Technosailor.com Readers! Donate today to assist the CHF International Haiti Relief in their efforts.

18 April 2006 5 Comments

A New Way to Look at Bloggers: Referential or Experiential

You know, as I’ve been in the process of writing a book about blogging, I really thought I had looked at blogging from every angle possible. Well, not really, but it sure seems like it. Then a new way of looking at bloggers comes along and it makes so much sense that it ends up as a “must quote”. This is what happened when I read a letter from Greg Knauss on Kottke.org.

Greg’s comparison between Referential bloggers and experiential bloggers was so poetic as to be Zenlike. Here’s his explanation:

The referential blogger uses the link as his fundamental unit of currency, building posts around ideas and experiences spawned elsewhere: Look at this. Referential bloggers are reporters, delivering pointers to and snippets of information, insight or entertainment happening out there, on the Intraweb. They can, and do, add their own information, insight and entertainment to the links they unearth — extrapolations, juxtapositions, even lengthy and personal anecdotes — but the outward direction of their focus remains their distinguishing feature.

The experiential blogger is inwardly directed, drawing entries from personal experience and opinion: How about this. They are storytellers (and/or bores), drawing whatever they have to offer from their own perspective. They can, and do, add links to supporting or explanatory information, even unique and undercited external sources. But their motivation, their impetus, comes from a desire to supply narrative, not reference it.

So in that light, most political bloggers like Michelle Malkin, Daily Kos, and the king of all linkage Instapundit are all referential bloggers. Link, link, link. Little bits of actual content-generation, but mostly link, link, link.

Then there are other bloggers such as Steve Rubel, Seth Godin and Scrivs who are experiential bloggers and thus relate content to their readers in a form that is self-generated and self-motivated.

I guess I go in waves.

Pick up your copy of the WordPress Bible, a wildly popular resource for beginners and experts alike.

Written by Aaron Brazell on April 18, 2006

Popularity: 1% [?]

5 Responses to “A New Way to Look at Bloggers: Referential or Experiential”

  1. Jesse 19 April 2006 at 12:06 pm #

    Obviously there are a ton of bloggers that are clearly one or the other- There’s no doubt which kind Glenn Reynolds is. There’s no question which kind Darren Rowse is. But it seems the vast majority of bloggers are really somewhere in between, and unless you’re really good, you quite possibly aren’t going to succeed if you do pure links with a little tidbit of your own or pages and pages of yourself rambling with hardly any outside content…

  2. Jesse 19 April 2006 at 12:06 pm #

    Obviously there are a ton of bloggers that are clearly one or the other- There’s no doubt which kind Glenn Reynolds is. There’s no question which kind Darren Rowse is. But it seems the vast majority of bloggers are really somewhere in between, and unless you’re really good, you quite possibly aren’t going to succeed if you do pure links with a little tidbit of your own or pages and pages of yourself rambling with hardly any outside content…

  3. David Nick 20 April 2006 at 12:46 am #

    Yup, what Jesse said. I am somewhere in between. I like to use links as a basis of my article, but then I dig deep (sometimes it’s a shallow well) an offer my insight and personal perspective on it. I think that’s a good mark of a decent blogger. When I read other bloggers, I want to see what they’re talking about, and then I want to hear their opinions and arguements about it. That makes for a good informative dialog between bloggers and readers.

    But what the hell do I know? I am an amateur LOL

  4. David Nick 20 April 2006 at 12:46 am #

    Yup, what Jesse said. I am somewhere in between. I like to use links as a basis of my article, but then I dig deep (sometimes it’s a shallow well) an offer my insight and personal perspective on it. I think that’s a good mark of a decent blogger. When I read other bloggers, I want to see what they’re talking about, and then I want to hear their opinions and arguements about it. That makes for a good informative dialog between bloggers and readers.

    But what the hell do I know? I am an amateur LOL


Trackbacks/Pingbacks.

  1. LexBlog Blog - 23. Apr, 2006

    Two types of blogging : Referential and experiential…

    In my speaking I talk of the two extremes of blogging. On one end of the spectrum, you have folks like me who share what they read, adding a comment or two to a block quote from another post. We’re……