing…

9

I know I’m a snob. Which is bad since I’ve never gotten around to fixing that double comment problem.

10

I asked Belling once why he doesn’t blog. He said that bloggers are people who can’t get paid to get their stuff published. I like Belling, but that’s what he said! Then, I noticed he seemed to get it more and he’s pushed blogs on the air a couple of times and in his Freeman column. I hope he blogs.

11

I’ve been asked why on earth I blog. After all, people reason, if you want to get paid for writing, why on earth would you give it away?

The principle, of course, is supposedly the same one that leads pushers to give “free samples” away in order to get people hooked.

Unfortunately, people like to do drugs, as a rule, more than they like to read.

12

Part of the reason webloggers don’t get paid is because they don’t know how or don’t want to deal with editors and other gatekeepers who will take their writing with strings attached.

I’d love someone to pay me to write, but getting someone to cough up the dough is easier said than done. I’d rather write than engage in (possibly fruitless) self-marketing.