If you’re an avid web surfer, a regular blogger, or even given up blogging (which comes after the Internet dropouts phenomenon), you’ve probably seen Superblogs… ones that are made up of a group of bloggers who regularly post interesting finds, news and opinions which help makes the Internet a dynamic, colorful place. We’re talking about BoingBoing.net, which could very well be the first recognized collective have their own share of the blogosphere.
As of two days ago, a new collective known as the Huffington Post made its blogosphere debut, much to the excitement and resentment of web critics as well as mainstream newspapers.
What makes the Huffington Post different?
How about a group blog with posts from Senator Jon Corzine, Larry David, Walter Cronkite, Mike Nichols, Gwyneth Paltrow, Ellen DeGeneres, John Cusack, Julia Louis-Dreyfus and hubby Brad Hall, Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., Harry Shearer and David Mamet! Essentially, it’s big time media celebrities getting some of their own piece of the bloggin’ action.
The Huffington Post is a group blog run by American socialite and journalist Arianna Huffington and judging from the outset, she’s got some of the ingredients tighter than the rest of us:
- a bunch of intriguing “star-quality” people constantly writing articles
- she posts breaking news and interesting stories around the web
- an edited version of Huffington’s sampler will be syndicated to newspapers and their Web sites by Tribune Media Services
One thing that doesn’t make the Huffington Post a true blog is the inability to comment or trackback to the site. Perhaps this could be a move to deter blog vandals, but the price of this control is the lack of feedback from readers, which is what a real blog is all about: a platform for social interaction. One thing she gets good marks for is the provision of full, raw, unadulterated RSS feeds for the entire blog.
While the rest of the vultures critics in America await to see what others make of the Huffington Post, back home in Singapore, the opposite seems to be occurring. While the Huffington Post turn VIPs (Very Important People) into VIBs (Very Important Bloggers), Singapore’s own blogging collective, Tomorrow.sg, may naturally turn our VIBs into VIPs (mainstream media celebrities). This can be seen by how the local mainstream media has increasingly called on such bloggers for opinions on current affairs.
In part of Tomorrow.sg, the Singapore blogosphere has become more accessible to the international Internet audience and mainstream media. Who now doesn’t know about the existence of Tomorrow.sg, or the AcidFlask incident (first Singapore blogger to shut down his blog and provide a full apology to the Singapore government) ?
At this point, what do Superblogs (like Boingboing, Huffington Post, or Tomorrow.sg) mean for the rest of us bloggers?
I see two immediate positive effects:
1) to popularize blogging to the masses
2) to highlight salient news & opinions
*** UPDATED ***
The next paragraph has been deemed controversial, so I wish to remind readers that this paragraph states the possibilities, not actualities, of what superblogs might become. I see superblogs existing between blogs and the mainstream press, so these negative effects tend to take the cue from theories on mainstream press. There’s definitely room to refine what I’ve got to say here.
*** UPDATED ***
I also see two possibly weaker negative effects:
1) to polarize the blogosphere where the popular get more popular, the lesser known get even lesser known; works like in-groups or cliches
2) agenda setting through editorial gatekeeping
In either case, a useful purpose for superblogs may allow for a transparent, accessible way for us to predict or forecast trends on the Internet. As seen in Alex Halavais’ paper entitled Blogs & the “Social Weather”, John Hiler has examined the impact of blogs on the larger media environment, and more specifically their relationship with more traditional forms of journalism. He suggests that blog journalism has much in common with the collective mind of Star Trek’s Borg (2002a). Soon after, he rejects this metaphor for another, ecological view of the “blogosphere” (2002b).
Assuming that superblogs allow for collective intelligence rather than collective mindset, could this still be a way for us to predict people’s interests and opinions on wide-ranging issues? Or are blogs too eclectic to provide any predictive value? Perhaps time and more research will tell…
