Blogs what are they good for? (unlike war, actually something)
Posted by Raznor

I agree for the most part with this post by Tom Tomorrow, but I think he underestimates the importance of blogs, mostly because he (correctly) notes that they aren't important in the way the Right Wing blogosphere seems to think.

The thing is, the internet is still a new medium, with lots of little marketing niches to explore. So every so often, we see how these niches get filled in ways never done before. Homestar Runner shows how the internet allows cartoonists to make a living by going directly to the consumer (Mike and Mark Chapman make plenty money off of t-shirt sales). Howard Dean's campaign showed how you can use the internet to receive previously unheard of levels of campaign contributions almost exclusively from small donors (the fact that his campaign frivolously lost all that money in ineffective advertisements is beside the point). And blogs, well blogs fill a little niche of their own.

The internet allows an unprecedented level of pornography information at the user's fingertips. What blogs do is sift through that information to make it easier for people to find what's significant. It's like a search engine, only with commentary. Be that for news, politics, games or pornography, it's a need that is specific to the internet, and it is one blogs fill.