Taking the Linkbait about Blogging

Paul Boutin has a linkbait article up at Wired, about why you shouldn’t bother blogging. My response is:

Don’t blog to get known, blog to be knowable.

Twitter, identi.ca et al are great, and certainly they’ve eaten into bog posting significantly; the pros have (of course, what did you expect?) moved into what used to be a wild & wooly amateur haven. But that doesn’t remove the importance of blogging for all sorts of significant things, not least of which is a platform to write long reasoned arguments about topics that are relevant to you.

From a more mercenary view though: if I am evaluating someone as a potential business partner, client, service provider, etc, I want to be able to trust them. There are a few ways of trusting someone: knowing them, getting a good recommendation about them, or knowing about them.

When I am researching a person, a company, a product, I want to be able to go somewhere like a blog to poke around, read up on their thinking and opinions, a place where I can get to know them, what interests them, what they are like. No other platform – not facebook, twitter or anywhere else – comes close to a blog for giving me immediate comfort about & trust in someone I know nothing about.

Mitch has some thoughts on the topic too.