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A Note About MC.com’s Future

By Maegan Carberry ⋅ November 10, 2008 ⋅   Email this post ⋅  Digg This ⋅  Share on Facebook ⋅  Print this post ⋅ Post a comment

Hello, friends!

If any of you wondered why I disappeared right after the election, a time one might suppose I’d have a lot to say, there are two reasons.

Foremost, on Nov. 5 I hopped immediately on a plane to San Francisco for the Web 2.0 Summit, where I spent several days with world tech and media leaders discussing the future role of the internet in society. Incidentally, the Palace Hotel, where the event was hosted, had a very shoddy wireless connection, and every time I went to write something I was thwarted!! (Next year they are moving to the Westin, thank goodness.)

My absence extends beyond that, however. I’ve been reflecting on the nature of the blogsophere and what role I can play in it, given the sea of voices we are all flooded with daily. It seems that too much of blog world is about instantaneous commentary and aggregation. While I enjoy aggregating articles and videos for those with a similar perspective to consider, it’s not 1) something I can’t do more quickly and efficiently on Twitter, or 2) particularly thoughtful. That’s not to say blogs aren’t useful for news in that regard, and were I to ever rejoin the (gasp!) MSM or a more prominent blog, I’d be happy to re-engage in such a capacity. But I intend to slow down a bit going forward and make more incisive contributions to our dialogue about media, politics, technology and the role our millennial generation leaders will play in the exciting four years ahead of us. 

On the plane I finally had a chance to read the November issue of Wired, and encountered Paul Boutin’s proclamation that blogs are dead. That’s obviously not true over at HuffPost or TechCrunch, but for smaller publishers looking to make a profession or viable source of ancillary revenue they may just be a stimulating, time-consuming hobby. (This was a predominant belief at the Summit as well, particularly given the oversaturated market of start-up ad networks.) Since I write on sites with much larger audiences, I’m going to dedicate more energy to them, and use this as a place to aggregate my work for those who are interested. And, of course, the very exciting photo gallery. 

So, if you want to know what I’m reading and thinking about on a daily basis (surely I have a few stalkers out there!), I encourage you to sign up for my Twitter feed.