What is your first step if you were to research on hotels? Weblogs.
Where will you surf if you're trying to get yourself a nice and comfy place to have a nice dinner/lunch? Weblogs.
In fact, actually you can find weblog covering a huge range of things now. From travel, food review, movie review, song review to even the little things they bought. So, why are they so passionate in sharing the reviews/thoughts out? One of the reasons is to get more visitors to their blog and earn money through that. You see, there are plenty of advertising community sites now to be put up on the blog. For example, Nuffnang, Adverlets, Google ads etc.
But do you think that it eventually made the writing field/book publishing harder to get more business? Like what it's mentioned in this article,
This assumption has it backwards, because mass professionalization is an oxymoron; a professional class implies a minority of members. The principal effect of weblogs is instead mass amateurization.No matter how weblog is so common in this world right now, they are still nothing compare to the books that are published. In fact, there is a clear line of difference between these two parties. Books, obviously it is more details, professional and filtered which is and is not suitable to be published. Example, a travel guidebook. When a travel guidebook is published, the content in the book are all been filtered. They know what they should and what they should not include in the content. Besides, it'll also explain in a more formal way. As for weblog, instead of going like
"The Great Wall of China has a total length of 6,259.6 km"
it'll turned out like
"Gosh, the Great Wall of China is soooo long!"
It's more informal and things being discussed in it is normally briefer compare to the book. This is because the bloggers are just typing out whatever they thought of. They don't have a specific audience. Unlike the books, they know that when a person ever buys that book, there is a high chance that he/she needs it as a reference to go to a certain place. The author have the responsibility to give whatever information to the reader about the place so as to make the reader to have a clear mind on the certain location.
This is also why books are mostly more formal compare to weblog. Not many people can stand writings in books like "wow, this is really nice so you really have to taste this! It's so awesome!"
From the example given, it is obvious enough to show that this is why the mass amatuerization is getting so common. Like it's stated in the article itself,
As long as ink on paper enjoys advantages over the screen, and as long as the economics make it possible to get readers to pay, the webloggers will be a de facto farm team for the publishers of books and magazines.
No matter how it be, weblog is just a diffusion of cocktail party. It's serve more like a place to sharing thoughts among the circle of friends than a medium to pass to the public. Besides, with the information given/provided in the weblog itself is not enough for the readers to understand a matter. It's unfiltered.
However, in my opinion, even though it is just a mass-amateurization, they are still a lot welcomed by the readers. Why? Just like what the previous paragraph stated, it is unfiltered! Everyone just post whatever thoughts they thought of on the weblog and that's all. Regardless it is good or bad, if that's what they think, without any hesitation, they'll blog it out. And that is how the public get to know the truth. For example, again, travel. When a person wants to book a place as accommodation, instead of browsing through the websites of the hotel/books, they'll go for weblogs. Why? This is because they did not censor anything.
They use only the normal camera to shoot the scene, to show you how it looks like. They write their honest thoughts towards the place, how good is it how bad is it and so you can have your wise choice.
In a nutshell, weblog are turning to a mass amateurization but it is not a bad thing in a way. Firstly, it gave just a very minor impact to the publishing books afterall. Books are apt to a more specific target audiences and convey in a more formal manner and as for blogs, it's totally different. It apt to just the circles of friends of the author and convey informally. Besides, with the unfiltered content, the readers could understand and know more about the "truth" over something. Pretty sure this is also what a reader wanted to know. Instead of
"Fuji Apple is the juiciest apple in the world"
I think the readers will prefer
"Fuji Apple is just a normal apple. Nothing special about it actually. It's just a little bigger than any other apples"
The ugly truth is always the thing we want to know the most. Agree?
I agree with weblog is nothing compare with those book that are published. It is truth that book had more details and more information compare to those people who shared in the weblog. Somehow, some information from weblog is not exactly right and true a it might be a bit change from the exactly information. Actually is not bring harm to us just that it is a bit not fair for those who publish and write the information as their work had being share without any charges. By the way, I like the way you say about weblog. Great.
ReplyDeleteI like the way you comparing books and weblogs. Books is more formal,professional and full of information in detail. While weblog is straight forward, in- formal and unfiltered as you said. Sometimes, the books have too many information and makes it difficult for us to just find for a specific small detail. For example, when a person bought a travel guide, he or she will find that there are too many hotels,motels, chalets and so on. Then, he or she will find it difficult to choose it when the travel guide did not mention personal experience in it. But we can get this in the travel blog. Travel blog is more straight forward and they will recommend the best place to stay with their own experience and pictures too =) People are more comfortable with the casual and honest way of expressing in the weblog =)
ReplyDeleteGood example of comparing books and weblogs.
ReplyDeleteIt's true that books have more detail information. Normally books' information are well-researched before publishing out to the books which means the information are creditable.
Compare to blogs, blogs are more informal and the information are based on the bloggers' experience without any research. However it provides more interesting information compare to books. For example, they give review on movies and they are honest in it. It provides information that close to us.
I agree with the difference that you make in the post between weblog and book. In my opinion, to get the accuracy information you can find it from book as book provided the most accuracy information like the length of the Great Wall of China. However, if the purpose if finding the most popular dining place, food, travel place or anything you can find from the weblog as weblog provide the highest liking rates from users comment. To know a hotel that is suitable for stay or not, you can look through the weblog to make decision because weblog is the places users sharing their through and opinion about the particular things．There will be no hidden fact as the controller doesn’t exist in the weblog’s world.
ReplyDeleteWell, that's how we prefer to go to. The ugly truth. We always wanted to know something that are true and no lies. When you go to books, there were always have the detailed but not very updated. But for weblogs, it's usually more interesting than the books, don't you think so?
ReplyDelete