I read in a piece from Graeme Philipson about a forthcoming debate from Slattery IT titled Blogging is as Useful as Talkback Radio. Sounds like a fun event! As Graeme commented, it “…makes you ask yourself just how useful talkback radio is.”
I would posit that there is (or should be) a major difference. Talkback radio is a broadcast medium – a few stations (and probably fewer political opinions) cover a complete audience, and often a geographically limited audience. Bloggers, however, cover a very wide spectrum of views and opinions, each with their own potential audience, and each audience is potentially global.
Graeme also comments on some figures from Ross Dawson that show that we in Australia are punching well below our weight in blogging. Apparently, “of the top 25,000 blogs globally, around 9,000 are in English, but only 75 of those originate in Australia.” Comparing this with our share of the English-speaking population, we are under-represented “by a factor of six or so.”
Why are we not blogging more? Is it because we don’t have the bandwidth, or because we are all outside kicking a football or wrestling crocodiles? I would suggest that maybe we just can’t be bothered…