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Group Blogs

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Daniel wrote,

I am interested in your comment about not subscribing to group blogs. Why? Isn't it a good way to discover new blogs worth reading? Just curious...

I think it's important to differentiate between two types of blogs. The terms I use (which may or may not be generally accepted) are:

Aggregated blog

A blog that aggregates together the blogs of separate people, presenting them on one feed.

Group blog

A blog with posts written by several people.

I think aggregated blogs are okay, though I tend to read them on their web page to find out what I like rather than subscribe to them. They do tend to be pretty noisy, especially when there are a number of new bloggers, but if you can get by that, there may be some good people to subscribe to.

Group blogs are a different beast. In them, a group of people write articles for the same blog. ABlog is one, and there are a few that are run by Microsoft teams.

I don't think I've come across one yet that was any good. I read a blog to get a specific person's perspective, not to get the jumbled-together perspectives of a group of people. Group blogs also lack coherence, and most they are normally one-way.

In my mind, one of the points of having a blog is to engage in conversation. I read every comment that gets made on my blog. Sometimes I reply, sometimes I comment, sometimes I write a new blog entry. Sometimes I don't do anything, but the comment still effects what I do in the future.

That's because I have a sense of ownership around it, because it's *my* blog. It's just human nature to care more about something that has your name on it than something that has your team's name on it.

The C# team actually has a group blog for FAQ questions. It's much better than not getting that information out at all, but it has neither the personality nor the interaction of a personal blog. That's okay if it's an *adjunct* to other blogs, but not if it's the only one for a team. I'd read a general Apress blog devoted to new releases even if it were a group blog, because it would have a different goal.

My advice to everybody doing group blogs is to do aggregated blogs instead. Sure, it's more work, but the result is so much better.

Comments

  • Anonymous
    September 24, 2004
    You are right it is important to distinguish the two and yes I thought you meant aggregated blogs in your previous post (while we are on terminology, are these "blog entries" or "blog posts" ?).

    Having clarified that, I tend to agree on your position on group blogs however here is one that qualifies as a group blog and I think is worth subscribing to: http://ea.3leaf.com/. Maybe it is the exception that proves the rule :-)
  • Anonymous
    September 24, 2004
    Exception that proves the rule:
    http://www.worldwidewords.org/qa/qa-exc1.htm
  • Anonymous
    September 24, 2004
    Maybe I'm biased, but I think http://blogs.msdn.com/jobsblog works pretty well as a group blog and retains personality of the writers. Hence... it is possible, just not well implemented often.
    josh
  • Anonymous
    September 24, 2004
    I recently stopped subscribing to the c# team blog for lack of posts...
  • Anonymous
    September 24, 2004
    Drew, interesting link, I enjoyed it. "Exception that proves the rule" is an expression of the English language. In Greek, the saying is: "Every rule has its exception". My native language is Greek, so I just found the closest English equivalent. Now if you point to any rule that does not have an exception... guess what my reply will be?
  • Anonymous
    September 24, 2004
    Maybe I'm biased, but I think http://blogs.msdn.com/jobsblog works pretty well as a group blog and retains personality of the writers. Hence... it is possible, just not well implemented often. josh
  • Anonymous
    September 24, 2004
    The comment has been removed
  • Anonymous
    September 29, 2004
    Not sure if you're a baseball fan, but the USS Mariner is a great blog co-written by three guys: http://ussmariner.com/
  • Anonymous
    September 29, 2004
    Not sure if you're a baseball fan, but the USS Mariner is a great blog co-written by three guys: http://ussmariner.com/
  • Anonymous
    September 29, 2004
    Sorry for the double post. (And now I've made it even worse with the triple post ;-)
  • Anonymous
    December 18, 2004
    Helpful For MBA Fans.