Alternative View of Weblogs Technology & Sociology7/11/2000; 8:00:38 PM Weblogs are often looked as as collaborative filters. I think another valid way of looking at them is as "surfing time". When you visit a weblog, you "absorb" the time that person has spent surfing and contributing to their weblog. A day spent browsing weblogs that aren't all me-too-'blogs, but have some original browsing behind them, can cover a large portion of the importent news of the day, allowing you to effectively surf at many, many times your own speed. This effect is amplified in 'blogs that are topic focused, as the people running those 'blogs become better at ferreting out that sort of information and are already more effective then you could be yourself. (For instance, I'd have no idea where to go for news about education, but Serious Instructional Technology's got me covered... so well in fact that I am often interested in the stories, despite not really being all that interested in education per se.)What made me think of this? Well, I caught David-Carter Tod's announcement that he's created a Manila Express for News Items within two hours of its posting (if I'm getting the time-zones right... manilaNewbies runs on Pacific, right?), despite the fact I don't really follow manilaNewbies that well. I caught it from View from an Iowa Homestead. John VanDyk had surfed over there and saved me the time of doing so by converting his surfing time into a 'blog entry.While practically speaking there's really no difference between viewing a weblog as a filter and as "saved time surfing"... the second way of looking at things more accurately reflects the value of a good weblog, I think. Blog's tend to have journal and browsing service components, and while I won't try to judge the value of the journal part of a site, one might use this to measure the browsing service side. Does this save me time and bring me the best of the topic, or could I have gotten this info from any number of other sources in the same amount of time? (or less time!)For me, this is stuff-I've-always-known-but-never-quite-thought before. Obvious in hindsight, but it explains our reactions to the me-too 'blogs that offer the same links everyone else does. They promise us these time savings, yet by having the same-ol', same-ol' links, actually cost us the time to visit their site (and they probably have bad journal stuff to boot!). Not inclined to return.The lesson? Original content counts! (Duh.)Cynical view: [Some] 'Blogs give away time-saved-surfing as an incentive to read journal-style navel-gazing that nobody in their right mind would read voluntarily. Always quid pro quo.