Jack Yan: the Persuader Blog: Potential new worlds, at the rate of a blog a second

It must be satisfying as a founder to see this: Dave Sifry, the man behind Technorati, released his ‘State of the Blogosphere’ a few days ago. It’s been picked up by most blogs, but I wanted to highlight one statistic: a new blog is created every second. In the time I have taken to type and proof this, and add the links, a few hundred blogs have sprung up.
It means more than a million blogs a year, and I am sure the rate will increase. If each one of these bloggers has inﬂuence over his or her network of people, then we might see some real change.
The whole Muslim cartoon affair has brought me into contact with regular Muslims and Arabs, thereby passing the lies of governments, extremists and media. Forming these networks remind me once again of the promise of the internet as a global force, something that we are in danger of forgetting as the web tries to mirror the geopolitics of the real world.
The web must remain a frontier where there are no borders, for otherwise there would be no purpose to it. It would simply be another boring medium that adds to the din, stress and confusion of everyday life. Through the web, we should rightly perceive someone halfway across the world as a neighbour, because for the ﬁrst time in our lives, it is now possible. We might actually create unity and make the world a better place.

Del.icio.us tags: blogging | unity | blogosphere

Posted by Jack Yan, 13:56 permalink

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Update: my coComment box is at the bottom of the ﬁrst page to this blog, at www.jackyan.com/blog. It’s still in beta, but when it comes right, I am sure it will create the dialogues that we expect blogs to. It’s only natural, and human, to want to feel part of the human race and the planet.

# posted by

Jack Yan: 2/09/2006 02:18:00 PM

"The whole Muslim cartoon affair has brought me into contact with regular Muslims and Arabs, thereby passing the lies of governments, extremists and media."

I was just thinking earlier how our personal experience can colour our perception of world affairs.

It can work negatively, as with stereotypes etc.

But it can also work positively - as when we meet someone from another part of the world (physically and ideologically) and discover their humanity.

It's essentially unscientific, but we are unscientific people at heart.

All of this to say, I think you're right Jack - the kind of globalisation that the internet facilitates can break stereotypes, or at least replace negative unscientific data with positive unscientific data.

Or put another way, we learn more about a brand (of a business, nation, race or religion) through the individuals we deal with than anything else.

# posted by

Simon: 2/10/2006 06:23:00 AM

Well put, Simon: we are, ultimately, all ambassadors—and it’s useful to put that back in the context of business, too. Humans really want respect and a chance to be all they can be—and it’s through interactions and conversations that we learn and take steps to achieve our life goals.

# posted by

Jack Yan: 2/10/2006 12:07:00 PM