blog slower, read closer

In the world of bloggers there are many classifications. One, already old, makes a distinction between life bloggers and link bloggers. The life blogger uses the blog as a tool to talk about his (and others) life experiences: events, emotions, moods and brief reflections on it.
The link blogger collects and publishes new links. There are more female than male life bloggers, where as men prefer link blogging. Link bloggers tend to give short information, sometimes commenting it and nearly almost linking to the spots where the information is related to.

• For many people the link bloggers are going too fast, producing information that is shortened and shrinked, and tends to be at the surface, rather then going deep to the roots of a problem. It seldom leads to deeper reflection and there is hardly a chance to get to well grounded conclusions.
• Another important objection against these speedy bloggers is that many of them lack a theoretical coherent theory. As a result their news is what it is: new, but without any or mainly poor grounding in overall theories.
• Furthermore there is hardly historical reflection available. Many hypes have passed that have their roots in common human behavior and some of them were active already long before the internet application appeared.

However people have a need for speedy news, where the aspects mentioned before are not relevant for the majority of blog readers. The tabloids, reviving partly the newspaper scene, show that this formula works.

Some people however try to slow down in blog country. They introduced the term "slow blogging". Barbara Ganley, as far as we can see, introduced the term for the first time.
By slowing down the production and reaction rate there is more time for critical reading, better analysis and better conclusions. Time, especially as a factor to let the concepts and thoughts incubate, is seen as a natural aspect of the learning proces. Benjamin Bloom created a taxonomy, in which many of these elements, useful for slow bloggers, are worked out.

In the sixties and seventies from the 20th century a similar development emerged. At that time teachers also thought that reading went too fast and therefore got no deep impact. They created the technique of close reading.

Combining experiences and research from that time gives a good starting point for a more in depth use of blogs, as a worthwhile and new tool.