Attack of the Blogs – the cover story on Forbes magazine, wins this week’s award for shoddy tech reporting.  The article’s lead foreshadows its vague and pompous angle.

Web logs are the prized platform of an online lynch mob spouting liberty but spewing lies, libel and invective.

Firstly, let me say that I do not spew forth invective – I’ll give an author credit where credit is due. I'll extend the olive branch, and freely acknowledge that “Invective” is a great vocab word. Using it in a sentence is sure to impress the high school English teacher. Nevertheless, the author's mastery of advanced vocabulary words doesn't make up for the article's lack of Substance (with a roman S).   I give Forbes a D minus; but not an F, because there were valid – and good points made. And I’ve listed those below:

1. Blogs can do serious damage to a brand.
2. Companies are waging a guerrilla war in the blogosphere. For example, Acme inc. sets up a fake “independent” weblog devoted to smearing their competitor.
3. Smart companies will invest money in “total information awareness” of what is being said about them in the blogosphere. You can’t stop blogs from attacking, but at the very least, you can ensure a swift response to attacks.

The biggest weakness of the article is its characterization of the blogosphere as a “lynch mob”.  It reveals a fundamental misunderstanding of what the blogosphere is. Call me a nitpicker, but I think you should know what something is before you write a cover story on it.

There are indeed several lynch mobs within the blogosphere. The vast majority of them are held together by political ideals. On the American left, we have the Nader-phite mob of green peace, Che worshiping, wannabe Leninist idiots. And on the American right, we have the mob of war-mongering, inbred paranoids and pig-faced republican lackeys. The political lynch mobs are particularly dangerous when provoked. However, those two “lynch mobs” make up the extreme minority of the blogosphere.

The sad fact is that the great majority of bloggers are 15 year old girls who write deeply moving entries such as “I hate homework”, and “OMG! Billy likes me!” And the rest of blogs are as diverse as humanity. I’ve seen blogs that discuss everything from knitting to hunting. To be perfectly honest,  most of the time I haven’t a clue what the majority of bloggers are talking about.

The point is that the blogosphere is neither *good* nor *bad*. “Blogosphere” is a noun which is about as specific as “the public”, “the masses”, or “the American people”.  As a rule, anyone who dares make sweeping generalities about “the masses” or “the blogosphere” either doesn’t know what they are talking about, or has ulterior motives.

Of course, I’m not exactly sure why this bothered me so much… After all, who actually reads Forbes?

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