Adoption by the mainstream is the natural state of affairs for edge trends that gain traction. It can be a sad affair or a celebration, depending on one’s point of view.
Nicholas Carr, a serious writer and editor with a blog, makes some astute observations about the state of blogging as we head toward 2009.
Stylewise, little distinguishes today’s popular blogs from ordinary news sites. One good indicator is page bloat. Among the top 100 blogs, as listed by the blog search engine Technorati, the average “front page” is nearly a megabyte, and three-quarters of the blogs have front pages larger than a half megabyte. The main culprits behind the bloat are image files, which have proliferated as blogs have adopted the look of traditional news sites. The top 100 blogs have, on average, a whopping 63 images on their front pages.
Carr’s front page template only has four images by contrast. AdPulp doesn’t carry much more than that, although we do drop images into posts more frequently than does Carr.
Yet, number of images, or ads, isn’t always indicative of business intent. In fact, keeping a site clean might lend one a business advantage, provided there’s another business model besides display advertising at work.