the pod bay door

:: Mike sent an e-mail reminding me that Arianna Huffington‘s new blog debuted this week on the web. It gained notoriety weeks before it began, when it was announced that the blog, part of the new web site, The Huffington Post, and known simply as “The Blog“, would feature up to 300 “celebrity” bloggers, including the following who have already contributed brief entries: Larry David, Walter Cronkite, Tina Brown, Julia Louis-Dreyfus and Brad Hall, Mike Nichols, John Cusack, Ellen DeGeneres, David Mamet, Harry Shearer, Paul Krassner, and David Frum. The group (so far) leans heavily to the left, and features mostly members of the entertainment industry. I love John Cusack (I want to BE John Cusack!), but I’m not sure what qualifies him and the others from film, tv, and music, to be blog columnists. Then again, doesn’t that define blogs – anyone can write about anything at any time, without the worry of a deadline or an editor? In this instance, the posts are edited, according to Mike, but I can’t find anything on the site to confirm this.

One thing missing from the blog are comments – readers cannot respond to the posts. Another section of The Post, The News Wire, does allow comments. It’s unfortunate that comments are not allowed on the blog. Comments on blogs are what make them interactive and worth revisiting. Comments make a blog lively and challenging by allowing for discussion and discourse.

I was talking recently with colleagues who like myself, contribute library-related blogs to the field. There are many good blogs covering many different aspects of librarianship. That said, I wondered out loud if we are approaching the moment where library blogs experience some kind of dot-com bust, wherein we reach a critical mass, and the library blogosphere does a self-correction, and reduces in size. Might the same thing happen to other subject-related blog communities?

My Bloglines feeds currently number 143 – there is no way I can keep up with following most of them. Arianna Huffington has created a community blog, with up to 300 handpicked contributors, perhaps the highest profile blog of its type. Will it be possible to keep up with so many contributors, or will it be easier because all are contributing to the same site?

The politics notwithstanding, I’ll be interested to see how this new template of a blog is received, and how it will develop. If only she would add comments to the mix.

Also published on Blogcritics.com.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 11th, 2005 at 18:34 and is filed under Blogging. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.