To: jakob@useit.com

Subject: Content Creation for Average People == Blogs



Jakob,


Your latest Alertbox makes many excellent points. I concur with your conclusions.


I find it surprising, however, that you ask the question, "How can we increase the number of people who contribute content to the Web?" and talk about tools that provide structured creation, but fail to mention weblogs.


While some may not consider weblogs "content," contrary to common definition, blogs are not about linking to web pages -- except in that linking should be a part of most any writing on the web. Pointing out sites may have been a place to start, but if you look at what's being published in the blog format today, you'll find it's everything from personal journals, to poetry, to punditry. Blogs are really about the *format* -- frequent, short bursts of text -- a format that happens to work very well on the web, both for readers ("people don't read on the web") and writers/publishers.


Most importantly, in regards to your piece, this is a format that the average person can produce. One doesn't need to be a comfortable writer in order to post a short blurb about their thoughts on a particular subject/product/site/experience. What's more, even if the average person felt comfortable with a blank piece of paper, the time to write longer pieces is daunting to those for whom creating web content is not a full time job. Blogs let people get their thoughts down quickly, succinctly, and with enough structure to help them along, without being limiting on what they choose to communicate.


If you ask me, you can't do much better than that in getting average people publishing content on the web. And the proof is in the tens of thousands of people who, because of blog publishing tools, now write and publish on the web every day, who never did before.


--

Evan Williams, ev@pyra.com

President/CEO, http://www.pyra.com



BTW, it's not that he's just not clued in. Nielsen was in the audience asking questions at PC Forum last March when I demoed Blogger and Dave demoed Manila.