This article by John Evans recently appeared in Syntagma

Blogging is like last year’s newspapers — only of interest to historians and obsessives. Blogging, though, continues to get immense coverage on the “blogosphere,” mainly because lots of people invested money in it.

What I want to do here — very briefly — is to convince them they need to shift focus just a little to grasp the wider picture. Two years ago I wrote a rather silly piece on why I hated the “B” word in all its derivations. So I do have form here — I’m not just going off on one.

Blogs, or weblogs, began life as a new system of mass publishing. It made it easy for anyone interested in distributing their thoughts globally to do so at minimum cost. No wonder mainstream publishers felt threatened.

The problem for bloggers and blog-related businesses is that the word itself comes from a typical counter-culture and remains deeply embedded there. To say “blog” instead of “mass publishing technology” is to separate blogging from the world of publishing and lose its significance. Nowadays, “blogging” seems closer to politics than technology.

Typically, the mainstream has hoovered it up, adapted it to its own needs, and moved on. They have also raised the threshold of excellence by adding expensive new technologies.

When bloggers insist on standing aside, wearing their badge of defiance — blogging — they resemble the anti-capitalist mobs of the 1990s, the ragged-trousered international Marxists of the 1980s, and the newer “climuttchange” fanatics. They don’t seem part of the human race.

In the beginning blogging was a genuine topic of interest because it did have an immense releasing effect for many new voices. Now that it’s mainstream stuff, people should stop trying to create distinctions that are no longer there. They are not helping themselves if they want to earn a living online. Moving on is what successful people do, as Jason Calacanis has.

Blogging is not a movement, it’s lots of individuals doing their own thing.

Face it, blogging is boring. In the end, it’s what you publish, not how you published it that matters.