Blogistan neighborhoods
If Blogistan is a community, what kind of community is it? I was thinking about this on Saturday as I was driving through one of the original planned communities in America. Radio Userland-created weblogs are a huge apartment complex; everybody lives in the same place, and individual units are denoted by long strings of numbers. There are a few different kinds of units available, so many of the apartments look alike. The apartment complex is right next to a hugely influential industrial zone. Manila and Blogspot-hosted Blogger weblogs are condos, and there are a few of those complexes around town. Movable Type blogs are Levittown; most of them look fairly similar (particularly the ones that use templates that came with version 2.0; I can usually spot a blog that uses MT but hasn’t extensively customized the design), but have some individual touches as the owners have made them their own. GreyMatter sites are the brownstone district; similar in concept to the Movable Type blogs, but from an earlier age. Slash blogs are frat houses on the edge of campus. Massive food fights often ensue. People like me who roll their own software are out in the distant townships with septic tanks and wells, and we all installed our own plumbing and electrical systems. Some of the houses out here are shacks and some palaces; with no zoning you get all kinds of structures.
Spare a thought for poor Dan Gillmor, locked up in the insane asylum of Knight-Ridder’s content management system.
Posted at 3:59 AM