Bloggers are like sheep herd

I was absent from blogosphere for past two weeks, not intentionally. Blogging took a back seat while I managed few other projects in my life.

At work, by pure chance, I landed up performing the first field installation of new data de-duplication product. The pressure to not screw-up was great considering the high visibility internally. At home, I made a move from Eastside to Seattle that disrupted blogging routine. Also, as I am settling down in Northwest, moonlighting opportunities are growing resulting in thoughts about resurrecting a moonlighting venture.

Blogosphere hasn't been very exciting either. Most blog posts are starting to look very similar and repetitive. Everyone seems to hop on to latest news. Most posts are nothing more than hashed, rehashed or paraphrased versions of original story. It was amusing to see the coverage, blogger after blogger gave to Intel 45nm processor and the YouTube announcement of paying content creators.

Another annoying trend is promotion of audio and video podcasts through blog posts. I rarely listen or watch podcasts. Why? Because it takes too long to figure out quality and relevancy of podcast compared to scanning a text post in few seconds. And, more often than not, podcasts are nothing more than someone droning on and on about nothing .... It wouldn't be a bad idea for audio and video bloggers to start posting transcripts.

I am subscribed to almost 200 blog feeds through Google Reader. Still, there seems to be lack of original and quality content to read on blogs. Finally, I started axing the blog feeds that didn't have enough original content and thoughts put in to the posts. Quality is trumpeting over quantity in deciding who stays.

Old fashioned print publications and broadcasters seem to be offering better quality content like Z-RAM coverage in IEEE Spectrum. There may be a business opportunity for print publications or another startup, read all bloggers opinions on an issue or news, distill, summarize and print them.

Bloggers are expressing more and more what corporate marketing and public relations groups are feeding them than speaking their own mind and opinions. Bloggers are acting like sheep herd instead of sheep dogs.