Taking a break from research, I've been reading up on some of the blogs that I subscribe to from my Bloglines. I came across this blog post from AccordionGuy (Joey DeVilla) who's been a speaker at the CASCON workshops on Business of Blogging and Social Computing: Best Practices, which I chaired. It's about Jakob Nielsen and his case for writing articles, and not blog posts. If you don't know Jakob Nielsen, he's famous for his usability guidelines and his usability heuristics for creating user interfaces.
In this article, it's interesting that Nielsen says that writing articles are more world-class than writing blog posts. Specifically on the top of his article, he writes:
To demonstrate world-class expertise, avoid quickly written, shallow postings. Instead, invest your time in thorough, value-added content that attracts paying customers.
He feels that blogs defeat that purpose because people rant and just write stuff off the top of their head, it's not well organized and thought through (like I'm doing right now). Therefore, blogs are not very credible, is what I think he's trying to say. Off course, this brought the king of blogging himself Robert Scoble into the conversation with his counterpoint "Jakob Nielsen says “don’t be like Scoble”" , which caused a huge discussion in the blogosphere. Robert Scoble says the following:
1. Don’t do quick posts like Scoble.
2. Don’t risk being an idiot like Scoble.
3. Don’t put comments on your idiocy like Scoble.
4. Don’t link to other idiots like Scoble.
5. If you want to seem like you know something, unlike Scoble, write long ass white papers with lots of charts.
6. Don’t have fun like that idiot Scoble.
7. Don’t you dare put pictures of cats or babies or other personal details up like Scoble does.
8. Don’t add Web 2.0 mechanisms to your Web site like Scoble does. Definitely no “del.icio.us” or “Digg” voting graphics.
9. Don’t get caught dead inside an Apple store like Scoble does.
10. Don’t give Fake Steve or Valleywag a reason to deride you like Scoble does.
11. Definitely don’t get close to Twitter/Jaiku/Pownce/Facebook like Scoble does. If you can say it in 140 characters you shouldn’t say it at all.
Of course, that is Scoble's interpretation. There are some that agreed with him, saying that Nielsen doesn't really understand what blogging is and the impact that blogging can become (there's many examples of this and how credible a source that blogging can be against traditional media). For more information, you can read Scoble and Israel's Naked Conversations book which I highly recommend reading. I've posted my own thoughts from the book if you're interested. Then there's others, who've felt that Scoble is being egotistical of himself especially saying that Nielsen says do not be like Scoble and that Nielsen was making an attack on Scoble. In Nielsen's article, Nielsen does not even mention Scoble. However, I think what Scoble is trying to say is that Nielsen is against the practices that what Scoble does in blogging, not against Scoble himself. I don't think Scoble intended to say that Nielsen was attacking him, just his behaviour and his beliefs indirectly.
Of course, having this controversy, has caused 88 comments on Scoble's blog post, so lots of interesting conversations happening. In my own opinion, I believe that blogging and writing long thought-out articles, both have a place on the web and that each serve its own purpose. There may be times for example where you want to write something to an audience in a professional manner to make it scholarly and intelligent. Then there may be times, where you want to just start conversation and bring about your own thoughts (like I'm doing here), but it's not meant to be something like a news article. Some people don't have the time to read long articles (I for sure am not with my busy day!), and enjoy just the short blog entries (sorry this blog post I'm writing is not short!). I think one thing that Nielsen misses is the impact of what blogging can do with the linking behaviour. It's powerful, it makes you get noticed, it's self publishing and self-advertisement. Look at Technorati and del.icio.us where you can find conversations and trends on various topics, and search through blogs. So powerful, that I'm studying blogging to find communities from the social networks that get created through the blog links.
On Technorati: Jakob Nielsen, blogging, usability, Robert Scoble
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