Blogs as exotic particles
Via The Publishing Spot, I came across FTMAGBLOG, a blog devoted to a recent Financial Times article on blogging. As someone who started a blog on the end of cyberspace after co-authoring a short piece on the subject, I was interested to find another example of an article-inspired blog.
The two most interesting things about the FTMAGBLOG are 1) it's got a lot of comments from readers, and 2) it consists of two posts from the authors: one announcing the opening of the blog, the other its closing. That's it.
Most blogs are like black holes: stable, strangely irresistible, and capable of absorbing all our time (even more so as writers than readers). Within the Institute, we've created various project-specific blogs (most recently Virtual China) that may have lifespans of months or years-- however long the project lasts. Perhaps FTMAGBLOG is a sign of something new and even more short-lived: the blog as exotic particle. It appears after some high-energy collision (the publication of a controversial article, or protests against a controversial piece of legislation, or March Madness), captures lots of interesting interactions for a very short time (say, a few weeks), then decays into nothing, leaving behind just tracks and traces for people to analyze.
Thanks for the link, and I enjoyed your analysis. Maybe more newspapers should try these "high energy collisions" as they build online projects.
Butterworth did respond to my post on the subject, which I appreciated. He sent me this link this link too, an interesting face-off between a new media cheerleader and scrooge.
Posted by: Jason Boog | March 15, 2006 at 05:07 PM