John Drake

Create and Be Merry

Drake Cooper "Be Merry" from Drake Cooper on Vimeo.

A little holiday cheer from Drake Cooper.

Enjoy.

For Ideas and Inspiration

Technorati recently released their 2011 State of the Blogosphere. It does a nice job relaying the demographics of blogging: who's blogging, how they go about it, what platforms are most used and things like that. So if you need that stuff, it's here. 

Despite lots of effort picking through this year's results, new insights were slim.

But here's one...

For the second year in a row the report also surveyed consumers, 80% of which were non-bloggers. And here's something they said that all blogs should keep in mind:

When it comes to seeking ideas and inspiration blogs dominate all media by a sizable margin. Which is wonderful. Because blogging is one of the most creative outlets around. There are no limits. You can create what you want. Write how you want. Use only imagery if you want. Get creative with links... It's your own space on the web where you can do whatever you wish. It's all about personal creation. And I subscribe to the idea that personal creation is one of the most wonderful as well as one of the most unmentioned benefits of the web.

Russell spoke recently about GeoCities and how that was neat because people could create their own thing at a very early development stage of the web. More on this thought and our free time is articulated well by Clay...

At 2:26 the video takes an interesting turn to Lolcats:

"Someone who has taken a Lolcat and shared it with the world is on a spectrum of activity that goes from there to Linux--it's a spectrum one can climb. The gulf is actually between doing something and doing nothing." Crossing over the gulf is actually the bigger deal.

And that's the reason that many people, including this author, struggle with spending significant time on Facebook because there's little room for raw creation. That's the place to share and connect, of course. (Per the State of the Blogosphere, Facebook is the second highest ranking share source of blog content by consumers--behind email.)

When people come to media for ideas and inspiration they turn to blogs. Of course they do. A quick stop at Kottke, It's Nice That or Fubiz re-inforces why. And reading something like this is a terrific reminder about just how creative a post about an otherwise dry topic can be.

That's the value blogs offer. Nice to see it quantified in a survey.