Let's start with a quote from
THE top marketing blogger:
Seth about blogs, "Lately, the noise seems to be increasing and the signal is fading in comparison. Too much spam, too many posts, too little insight leaking through. "
Seth Godin has a way of being topical, personal, all mixed with great punditry. That's why he's tops. A long time ago I gave up posting in response to his posts, because this blog would just be one big suck-up.
But in this case, what he says sheds light on what I wanted to say. There is too much noise, making the B2B/marketing blogosphere dead-boring these days.
Jumped the shark:
IMHO, the blogosphere started to go flat when Kathy Sierra stopped blogging. The number of true guru/pundits went down by one, and that's when blogging 'jumped the shark'. We stopped being a community in discussion, and transitioned into a roomful of soapboxes.
Around that time there was a unrelated rise in corporate bloggers, mostly those who are marketing consultants, but especially SEO and those focused in web-lead generation. Individually, they aren't bad, but collectively they raised the noise level.
Even worse, those starting worthwhile blogs aren't being heard. I've posted articles linking to a few such bloggers, but without seeing their Bloglines subscriber number go up AT ALL. Hey, you like my blog, aren't you interested in these guys? Has the joy of discovery of new blogs gone away? Or are you just scanning thru too many feeds to quickly to care?
Certainly the problem is too much noise. Not enough patience to see if another blog is going to pan out as worthwhile. Not enough patience to comment on a post if there are 10, 20, or 100 other posts by others to read.
What do you think? Why aren't you subscribing, commenting, or linking to other blogs as much as you used to?
Next: 'Signal in the B2Blogosphere' and the inevitable signal-to-noise ratio metaphor.