You have been blogging for a long time in the whole scheme of things what has changed since you started to blog?

Three big differences. First, when I started there were few other bloggers. Now there are millions. Second, most blogs are now syndicated. In fact, I would say that blogs are now essentially defined by syndication. A blog without a feed isn’t really a blog. Third, blogs now have a lot of respect and attention from the mainstream media. In fact, they are becoming knit into the mainstream media in a variety of ways. In the long run I expect blogs, and blog authors, to serve as sources of, and editors for, a large percentage of mainstream news.

Why do you think blogging is so disruptive?

What’s disruptive isn’t blogging itself, but the low threshold of publication and authority that the Net and the Web have provided individuals since the beginning. Blogging has equipped writers far better than html alone did in the beginning; but the disruptive trend toward personal authorship, and personal authority, predates blogging

One of the main points we made in The Cluetrain Manifesto, way back in 1999, was that the real revolution with the Net was not an increase in the power of supply, but an increase in the power of demand. Customers were no longer mere “consumers”, and not only graced with far more choice –the power to pick and choose among vendors’ products and services. Thanks to the Net, and to features such as blogging, the demand side now had the power also to *supply*. This is what’s so disruptive.

With blogging, the demand side began to supply its own journals, and its own journalism. Big-J Journalism was no longer the only legitimate kind. Now we have millions of Benjamin Franklins, each writing his or her own Poor Richard’s Almanac. (For my money the first blog was Franklin’s.) This is disruptive to many institutions. But it is also empowering in countless ways.

We see demand-supplying-itself in other areas in addition to blogging. Such as software development. The free software and open source movements are examples of the same phenomenon.

Conventional economics has no frame of reference for demand-supplying-itself. Years will pass before we begin to understand the phenomenon fully.

Blogging is also disruptive because it violates the whole notion of mediation — of a “medium” serving as a conduit between producers and consumers. Blogs speak directly to readers. They don’t have “consumers”, or an “audience”. What’s more, many of those readers are also writers, are also producers. The *unmediated* nature of blogs is very strange for those whose minds remain framed by traditional media notions.

Whenever somebody calls blogs a “medium”, they prove they don’t get what blogs really are.

Where do you see blogging in 5 years?

It will be the standard, baseline, molecular-level form of journalism. There will still be large, mainstream publications and other media; but blogs will be far more the context than the exception. They will be inside, rather than outside.

What is the most important aspect of a personl blog?

You mean a personal blog?

Voice. Authenticity. Honesty. Blogs are speech. They are not just a form of entertainment, or worse, of “content”. They express the direct, usually unedited voices of human beings.

When you read a blog what gets you to add it to your RSS feed and what gets you to not visit the site again?

Well, I’ve generally stopped adding blogs to my RSS reader. As I said today my aggregator is mostly filled with searches for keywords and keyword combinations.

There are some blogs that I follow because I’m curious about what they are saying. Most of those are in my blogroll, which (I’ll admit) is far longer than it ought to be and has no small amount of rot in it.

What blogs are you reading currently?

Dave Winer, Andrew Sullivan, Jeff Jarvis, David Weinberger, Susan Crawford, Sheila Lennon, Bret Faucett, Mike Arrington, Bernie DeKoven, Kim Cameron, Drummond Reed, Allen Searls, Larry Lessig, John Palfrey (and the whole crew at the Berkman Center), Don Marti, Jim Thompson, Dave Rogers, Daniel Drezner, Matt Welch, Roger Simon, Tony Pierce, Moxie, Mary Hodder, Britt Blaser, Kaliya Hamlin, Johannes Ernst, Shelley Powers, Craig Burton, the BoingBoing crew, Chris Locke (RageBoy), Jay Rosen, Terry Heaton, Scott Rosenberg, Mike Sanders, Chris Lydon, Ted and Julie Leung, Ed Cone, Ruby Sinreich, Dan Gillmor, Steve Gillmor, Amy Wohl… and on down my blogroll, plus whoever links to me or writes about subjects that interest me.

Blogging has become a powerhouse in the last 2 years why do you think that happened?

It’s interesting and useful. Again, not just on the demand side. Thanks to blogging, anybody can supply their own journalism as well. Once one feels the power of that, the “powerhouse” sensation is remarkable.

How long did it take you to build your base?

I don’t have a base. I’ve never thought of my readers as anything other than readers. in fact, I don’t think of them in the possessive, either. David Weinberger correctly uses my blog as an example of a writer who gives readers many ways to leave, rather than to stay.

I write for readers who might be interested in the subjects I write about, not those who are interested in my self. I don’t mind when people take an interest in me, but that’s not why I write.

I once wrote “blogging is about making and changning minds”. Jay Rosen quoted that, ran with it and added tremendous value to it. So did his readers who also blogged about the idea. That gratifies me.

To me blogging is about rolling snowballs. Whether I start a snowball rolling, or add mass to one that rolls by, I have no sense that it’s ‘mine’ in either case. I do, however, have a sense, quite often, of what works and what doesn’t, what’s interesting and what isn’t.

Yet, knowing a subject is interesting to just a few people doesn’t stop me from writing about it. Blogging for me isn’t a popularity contest. I used to be in the Technorati Top 20. Now I’m down in the high 50s. Soon I’ll be off the list. It’s inevitable. There are too many new, good bloggers out there, moving up the list.

Being a ‘top blogger’ is like being a ‘top paramecium’. We’re all one-celled animals here. And I mean that in a positive way. Blogs are profoundly human, and personal. Humans are indivisible, and don’t add very well without losing their humanity. There is only one me. I am typical of few, if any, other people, much less other bloggers.

I can’t think of anything that demonstrates the sovereign nature of the self better than a blog.

By the way, this is the only way I can see statistics about how many people read my blog. The numbers have ranged from about 1000 to 4000 since the year 2000. I have no idea if the numbers are accurate or not. Some tell me they couldn’t be. The numbers don’t take feed subscriptions into account, but I have no idea how many of those there are, at all.

In any case, I don’t care. I have a pretty good sense of when I’m having an effect and when I’m not. The proof of that is in the searches, and in the aggregator. Not in statistics.

Community involvement in a blog is key to it’s success how did you get your community involved in your blog?

I don’t have a community.

There are people who read my blog, and occasionally blog stuff I say. But that doesn’t make them members of my “community”.

True, there *is* a social network of bloggers to which I belong. Several, in fact. But what makes them social is that they show up at the same conferences, events, dinners and so on. These for me are geographical: Bay Area bloggers, Boston Bloggers, New York bloggers, L.A. bloggers, London bloggers, Toronto bloggers, Paris bloggers, Copenhagen bloggers…

What advice would you give someone who is just starting out blogging?

Think of every post as an email that’s “cc:world“. Don’t worry about making mistakes. Be yourself. Write about what interests you. Link a lot and follow other links. Follow subjects through keyword search subscriptions in your aggregator. Drive ideas. Participate. Write with provisionally, rather than finality (leave that up to the big-time print journalists who are paid to pontificate). Start snowballs rolling, and add snow to ones rolling by. Be humble. Make mistakes, correct them and move on.

Oh, and use your own name. Don’t bury your identity.