Warren Ellis wants more content, fewer linkblogs
And I think he's wrong. I think what we really need is both and neither. We need a more seamless meshing of the two. Blogs that link to interesting things, and also provide unique thoughts and stories and coverage. The two greatest strengths of the interweb are its interconnectedness and the ease of publishing. We don't need to separate those, or to point at Boing Boing like Ellis does and call the job done. We need a third way. A synthesis. All of my favorite sites aleady do this, they mix unique content with fun links or important stories. Look at MightyGodKing Chris Bird for a perfect example. Hell, look at us here at the Newswire. We not only run this daily compilation of all of the awesome things we find, but we also publish a weekly magazine for free. We have been for eight years now, as a matter of fact.
Beyond which I have to disagree with Ellis' point that "no one does it better than BB." But I'll save that for another day.
What do you think?
(In fact, if you read any of the abhorrent comments threads on BoingBoing, you could be forgiven for coming away with the notion that its readership would be happy if it shut down tomorrow.)
(It’s also notable, I think, that my favourite “new” groupblogs — Ectomo, Coilhouse, Inferior4 1 — don’t just link and go. But anyway.)
And, frankly, no-one’s going to do a better job of being the internet’s copy/paste editors than the BB crew anyway. They have the time, they have the money, they have the setup, they have the audience and they have the momentum of nearly a decade in the job. Nobody needs another linkblog like that. There are already thousands of them. The job of curation is being taken care of. Look ahead.