Author: Tom Coates

Wise up, UK webloggers, and get yourself a copy of PCFormat. Picture the scene – I’m sitting at my desk, pretending to do work and sending my boss cartoons involving kiwi birds being chopped up into little bits and stuck in fruit salads, when suddenly said boss shouts fuck! and raises his eyebrows skywards. Summoning me over, he slowly opens up the pages of PCFormat to reveal a two page spread on Weblogs. Blogger is featured prominently, and there are detailed walk-throughs of setting up your own weblog.

All very interesting, I think, and slowly and carefully read through the article. It’s a fun piece, which mentions a good number of weblog related sites, from groksoup to eatonweb. And then there is a section on British weblogs…

This looks like it could be interesting, particularly as many of the British webloggers met up last weekend for a couple of drinks. perfect.co.uk is mentioned, as is Need to Know and haddock.org. And then right at the bottom is this little tiny throwaway comment, almost completely lost on the page:

“Our own favourite is Barbelith (www.barbelith.com) for its great design.”

This is obviously completely delightful, and has brought a real spark into my day (which was relatively sparkful already, if I’m honest). But it only gets better. There are also two panels with slightly longer reviews of weblogs, including screenshots. Barbelith is there as well. As are: Zannah, eatonweb, slashdot.org, Ooine, robotwisdom, Daily Doozer, metafilter, mutability and Rebecca’s Pocket. Yay us, guys. We rock…

I am going to respond to Jason Kottke’s comments about weblogs in full shortly. In the meantime here are a few thoughts on the matter:

• Jason Kottke has inspired me to work on the web more than anyone except perhaps Derek Powazek.
• Unfortunately, the “weblogs are dead” discussion is as old as the content of weblogs themselves. The most obvious response that I can think to this argument is that people have found a medium and they are damn well going to use it. Not everyone is going to want to push the envelope – for most people, the web is a way of writing a diary or commentary for more people than just themselves. The journal was basically written in two or three different ways for hundreds of years, and I am not in the slightest bit surprised that the format and content of web journals and logs are following suit.
• And then there is the age old battle – personal content, versus web content, versus commentary, versus self-indulgence. Everyone has a position. Everyone tries to do their own thing. No one can really be right, except in a matter of degrees. If you write it, then they will come…
• That’s not to say that there isn’t room for a bit of dynamism and forward thrusting. I’m in a bit of a downer about weblogging myself at the moment. What happens when you don’t have any more to say?
• The one thing about Jason’s commentary that I have real trouble with is its uncharacteristic harshness. A couple of examples of the unnecessary slamming of other people’s work: “I almost never talk about weblogs here (mainly because everyone else does and it sickens me)”, “It’s just more of what you’re used to; if Swallowing Tacks is a medium Dr. Pepper (hold the ice), Zippyblog is just a refill.” Incitement to change is crucial on the web, but at the end of the day what people decide to say is completely up to themselves. There will be an audience for whatever is written, even if that audience is small. The old web truism stands here: If you don’t like what you are reading, then read something else…