Is Tech Blogging Happening Too Fast?

Anne Zelenka has an interesting post at GigaOM. Entitled, "Tech Blogging: The Web Mind at Warp Speed", the post raises the question about whether tech blogging is happening too fast these days. Anne cites a couple people who feel that it is...

Marketing consultant and blogger Brian Oberkirch suggests that tech blogging happens too fast, without enough thought, and that a decrease in ad spending could have a helpful effect:

A minor correction in the ad market might be the best thing to happen to blogging. Maybe writers would turn away from becoming page mills and boring the crap out of us, and instead, will turn back to value, passion, thinking things through, making connections previously unseen.

Forrester blogger Josh Bernoff recently voiced a similar criticism:

When it comes to blogging, faster is often perceived to be better. GigaOm and TechCrunch are all over the trends, covering the same announcements, often within minutes of each other.

Anne, however, feels differently...

I’m not convinced, however, that better ideas emerge by holding back on them, deeply thinking them, and polishing them until they’re just right. With the global Internet mind, offering more tentative and provisional ideas and doing it faster may be a better strategy than sitting in an isolation chamber, devoid of feedback.

And...

If all tech blogs did was rewrite press releases, they would add little to the evolving understanding of technology. What they do instead is consistently introduce timely information and quick analysis into an ongoing conversation. While it’s not a perfect approach, it can contribute to an incremental growth in understanding — especially when that new information is mixed and mashed up by other writers working at different paces and with knowledge of other spheres.

I've been thinking about this lately. Every day, I spend a good portion of time sifting through the RSS feeds of the popular tech blogs I subscribe to. I am finding that for the majority of them, I view them as "news providers", rather than as "news analysts". I see their value as delivering news to me on a timely basis. I go through their feeds quickly, scanning the headline, rather than looking for their analysis. For this category of blogs, I am thinking of unsubscribing to some of them since they are playing redundant roles in my mind.

These days, I place much greater value on blogs that deliver lengthier, insightful posts. Read/WriteWeb, in particular, is a favorite of mine right now. I read their posts more carefully because I appreciate the analysis they provide.

So, from my perspective, I do think tech blogging is happening way too fast.