Malcolm Gladwell’s book, “The Tipping Point” is a great read, providing a lot of stimulating thought about the concept of a “tipping point”. A point in an evolution of a process where there is an apparent sudden and dramatic change in the way things were previously done. Think the adoption of VHS over Betamax, for example.

It is difficult to know where blogging is going if you’re in the thick of things, and reading blogs all the time (which I find myself doing). When you read Sifry’s state of the union speech about how blogs are exploding at an absolute prodigious rate, you find yourself thinking “wow — that’s incredible”.

Furthermore, when you read about how rapidly a newer generation of internet users are adopting the social content systems and taking to this new ecosystem of participation — you begin to think “wow — this is important.”

Then, you start reading books, such as “Blog: Understanding the information reformation”, by Hugh Hewitt, and political maunderings aside, it really gives you the opinion that bloggers (political ones, to be sure) had an instrumental role in debunking Dan Rather’s story on George W. Bush that eventually got him canned, but as well, but also the failure of John Kerry to win the Presidential Election in 2004. And then you begin thinking “wow — that’s … influential”.

But …

But then, you start stumbling upon data from the Scripps Survey Research Center of Ohio University which interviewed over 1000 adults. Now, you might think there would be a bias, because … well, maybe Ohians (is that right?) are perhaps not as technologically savvy. But all that aside, there are some startling results (for me, anyway) [tip: bloggers blogosphere]

• 88% never use blogs for news
• 7% read blogs 4 days a week or less
• 5% read blogs 5 days or more
• 25% of young adults read blogs once a week, compared to 3% of people age 65 and older

Which then gets you to start thinking “wait — who reads these things, exactly?”

And then, you read the latest article on Wired, about “Splogs” — Blogs that are essentially spam (which, I should add, is a fabulous read); that is, they are full of the usual offers, but worse, steal content from other sites . In it, they interview Anil Dash over at Textpad about how these are proliferating around the blogophere, and account for as much as 60% of all blogs. More worrisome — the “splogosphere” is growing at a faster rate than the “blogosphere”.

Which then gets you to start thinking “wait — what are most people reading, anyway?”

I think these thin slices of understanding, when cobbled together, paint a picture that is somewhere in the middle. Blogging is a movement that is on the rise. Has it pierced the public (off-line) consciousness? Probably not (see the Scripps study). Are most blogs garbage — well, if by “most” you mean more than half, and by “garbage” you mean spam — than, actually yes!

But, blogs are clearly influential, because blogs are a source of news. Citizen journalism is on the rise. They can change things and bring light to events that would have never seen the light of day (see: Dell battery fire, and AOL data leak). Opinion makers and celebrities have cottoned on to this fact, and many of them actively (or try to, or give the apprance of doing so) attempt to participate in the blogosphere.

Moreover, future internet users have never known a world without blogs, without instant messaging, and without MySpace. Blogging will, at sometime in the future, be another recognized medium recieving just as much attention as the others.

I think that revenue models such as AdSense are creating a fertile ground for splogs — and combatting them is going to be just as hard as email-spam. Appealing to bloggers higher sense of good … quite frankly, I think is just naive. But the pollution of the blogosphere, one wonders, if it will have any kind of ‘poison-pill’ type of effect, and turn people off of the whole thing altogether.

And that is more than simply blogs which have culled (stolen/ plagiarized) data from other sites to act as AdSense machines, but also those that act as corporate shills and sockpuppets, giving the appearance of independence, when actually they are the arms of sophisticated marketing departments.

I don’t think we’re there yet — at that “Tipping Point”.
But when you’re in the thick of things, its difficult to see the bigger picture. What IS clear is that is sure as hell fun to talk about and think about. And discuss about.

Let me know what you think on this topic — do YOU think we’re at that tipping point yet?