Blogging: The Tipping Point?
I watched the debate, of course, and am now watching the postgame show, eagerly anticipating NBC's interview of two of the most prominent political bloggers (if it's anyone other than Atrios and Glenn Reynolds, I'll be surprised. Okay, I'm surprised. As I type, they announced that it's Power Line Blog and Wonkette, which are both loading very slowly right now.). I expect that Tom Brokaw will at some point explain what a blog is (check), and hopefully he'll allude to that "political jihad" metaphor (guess not). I'm wondering: Is this the tipping point? Is this report going to cause an influx of new blogs or a spike in blog reading? Has blogging been blown wide open?
In other news, see Josh Marshall's pre-debate post, Wonkette's running commentary, and the VP debate drinking game.
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Comments
Where is the tipping point?
I don't think this report will be much of a factor in tipping blogs further to a mainstream audience. I didn't get to watch it, but judging from your description and Power Line's post about it, it only gave blogs a couple minutes of coverage. While they introduced what blogging was to their audience, I don't think a couple of minutes is enough to fully explain the concept of blogging. NBC must assume that most of America is already familiar with the concept, and since it brings fresh, new faces and opinions into their coverage, why not run with it and see if it nets some more ratings.
If blogging hasn't reached mainstream acceptance yet, it's very close to doing so soon. How much growing is there left to do? The Internet gives every website a potential audience of millions, but the most popular blog (dailykos.com) tops out at 400,000 hits a day. However, that's double the amount of hits foxnews.com gets. Blog traffic has been steadily increasing this year, even for the smaller blogs. But is this something that will be sustained after November and we go into a non-election year?
I agree...
that this won't change the blogosphere all that much. I think it was blown wide open quite some time ago, which is why everyone and their brother has a blog.
I have to admit that I've never heard of Power Line Blog. I'm kind of ignorant, apparently.
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DeAnn
I doubt it.
Given that they keep offering lame, crude, sophomoric things like Wonkette as "representative", I can't imagine that the average person who goes to visit sites like hers will come away with any sort of positive view of blogging, let alone enough interest to pursue things further.
Ditto Atrios, for that matter. I like some of what he posts, but so much of it is just headlining, links, and gotchas. There's so much better out there!
Rana