Flocking up your Blog

Have you ever been reading a blog, like you are reading this blog now, and wonder how many other blogs have similar content as this one? Not just posts or topics, but writing style and tone?

Some of you like politics. I know I do. And I like informative, interesting political pieces that cover the subject in depth. I'm not too crazy over partisan hack-jobs, but you have to put up with that from both sides to get to the interesting story -- how people make decisions.

Many times I've been reading a political blog and thought "It would be great to have the 20 blogs just like this one all together in some sort of magazine format. Kind of like a carnival, but unplanned. Something I can pull from instead of them pushing out to me."

I like to call these blogs that act as one "flocks of blogs". Why do I call them this? Because nobody else has come up with the words. Hey, when you make stuff up you get to name it. So there.

I would guess there's probably a hundred or so major flocks of blogs out there today -- USA politics from various angles, sports, hobbies, homeschool, etc. Inside of these flocks are maybe 10-50 thousand small flocks, flying along paths something like "libertarian politics for people who own model trains" or "funny stuff I saw on the web from a 20-something man living in the city" Some times these people reach out and find others of like mind, sometimes they do not. Or you will get a group of people pulling together that decide to become part of a blog-writing team. Of course, these folks don't think of their blogs in terms of flocks. Yet flocks they are. As some smart person said some time ago, there's only so many ways to be creative. And there are only so many favorite topics, styles, and philosophies of life.

At any one time, most people feel part of one or more flocks. They may have started reading Iraq war blogs by Iraqis and identify with those people and want to hear more. Or they might start reading some fan-site about their favorite rock star and want to hear more about him or her. Ah. But there's the rub.

How do you find your flock? Googling doesn't help. It just tells you everything on the web that matches your search terms. Technorati? Nope, and for the same reasons. The trick for any new blogging technology is to allow people the ability to find and mingle with flocks when they chose, not just blogs or websites.

Over time flocks migrate. People who used to read about the Iraqi people during times of war may start becoming interested in Iranians, or the Lebanese. People drift in and out of flocks, always knowing there is some larger group, some larger cognition out there, but never quite being able to touch it.