"boring" is underrated

[“George”, which I sent out in the newsletter recently. You can get the signed print here etc.]

I was thinking back to “The Golden Age of Blogging”, whenever that was. Say, six or seven years ago… when it hit that sweet spot between still feeling like virgin territory, yet just on the verge of reaching critical mass.

Back then the Blogosphere was TINY. We blog nerds were a minority. We were cultural weirdos. But we knew we were on to something, even if the rest of the world didn’t see it yet.

And we were looking VERY HARD for business models to support our new, beloved medium…

I remember when a guy landing a well-paying job just on the merits of his blog, was considered big news.

I remember when a girl landing a book deal just from her blog, was considered big news.

I remember when Robert Scoble blogging on behalf of Microsoft was considered big news.

I remember when Gawker or Techcrunch making $10K a month on advertising, was considered big news.

A blogger making good money selling art- Well, that’s what I do now for a living– back then that would have been considered HUGE. Now we take that kind of thing for granted. Book deals, $10K monthly advertising revenues, dream jobs, celebrity Microsoft bloggers, nowadays that’s no big deal, either.

I remember when blogs first became “News”, when that Businessweek story hit in early 2005. It was a very exciting, validating, heady time for us early-adoptors.

Eventually the buzz and the hype died down, of course. Along came Twitter, Facebook, MySpace and whatever; the story moved on. “Blogging” got boring….

But to paraphrase Clay Shirky, a technology doesn’t become truly useful until it becomes boring, until it’s no longer “News”.

We may miss those early days, when blogging was new, exciting and “Hot”.

But for me and a lot of my early-adoptor friends, our blogs are making us A LOT more money now, than they ever did then.

“Boring” is underrated…