Audience and purpose in blogging

I recently listened to a podcast by Anil Dash (of Live Journal fame), discussing what a blog is / can be and what purposes they serve.

I found it here:

http://neologies.blogspot.com/ and at MeshForum2006 http://www.itconversations.com/shows/detail1069.html

In the podcast he talks about the expected use for blogging - 'citizen journalism' versus it's use more common use for social networking.

Interesting statistics offered suggested that the ratio between writers and readers (of LJ) is in around 1:6 or 1:8 and that a big factor in obtaining and keeping an audience is shared context / interests. Dash suggested that real influence is not about how many people you reach, but how relevant and meaningful the site is to the people who do use it.

Apparently most people like to read something they feel is 'exclusive', whilst authors can usually only cope with corresponding with a certain number of people within their blog social network. Dash indicated that the most correspondents people seem to be able to handle is about 150, and observed that "Nobody has 1,000 friends". A strategy he did suggest for handling large audiences was to offer them an opportunity to be part of the exclusive 150 you do choose to correspond with.

Gossip / reminiscence were cited as the two most common types of content for blogs, the minutiae of people's daily lives, and a comparison was drawn between the content of blogs and the content of 'historical' letters now held to be important.

Not surprisingly, there are indications that frequency of 'hits' is related to the frequency with which you post, and some readers will visit a site several times in a day.

A member of Dash's audience asked if, because the majority of bloggers are young females, whether a 'Feminisation' is happening, since many bloggers use their blogs to express their feelings, and was there now a change occurring in people's perception of 'what matters' ? Dash indicated that a trend of undervaluing the degree of influence blogging has exists, and that blogs are actually now competing with the more traditional news media.

What I refer to as 'voice' was also discussed - what tone people write with, what behaviour they exhibit in their writings and what they will tolerate in comments. The parallel was drawn about blogs being your 'living room' - that by operating a blog you are inviting people into your living room for a conversation, and how people are expected to behave in that context, including how the author behaves (For example, if you swear at home then maybe you are going to use bad language in your blog test as well).

Sustaining blogs was also commented on, and Dash seemed particularly interested in how blogs are affected by changes in audience / changes in your 'voice' / people projecting their lives through you, you being public property. Commercialisation of blogs and 'selling product' were also topics discussed and Dash gives a very interesting account of how his audiences reacted when a move was made to charge for some LJ-related products.

It's a really interesting article, if a bit long, so please do have a listen. I'll be posting my own thoughts on some of the topics covered in due course. Please cut me some slack, though, since I am very new to blogging and I had never even heard of Anil Dash 'til I tripped over this article. I'm not informed enough yet to get into discussions of how much of an authority he (or others) may or may not be on such topics.