Blogs Are 10 Years Old Already?

Yep, according to the Guardian's technology correspondent, Bobbie Johnson, blogs are 10 years old this week.

The very first ever blog post was, apparently, "Check this out. Amazing!"

I didn't know Duncan had been around that long.

It was another two years after that first post before the word "blog' was even coined, but now as we all know there's one born every second. Technorati says there are over 71 million blogs, and another 120,000 new ones every day. (And we all want to know why Duncan won't link to us.)

Dan Gillmor, author of "citizen journalism bible" We The Media, is upbeat about the social web which has evolved around blogging:

"Blogging and other kinds of conversational media are the early tools of a truly read-write web...They've helped turn media consumers into creators, and creators into collaborators - a shift whose impact we're just beginning to feel, much less understand."

But others aren't so positive.

Not everyone believes the influence of blogging will be long lasting. Andrew Keen, a former dotcom entrepreneur and the author of the forthcoming book Cult of the Amateur: How Today's Internet is Killing Our Culture, says that though it is enticing to believe that online diaries are empowering, the hype is dangerous.

"It's seductive in the sense that it convinces people to think they have more to say and are more interesting than they really are," he said. "The real issue is whether it adds any more to our culture. Most of it is just so transient and ephemeral."

The rise of the blog also triggered the explosion of other sites on which ordinary people share their experiences, from social networks such as MySpace and Facebook to the video-sharing website YouTube. Mr Keen says this "digital narcissism" is spurred on in large part by the internet's overemphasis of a libertarian political outlook, and a tendency to make individuals talk to themselves about themselves.

But he admits that there have also been some important contributions.

"Not every blogger is a narcissist who has nothing to say. In particular there are people in China and Iraq who are blogging - and that is very brave," he said.

"But generally I don't see a social benefit. It's just a great vehicle for next-generation media personalities. Why do I want to know what some guy sitting on the west coast of America thinks about Iraq? Would you pay to listen to this person?"

Well, yep, actually...I pay to read some pundit who has never been near Iraq every time I buy a newspaper.

And that's really part of the point, isn't it? That if Charles Krauthammer or Bill Kristol can be taken seriously as an opinionator then so can John Doe, Joe Bloggs and YOU. There's every likelyhood that if you've done your homework your opinions are at least as informed and worthwhile. But you likely won't get paid for it, unlike Charles and Bill.

And yes, Keen has a bit of a point about bloggers talking to themselves about themselves. A lot of blogging content centers around what some other blogger has said and another big chunk is about what some media personality or pundit has said. Opinions about opinions. Still, that's an important dialogue for a democracy, to my mind, as long as it doesn't turn into gossip for gossip's sake. It's surely a healthy thing, rather than narcissistic, to examine and counter arguments which influence the decisions being made on behalf of everyone in this democracy.

Perhaps the most important role that blogs have carved out for themselves is that of an ad hoc Fifth Estate keeping an eye on the Fourth Estate - the press and news media - as well as on politicians themselves. And it's important to realize that blogs don't just do that by the kind of incisive focus on an event that Firedoglake or Talking Points memo have done recently. Blogs also have an effect by their overall gestalt - the far right wingosphere and lefty moonbats play as important a part in the overall process of this "Fifth Estate" as any centrist blogger or carefully measured essayist. We might not like that, individually, but there it is.

I'm pretty sure Keen is talking narcissistic crap (his own blog is all about his book) and that blogs will have an important role to play in the next ten years and beyond. What do you think?