Something is happening here, and you yon't know what it is, do you Mr. Maney?

USA Today's technology columnist Kevin Maney has a column on blogs today. Here's a summary:

  • Blogs are overhyped.
  • But someday, their novelty will wear off.

I swear, that's it. But check for yourself.

These two mundane points are lavishly padded with (1) a witless rewrite of Monty Python's spam skit, where Maney replaces the word "spam" with "blogs" (get it?); (2) some facts obtainable in about three minutes (I suspect) via a Google search on "blogs"; (3) a lot of pointless hot air; and (4) one slightly funny anecdote, which I'll reproduce:

Last winter, I got to judge the New Zealand NetGuide Web Awards for best New Zealand blog of 2004. The winner was Bizgirl, who billed herself as a twentysomething librarian from Wellington. At the awards dinner, Bizgirl turned out to be a middle-aged fat guy.

snicker

Disclaimers: I'm not an expert, and I have no illusions about the cosmic importance of this blog (indistinguishable from zero). But articles like Maney's make me shake my head and mutter "they just don't get it."

Not to sound like some kind of anti-corporate hippie, but blogs don't fit into a worldview where "important" information flow is seen as nearly exclusively hierarchical and top-down, from producer to consumer, from organization to individual, from (say) USA Today to their subscribers. When someone is married to that worldview, as Maney apparently is, the interesting things about blogs just bounce off.