Greg Knauss on Bloggers: Experiential vs. Referential

2 comments February 7th, 2007

Greg Knauss was a guest blogger on kottke last year and ended his two week stint with this observation:

There are two kinds of bloggers, referential and experiential.
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The referential blogger uses the link as his fundamental unit of currency, building posts around ideas and experiences spawned elsewhere: Look at this. Referential bloggers are reporters, delivering pointers to and snippets of information, insight or entertainment happening out there, on the Internet. They can, and do, add their own information, insight and entertainment to the links they unearth — extrapolations, juxtapositions, even lengthy and personal anecdotes — but the outward direction of their focus remains their distinguishing feature.

The experiential blogger is inwardly directed, drawing entries from personal experience and opinion: How about this. They are storytellers (and/or bores), drawing whatever they have to offer from their own perspective. They can, and do, add links to supporting or explanatory information, even unique and undercited external sources. But their motivation, their impetus, comes from a desire to supply  narrative, not reference it.

I think we tend to blend these two styles. We do a fair amount of “reporting” on events that we attend, particularly when we think we heard something useful worth sharing and the event was lightly covered, if at all, by other bloggers or press. To the extent that we are trying to offer advice, we try and back up our prescriptions with reference to both supporting and contrasting perspectives in the blogosphere or in other reference material.

As you think about your own blog for your startup I think it becomes more compelling to the extent that you talk about real experiences with customers, prospects, internal issues, the decisions you’ve reached and while you’ve reached them, the decisions you’ve revisited and why you’ve revisited them, etc..