Blogging and the Lack of Focus

I think it’s a good time to be a blogger. Exciting things are happening in terms of the world and how they view blogs, and more and more people are not only creating blogs, but they’re reading more of them and more about them.

This produces, at best, a strange conundrum. Must a blog be a one-way street? To put it in simpler terms: Must a blog focus on one thing? How specialized must you be?

You’ll probably notice that over the past week or two, and really in terms of themes over the past few months, I’ve tried to focus this blog mainly on gaming, my stories and thoughts of game development, with a little family and technology thrown in.

It seems to me that at some point, most blogs stop becoming “personal web logs” and instead become small journalism outlets. Now there’s nothing wrong with this, but I also think that once you rise to the status of Dave Winer, the father of blogdom, I think you really need to reevaluate what your role is.

Scoble is a Microsoft Evangelist, which could be the most oxymoronical term I’ve ever heard. Religion and the Great Big Company. Just strange in terms of title, yet his blog is merely a conversation booster and an inside look at the company (at least in small doses). He regularly participates in Channel 9, which is the official Microsoft Dev Blog. But each dev has his or her blog provided by MS anyway, and with almost unwavering accuracy a lot of those same devs will write 2–3 blog posts and never be heard from again. The thrill is gone, no?

But then we have more situational blogs that make for good reading, such as marketing endeavors. What’s Your Brand Mantra is brilliant reading and lots of fun. It is the gold standard by which marketing blogs are judged.

On that same note, Jonathan Schwartz’s weblog is the gold standard by which corporate blogging in any shape or form is judged. Particularly with a voice inside the company. Jonathan makes great, insightful posts on how he sees his business and the candor provided is just awesome. A must read.

I hesitate to call Boing Boing a blog (note that the site refers to itself as a Directory). A blog can be many things, but Boing Boing seems to be a chatty Metafilter. They’re both in the link-a-lot business, and I assume with that many editors they’re bringing in plenty of cash based on readership and ad placement. At least, I hope they are. They’re great sites. But blogs? I don’t know if I would call either of them blogs.

Lastly we have the strictly personal blogs. These have their merits, particularly if the blogger can find interesting insights on his or her life and apply them to a blogging format. Brian Bailey has, I believe, shifted his focus on being more Social/Blogger Commentary than strictly family/church issues (as he had blogged about quite a bit in the past). Not that there’s anything wrong with that (apologies to Seinfeld), but a good example of “pure” blogging (god save the Livejournalers) is Sparkwood & 21, a great blog about a waitress in Nashville. Funny and Interesting, I really enjoy reading it. There are many others (MANY, my Onfolio eats my memory alive when it updates the list), but these examples are enough to prove a point.

So what is my conclusion? Well, one that I wish I had categories. While I think categories are inherently limiting (hence the name category), but they’re also a way to easily discern to the reader what you’re going to speak about during that post. However, as I recall RSS doesn’t pick up on categories, so it doesn’t really make a difference to Onfolio or Bloglines whether or not you’ve categorized your entries—they’re all a part of the same feed. While you may be able to subscribe to certain categories on certain websites (I noticed Engadget pimping this the other day), do you really want to do that? I mean, if you enjoy someone’s writing enough, do you want to miss what they have to say on different subjects?

I guess it gets subjective and comes down to taste. Me? I like blogs as journalism mediums, but also with the ability to shed light on things that haven’t been seen before. I see mine as not only a journal but a sharing medium, a way to express feelings and thoughts while at the same time document and provide information on the subjects I find important. Is it too heady for me to believe that I can give honest-to-goodness good ideas in terms of game development, specifically in the CCG department? Does it take getting paid for it? Does it take a released game to create an authority? I’m not saying I’m an authority (hell, I don’t even like authority), but for argument’s sake I’ll throw it out there.

Until then, I’ll read my Ensight, my loonyblog, my Sand in the Gears, my Moxie Blog. And I like my blogs any way I can get them.

But at the end of the day, I think as blogs develop further, they’ll have to come up with a better way of describing themselves, and in turn a better way of identifying what it is they wish to accomplish.