Well, actually, such a piece was written, for the features pages, by me, and appeared about a year and a half ago. It was basically about personal, journal type sites rather than link-based blogs, but it was covering similar territory.

That comment is somewhat patronising to both the technologically clueful people and the members of the general public who read the Irish Times technology section. More importantly it assumes that people actually read Karlin’s column and indeed that people actually read the technology section of the Irish Times as opposed to something more in the mindshare of the public like national or political news. When the Irish Times site went to a subscription model, the Irish Times technology section dropped off the radar of the web and its journalists, to an extent, slipped into pay per view oblivion.

To real reporters, the story is what matters. To op-ed columnists, that lack of brand name recognition that follows the Irish Times PPV move was a major loss. You’ve managed to achieve in one article something rare in the history of the Irish Times technology section – something that is worth discussing by techies and non-techies.

The breakthrough moment will be when the MSM is forced to cover (and credit) a story that catches fire in the blogosphere – particularly if it, in whole or in part, discredits a major story in the Irish Times and/or RTE (nothing personal, but they’re the big dogs, with the most identifyable biases and orthodoxy). I’ll post something later over on my place about some probable future Irish blogging events and stop hogging Gavin’s bandwidth now.

I think Robin raised an interesting point – I think the first politicians to start rolling out blogs will enhance their profile significantly.

We all know the seo advantages of blogs – but that message is only starting to sink in outside the blogging community.

This next year will be a fascinating one for the evolution of the blogosphere.

Tom

Excellent piece though, Gavin. And FMK is right, dialogue can make a blog. An active comments section can be as entertaining, or more so, than the blog itself at times.

now that is a topic i intend blogging on in due course. recent experience suggests there are some bloggers who really don’t want to get a conversation going. personally, i think that dialogue is what blogs *should* be about, but apparently there’s a lot of others who consider their blog to be just a monologue.