Stop blogisms now, or else
December 6th, 2005 by Terry
I am serious. I will stop this car right now and go back there and you will be sorry if this unholy trend of goofy made up blogisms continues. In fact, don’t even use the word blogism.
Now I know we just had a very good discussion on this very blog about useful marketing fluff words. We all hate the fact that the word solution is used instead of software. We all hate that anything is best-of-breed and synergistic. So why are we starting the madness now.
The English language is a wonderful thing. We have a plethora (and yes, I do know what a plethora is) of words that can describe almost anything. So why do we have to invent useless words and phrases to describe what we do in blogs. Our business communications have become one big run on sniglet (I am dating myself for those who remember Not Necessarily the News.)
I hearby declare my writings to be blogism free. I will not be using any of the following terms, and you shouldn’t either. Remember, back in 1990 someone said, “Hey, I like the way leverage and synergy work together. And heck, utilize makes me look much smarter than the blue collar people saying use!!” If that person had been slapped silly, we all would be much better off.
So my list of words that should die an unhealthy death:
1) Link Love: Getting someone to include your link on their blog. Just stop.
2) Using RSS as a verb. If you don’t know what the acronym stands for, turning it into a verb doesn’t make you look any smarter.
3) Blogistics: Details of how a blog is organized. You don’t need a new word for that.
4) Blogism: A term used by bloggers. Stop being pretentious.
5) Social software: Wow, what an incredibly complicated phrase. You must sound so smart using that phrase and have people stare at you blankly.
6) Link whore: Actually, I don’t know what it means, but it is sort of funny. Keep this one.
7) Blogosphere: O great, it is only a matter of time before people start capitalizing the B. Just because you blog, doesn’t mean you are part of a new nation. Are daily papers part of the DailyNewspaperoSphere?
Blurfing: Blog surfing. I have seen this used twice. Twice too many.
Now I know I am not perfect. My releases are chock full of marketing fluff. Let’s face it, it is just easier to get that stuff approved by product marketing and legal. But we can stop the nonsense early with this nice new thing we are all building.
This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 6th, 2005 at 9:50 am and is filed under PR. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.
December 6th, 2005 at 5:16 pm
“I hearby declare my writings to be blogism free. I will not be using any of the following terms…”
Oh, yes. WE will be watching you, Optimist…
December 7th, 2005 at 11:40 am
I buy all of these except “blogosphere.” It’s a horrible word, but it does define a real entity. Just conduct a trend search at Blogpulse.com. The community of bloggers results in conversations and trends with ebb and flow, and it’s worth defining.