If you’re reading this blog post, you read blogs. Do you just visit the website it is on? Or do you subscribe to it and use a feed reader? Or are you seeing this through some shared aggregator-like service such as Facebook or FriendFeed?
Whichever way you got here, you have to figure out if you trust the author. In addition, you might be inclined to read other blogs, and you’ll have to figure out whether you trust those authors! (Seth Godin makes this point from the perspective of the authors.)
Users who are unaccustomed to the blogosphere can become overwhelmed and give up. But I think there’s a very high value to be had here for those who find it “too difficult” or who “can’t be bothered.”
In his artcle, Seth concludes that
“Sometimes, the web is more of a cocktail party than a club meeting.”
Bloggers (and marketers) increase their effectiveness by doing the sometimes hard work of considering their audience. Readers (and consumers) can do the same by considering the source. Participating in the blogosphere doesn’t just make you a savvy internaut; it helps you develop skills in all types of encounters where perceiving the club/cocktail party distinction would be useful.
This isn’t really that radical a notion. Avid readers have known this for a long time before the Internet showed up. The web (blogospere) simply allows us to particpate with lower barriers and higher concentratration.
