The blogosphere was stirred up by gossip blogger Paul Boutin. In a successful attempt for some linkbait, the Valleywag correspondent announced the death of blogging on Wired.com:

The blogosphere, once a freshwater oasis of folksy self-expression and clever thought, has been flooded by a tsunami of paid bilge. Cut-rate journalists and underground marketing campaigns now drown out the authentic voices of amateur wordsmiths. It’s almost impossible to get noticed, except by hecklers.

He criticizes the immpersonal character of blogging and supports that with the following argument:

In 2002, a search for “Mark” ranked Web developer Mark Pilgrim above author Mark Twain. That phenomenon was part of what made blogging so exciting. No more. Today, a search for, say, Barack Obama’s latest speech will deliver a Wikipedia page, a Fox News article, and a few entries from professionally run sites like Politico.com. The odds of your clever entry appearing high on the list? Basically zero.

Boudin has also noticed that the Technorati top 100 list consists of blogs that have a bunch of professional editors cranking out thirty posts a day.

When Boudin states that blogging is only about writing mainstream stuff and expecting to hit the top search results with that, he’s right. But I think blogging doesn’t concern that, no, blogging is about niches and “small” communities.

So where do The Next Web’s 5000 readers come from?

Boris, Patrick, Arjen, Robert and I started The Next Web Blog earlier this year, when blogging was, according to Boudin, already pretty much dead. However, within six months we’ve managed to build up a successful European blog about Web 2.0 and technology with over 5000 RSS readers every day and TechCrunch stealing our editors.

Why? Because we focused on a relatively small community: European Internet geeks. By listening to what they wanted, answering every comment, showing up at every meet-up in a white suit, and using the power of viral, we’ve managed to grow an international web presence pretty fast.

A niche, for crying out loud!

Niches can be even smaller than the European tech crowd. If you want to start blogging about balcony gardens, you might only have an audience of several hundred people. Yet when growing some great flowers on your balcony is what tickles your fancy, you’re probably ecstatic about meeting some like-minded folks.

Boutin absolutely ignores the long tail of bloggers, ordinary people who just want share their knowledge and passion. By doing that, he pulls himself down to a self-obsessed gossip blogger who was a little too eager for some personal branding and linkbait. Well, he got some…

By the way, no worries, when people Google “balcony gardening”, you’ll end up high in the results. And if you don’t, it’s all about the fun anyway. See three examples in the video Dorien Pfauth and Sacha Post shot for BLOG08 (which is tomorrow!!). Blog on!

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