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I don’t want to see any more blogging networks

I remember when I got caught up in the pro-blogging craze. It was, well, before I even started blogging and I was in a hurry to catch up with it. I still aspire to be a “pro-blogger” but I’m willing to give it time. Back to what I was saying, right after I started blogging here 9rules had their 3rd round, and I was like “OH MAN WOW I GOTTA GET IN AAAH!”

I was young and stupid. Not that I’m old and smart now, but you get the idea. Anyway the ship came and went and I wasn’t on it. Not even with Liquid Designs to my name. It wasn’t a big deal, though, since I realized that I didn’t want to be in a blogging network after all. There were a few reasons for this. For one, I realized that if you are in a blog network, you are in the same ring as the other members. This isn’t a big deal if you like everything, but I for one can’t stand sex-blogging, and many networks including 9rules have sex blogs. Another reason was that I realized that I would prefer to get “pro” the old fashioned way; by promoting myself, and not by depending on the runoff of traffic to other blogs or an aggregator page. Sure, getting there on my own will take longer and might not even happen at all, but at least I can try. And the final reason was that I realized blogging networks are, in the end, just ad revenue generators. Whereas it was once “come to xyz.com and play games, chat, watch videos while seeing ads in the corner of your eye,” it’s now “come to zyx.com and read blogs while seeing ads in the corner of your eye.” Well, at least xyz.com offered something fun. I hate to be a cynic but reading blogs is, well, boring. Unless I’m reading Flock Sucks, but they don’t update often enough.

Anyway, it’s funny that I’ve been thinking this for a while now because today I came across an article at Whitespace that mentions that blogging networks will fail in 2006. Well, of all places to hear it I figured Whitespace would be the last one. It’s possible that blogging networks won’t fail after all, since it’s hard to measure something that is still so young, but I’m thinking I’m not the only one who’s tired of looking at them. I mean, I saw Erati.com today and I thought, “get me out of here! Back button! BACK BUTTON!!!” Maybe it’s the stupid name, or the ugly logo, but I think it’s the laundry list of blogs, about the same old topics; business, tech, girls, blogging, etc. I know these topics are guaranteed traffic sponges, but how many biz-tech-girls-blogging blogs do we really need? And lets not get into the fact that Erati is a sub-network of BlogMedia, and is also advertising for Spoke-Media (ho-bag blog is not enough. we need ho-bag network). You know that feeling you get when you see an RSS feed going through another RSS feed that goes through another RSS feed, and then the whole thing loops around again and eventually you’ve just wasted bandwidth to get the umpteenth iteration of the same original content, just re-re-blogged? Let’s just say it’s happening a lot over there. And that’s annoying.

So I’ll end this rant on a positive note: I really don’t think I’m joining any blog networks, ever. My opinion could change if the right people came along and thought there was some worth to it, but I doubt that will happen. And now I need to stop blogging about blogging. Really.