There’s no doubt that we’re in the middle of a media paradigm shift. I’m not sure if I really want to write yet another commentary rallying the rising power of bloggers or the sheer numbers of new participants… all you have to do is open your eyes, and you’ll notice more and more bloggers using the medium to create meaningful, lucrative careers. However, there comes the time where one shouldn’t be just pointing out the obvious, by saying ‘Hey there’s a lot of blogs out there, and I don’t like a lot of them.’ and start asking questions like ‘Why are there so many blogs out there.’ and ‘What can we as a community be doing to improve the dialogue’

This comes to mind as last week Business of Fashion published an article titled Fashion 2.0 | Not all blogs are created equal. Where they critiqued the aggregated content site Inside The Tents:

A perusal of some of the aggregated content on [Inside the Tents] ITT causes one to pause and ask: are these bloggers really offering any unique expertise or vantage point that adds to the fashion dialogue? Some (though not all) of these bloggers appear to be more focused on themselves and on the celebrities in the front row than on the fashions on the runway. Unique opinions are few and far between. [Read more]

Image via Garance Doré
Blog vs. print may be coming to a close, or maybe “independent blogs” vs. “media corporation blogs representing print magazines” may be coming to terms. I think. Scrolling through my rss feeder today, I came across Elle Magazine’s New Style Blogs article… It got me excited to see which blogs they picked, and what they had to say about us.

While the slew of Internet startups that emerged around this time [the mid-90's] tanked when the boom went bust, blogs have prospered, evolving into the creative outlet for people to share (and typically over share) information about their lives, for anyone interested�-or bored-�enough to read on. As a result, we’ve noticed that more and more quality, style-focused blogs are cropping up, offering a visual cornucopia for the fashion savvy in the way of street style images, “Last Night’s Party” type scenes of downtown debauchery (that often include inadvertent galleries of choice vintage pieces and designer duds) as well as the occasional eBay link for items you may have missed but, turns out, need to own.

[Read more]