[thelist] What's with this blog thing, anyway?

Ray Hill lists at prydain.com
Thu Mar 28 21:38:01 CST 2002


> I'd bet it will last. I started hosting a help board or
> beginners personal homepages a few months after I did my
> first one. That was when the community's homepages started,
> they ended up with over 100K of them. People have always
> loved them, it's a way of expressing yourself, whatever
> the purpose.

I would agree with this whole heartedly.  I used to do tech support at
WebTV, who intentionally catered their service to the non-tech-savvy.
It was incredible how often I would talk to eighty year old ladies who
had never even typed before they got their WebTV who, just a few
months later, were asking where they could get more images for their
new home page or asking complicated HTML questions.

I think that most tech-savvy internet users VERY MUCH underestimate
the learning capacity of new non-tech-savvy users.  They're not
stupid, they're just ignorant.  Make the first few steps easy for
them, and they'll be begging for more complex answers before you know
it.

Which is why a lot of the services out there that are catered towards
new users bug the crap out of my (like most of the WYSIWYG tools, and
the GeoCities version in particular).  Instead of giving the users the
ability to switch between beginner, intermediate and advanced levels
in the same tool and providing the learning tools to help them make
the transition, they simply provide dumbed-down tools that are easy to
learn but provide no way to use their experience towards learning new
skills.  When a user goes form a simple HTML tool to a more complex
HTML tool, they're just expanding the knowledge they've already been
gaining.  But when they go from a WYSIWYG tool to an HTML tool,
they're pretty much starting from scratch.  But that's a whole
different rant for another time...



> The question is whether to set up a blog or do a regular
> site with essays, random writings, poetry and memoirs -
> just creative stuff whether anyone ever sees it or not.
> It's like journaling, in my mind. The technology and format
> is a little different, but it's still a means of creative
> outlet. Like drawing or painting or writing as a hobby.

Right now it's a choice between the two.  But my sincere hope is that
future publishing tools will take advantage of what we've learned with
bloggers to make other forms of content publishing just as easy and
intuitive, so that when people get bored with just their same old
blog, they can easily begin expanding their sites to include longer
writings, photo albums, message boards for their visitors, party
invites and whatever other forms of content are in demand by then.

That's why I'm working on building such a tool as we speak.  It'll
probably be a few more months before it's ready for prime time, but
with any luck you'll all get to see it (and give it the torn-to-shreds
review it'll be needing) by the end of the summer.


Now back to coding the bloody thing...  :)

--ray





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