Forumisation of the Blogs from Macedonia

[Originally published January 19, 2006]

During 2005 I noticed a trend I provisionally named "forumisation of the blogs" from Macedonia, i.e. using blogs as a kind of "dispersed forum" ( Jovan). The blogger plays the role of moderator: starting a topic with his/her post, and then letting the visitors—including many other bloggers—providing comments, sometimes leading lengthy polemics.

This trend is not necessarily bad, but is different from the practice in the outside world, where majority of the bloggers, especially those most successful, use their own blogs to comment posts or articles published on other blogs or websites. Such comments usually consist of:

• Short summary/blogger's opinion
• Quote, and
• (Obligatory) link to the source.

The mutual deep linking in particular (alongside the blogroll) enabled the blogs to rise to the level of new and influential "wave of the future." Mutual links influence increasing the blogs' rank on Google, enabling them to surface among the search results. At a time there was even talk of "blog noise" as major issue Google needed to solve. Nevertheless, Google bought Blogger, the blogs won the fight for their place under the sun, and then they were noticed by the Macedonian public.

Most of the Macedonian blogs that appeared in the last year or two are introspective and serve for publishing of personal views, findings, or literary works. Most of them visibly lack deep links towards other blogs and websites.

I reckon that increase in deep linking will not only widen the horizons of the individual bloggers, but will enable raising of the Google PageRank of the whole Macedonian web – bringing more visits to these websites by new users, especially foreigners.