Blogs are boring, overblown and don't make a penny

So says Trevor Butterworth, writing in today's Financial Times.

The FT have given his piece two marketing URLs and set up a blog clearly designed to provoke bloggers (the first - and so far only - post is titled Blog off, we've had enough) into proving their point, I presume.

Ironically, I actually found the 4,600+ word article much more tedious than anything I have read on a blog this week, with Butterworth's main argument appearing to be based on the flawed assumptions that those who write blogs aspire to be stimulating or make money. Given that the FT itself is still loss-making, there's a hint of the pot calling the kettle black, too.

He is is right to ask whether blogging is about to drive the mainstream media into oblivion, though. After reading his article, I don't think it will need to.

Published 18 February 2006 17:06 by Niall Cook

Comments

• 

  Drew B's take on tech PR said:

  To accompany a tediously long article on blogging, the FT weekend magazine set up a new blog on blogger: http://ftmagblog.blogspot.com/ FT Mag Blog: Blog off, we've had enoughIs blogging really an information revolution? Is it about to drive the mainstream
  February 18, 2006 20:48
• 

  Open (finds, minds, conversations)... said:

  Trevor Butterworth's article in yesterday's Financial Times (no sub required at the moment) takes on what he sees as the unwarranted hype around blogging. It's a hefty piece (4,500 words give or take) and makes for challenging reading - as
  February 19, 2006 16:00
• 

  Mack Collier said:

  LOL! As I posted on BMA, it's hilarious that he spends the entire article downplaying the importance of blogs, then ends with the admission that he had created a special blog just to handle the influx of comments from bloggers! LOL!
  February 22, 2006 22:37
• 

  Andy Gavin said:

  What is quite interesting is the people from around the world that commented in a short period of time. I don't know in the end whether it was a genuine piece or a deliberately provocative; I can't see how anyone can doubt the technology when such a lot is being written. Perhaps papers are worried about their readership. I can understand why that might be with organisations like <a href="http://www.rsf.org/">Reporters without frontiers</a>. What is the future? Certainly rather than attacking it is would be better to embrace the change.
  February 25, 2006 00:57
• 

  omaniblog said:

  Oh you are too sharp. The guy was only earning his living. You are absolutely right that the article was not well written but it has some good phrases.
  I think the key thing is that the FTMagazine put blogging on its front page: that shows something. Perhaps it means that the time has come for blogging. Before this, there were the early adopters. There are always those who see the potential and set about being first to plumb it. But if the 'product' is going to become a part of our culture, it needs to move out from the nerds and enthusiasts. One of the best ways of increasing support for something is to write about it critically, get a bit of controversy going, upset the trailblazers. The righteous indignation of bloggers protesting that they have been misunderstood, I can see the traditional print journalist smiling. Andy asks whether it might have been deliberately provocative? He's right to wonder. But it's not the intention of the author that will endure; it's the result he has.
  The most powerful challenge in Butterworth's article came from the numbers. So many million blogs... Almost as if we were heading for a world in which you blog from birth. And what has been the result of all this activity so far? Is humankind kinder? Have there been any emotional breakthroughs? Are we talking transformation, yet?
  You run the risk of being perceived as petty minded if you simply pour vitriol on Butterworth. He may not be an Orwell, or even a Marx, but, if he hadn't been invented, we have had another one of him popping up in the FT at around the same time, wouldn't we?
  February 25, 2006 10:41
• 

  Janno said:

  The FT is back in the black.
  March 1, 2006 15:51
• 

  zdqn2hs@search.com said:

  funny ringtones
  October 3, 2006 14:39
• 

  kuep4go@mail.com said:

  funny ringtones
  October 3, 2006 14:39
• 

  Jason said:

  A very good article that hits the nail on the head. Blogging is overhyped, as are all other "web 2.0" technologies, such as RSS and wikis. Technology-wise, there is nothing new in web 2.0 at all, indeed blogs are just websites with user comments - I was doing that back in 1992. Yawn....

  Take another web 2.0 system, RSS, for example... touted as a way to avoid the email inbox overload and escape spam. DUH!!! Spammers already use blogs and RSS extensively and RSS is no different from email. Newsgator already delivers RSS feeds to your Outlook inbox so there is no difference from email overload... there is just as much blog and RSS information overload as there is email overload, hence why Newsgator et al even exists.

  Blog It? No thanks.

  May 16, 2007 15:35