Personal blogs are dead; long live professional blogs?

I meant to re-post this sooner, "Should we mourn the end of blogs?" I identify with Mel Campbell's sentiments:

I keep on blogging because, compared to tweeting for thousands of followers or posting to hundreds of Facebook friends, the single-digit pageviews my blog now attracts are a paradoxically private way to express myself.

Yep, call me a Gen-X dinosaur, but I'm sticking with my blog, too. ("I'm so 2008; I'm so 2000 and late.") To me, prose is still more powerful and precise than photo or video. Most times I don't even add photos to my posts. Why bother? It's not my content; my value added is the written word.

That said, the format of this blog is mainly re-posts, a kind of Twitter without the character limit. This blog is basically my personal filing cabinet of opinions and what's most important in world events... minus the Kardashians, naturally.

Believe it or not, I get anywhere from 300 to 900 pageviews a day, (over 200,000 overall), and that's without banners, monetization, SEO, linking to other blogs, or otherwise trying to promote it. Most of my acquaintances don't even know I have a blog. Those pageviews are simply because I've got 2,613 posts and counting, some of them on arcane or abstruse topics, and so I get Google's respect.

At any rate, like they say, if you can't beat 'em, join 'em, so in honor of all you Millennials with yer Instagrams, enjoy this collection of cheesy, awkward, terrible and obnoxious selfies!

I'm shocked that Geraldo, after decades as a distinguished TV journalist, went in for this venal self-promotion thing on social networks like the kids.

Actually she still looks really f-able.

Inappropriate? I'm on the fence.

Is this what passes for self-expression nowadays?

"These flames make my teeth look really sparkly."

Don't worry, I think it's really Tyler Perry in there, acting.

Good thought, bad timing. 

???

"Well, I'm the only one here so you must be talkin' to me!"

Dude, I tried, but enlarging this photo didn't help.

And this concludes my gettin' with the times.

Should we mourn the end of blogs?

By Mel Campbell

July 16, 2014 | Guardian

URL: http://gu.com/p/4v2mt

Putin's blogger law to fight 'CIA project' known as 'the Internet'

Mr. Putin, calm down: everybody knows Al Gore invented the Internet, not the CIA!

Seriously though, the widely-made prediction is coming true that Russian militarism abroad will be accompanied by even more draconian, oppressive rule at home in the Motherland.

Viktor V. Yerofeyev, a Russian writer, told the New York Times, "On the one hand, the Russian government says the Russian people are the best. On the other hand, it doesn’t trust the people."

I can clarify. There's no contradiction. Putin trusts Russians in the abstract, collectively; he just doesn't trust them as individuals. Understand?  Similarly, Putin trusts Ukrainians, er, Novorrossiyans, but he's got 40,000 Russian troops on the border just to make sure no jackrabbits from Pravy Sector or Svoboda try to cross over and rape, pillage and burn their way to Moscow.

Seriously, it makes me sick that Putin is a guy many on the knee-jerk Left in the U.S. and Europe admire, simply because he stands up to Western "imperialism." If these outspoken lefties lived in Russia, Putin would have them breaking rocks and eating snow in Magadan.

P.S. -- My readership in Russia is second only to that in the U.S.  Does that mean I should register with the Russian gov't.?  Nah, I'm gonna stay anonymous.

Russia's New “Blogger Law” Forces Writers to Register With Government

By Taylor Berman

May 7, 2014 | Gawker

First curse words, now bloggers: On Monday, Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a new law—referred to as the "blogger's law"—that will require online writers with more than 3,000 daily readers to register with the Roskomnadzor, Russia's media oversight agency.

Under the new law, which also affects microblogs and social networks, popular bloggers will no longer be able to remain anonymous and will be required to publish their names and email addresses.

From Reporters Without Borders:

[Bloggers] will be required to confirm the accuracy of the information they post, to respect the electoral law and to refrain from using swearwords. Using blogs and social networks to "hide or falsify information of general interest" or bring a citizen or group into disrepute will be forbidden. Such vaguely-worded bans are open to every kind of interpretation.

"This law will cut the number of critical voices and opposition voices on the Internet," Galina Arapova, director of the Mass Media Defense Center and an expert on Russian media law, told the New York Times. "The whole package seems quite restrictive and might affect harshly those who disseminate critical information about the state, about authorities, about public figures."

Putin signed the new law just weeks after denouncing the internet as a "CIA project."