Prepare to be Amazed: Observations on Becoming One with the Blogosphere

Prepare to be amazed ...by my utter lack of useful content.

Ha! Just kidding, I write great stuff... Great. Stuff.

Anyway, in my attempt to continue dispensing as much information as possible I've decided to "just start" another post: Observations on Becoming One with the Blogosphere.

The issue that I see within the blogging community, and one that I continually battle with, is the perception that there is nothing left to do that hasn't already been done. A lack of room for originality. What's interesting about that problem, though, is that it arose from the generalization of a niche.

The niche used to be the idea of the "blog." But now that the niche (blogging) has become mainstream, mini-niches have exploded into a convoluted mess of information sharing.

I sit on HootSuite monitoring the flow of information through my meager following of 125 people and I feel like I'm an internet relay that has random streams of information passing in front of me while I try to decide if I need (read: want) to take action on any one piece of it.

"Yes, that's nice, but how did you go from 'everything has been done already,' to watching your Twitter feed?"

Don't interrupt... rude.

While I was feeling like an internet relay, I began to see the patterns emerging. I started to figure out the 'Twitter stereotypes,' if you will. I noticed that the Tweets tried to are mostly well-crafted (or not) attempts at one of two things: grabbing attention and sending someone to a link or simply playing the "name recognition game" so when they do send out a link they hope certain people will click on that link because they commented on that person's post, even though they really don't care what their cat threw up that morning.

Also, everyone has a top 10 list.

Everyone has a 5 things that [fill in the blank].

Everyone links to news stories.

And yet, I continuously see things that I've never seen before on the T-feed.

That's what the cool people call the Twitter Feed. The T-Feed. TTF. lol jk bff...

My question then becomes, how can someone add value to a community of people who aren't necessarily interested in shifting through yet another news regurgitation site or another site filled with the top things you never cared about?

I'm not sure I know the answer to that question right now.

What? I'm just being honest. Don't look at me like that... if you have such a good answer, why don't you share it with the rest of us?

I kid. I kid.

But really though, I think the answer has something to do with relevance. If the content you post is relevant to someone's life, situation or current state of mind they are more likely to connect and want to come back, and that becomes your mini-niche.

Do you feel the connection? Between us?

No, not like that... Like the connection between a slightly sarcastic blog-poster and a most-likely slightly sarcastic blog-reader?

I feel it.

Now that it's sufficiently awkward feeling in here, I'm going to end this post. Good day Sir/Madam.


Agree? Disagree? Think I'm just a little nuts? Post a comment.

Also, you can follow me on Twitter @thestosbias