Readers Crave Destinations

Last Decem­ber I offered my two cents on what’s hap­pen­ing with blog­ging in response to Jere­mi­ah Owyang’s provoca­tive post that pro­nounced the gold­en era of tech blog­ging dead. Now, I’m not sure how peo­ple feel about that a few months on, but some­thing that’s stuck with me is how we gath­er infor­ma­tion online today. Sure, we’re hav­ing lots of “con­ver­sa­tions,” but read­ers still crave destinations.

Good writ­ers know that in order to get any­one to look at any­thing online, you need a hook. When we share links on Twit­ter and Face­book, they’re only inter­est­ing if you can tease peo­ple to click into the sto­ry. We’re all writ­ing head­lines for every­thing we share with the online com­mu­ni­ty. To me that means we still need blogs, websites…anywhere you can put lots of words and ideas next to each other.

We like info snack­ing, but we’re real­ly picky eaters. Giv­en the amount of infor­ma­tion that’s out there it’s only fair that read­ers only sam­ple what they like at the con­tent buf­fet. But make no mis­take, cura­tion takes more than the almighty “con­ver­sa­tion.” So, writ­ers, don’t despair: read­ers still crave the yum­my con­tent that’s always made the web great.

A Thank You to Readers

I’ve been butcher­ing this blog in one form or anoth­er since about 2003. My pas­sion for it has fluc­tu­at­ed over time, rang­ing from those heady days when I’d try my best to write about pol­i­tics, or when I ditched that and wrote about movies for a time, or when I just got caught up in the notion of need­ing a blog for some­thing as elu­sive as “per­son­al brand­ing.” I feel like I’m still recov­er­ing from that last one.

In the past week I’ve got­ten three com­pli­ments from folks who check in here from time to time and I have to say that’s immense­ly mean­ing­ful to me. I can’t tell you how reward­ing it is to know that even in an age where we’re just zip­ping one-lin­ers at each oth­er, some folks will take the time to read a para­graph or two. I nev­er ful­ly appre­ci­at­ed actu­al­ly engag­ing an audi­ence in that way until blog­ging became passe. Thanks again for reading!