SAN FRANCISCO, Jan 9 – As the Macworld keynote fires up, all the press and attendees focus on Steve Jobs as he gives his presentation on stage. As usual, the drama and theatrics are high at this flagship event. Steve is a master at creating suspense and wooing the crowd. However, the vast majority of people can’t see him at all. Instead, they’re huddled in front of computer screens, staring intently at static text and pictures that are updated almost in real time as the presentation unfolds.

Welcome to the world of live blogging, where passionate bloggers beam out the instant scoop regarding current events and news. Unlike normal blogging, which is asynchronous, live blogging is more akin to a one way IM conversation. The people who really care about the topic will keep the post open, and refresh constantly to find out what’s happening. In the case of the Macworld keynote, blogs were the only way for people not in the room to get the scoop. I was one of many people who oohed and ahhed as Steve unveiled the details of the iPhone.

Blog posts as instant messaging
Live blogging is not a new thing, and has been around since the early days of blogging. Whether it’s the Macworld keynote, the CES conference, or the Oscars, there will be people live blogging on the scene. How people consume these live posts is very different than normal posts. As I mentioned before, live posts are like one way instant messages. The audience expects updates on the order of seconds and minutes, not hour or days.

During the Macworld keynote, there were dozens of blogs that were engaged in live blogging–some more successful than others. The two leaders were Engadget and Mac Rumors. Both were providing pictures along with the text, and keeping the post updated at least once every few minutes.

However, there was a key difference between the two. Mac Rumors actually implemented an AJAX refresh that updated the post without needing to send an HTML refresh of the page. This served to reduce the bandwidth needed to push out the information to a large audience, and also to reduce the potential wait time to get the information. This made the Mac Rumors live blogging experience to be more fluid and timely.

Using the right tools
The problem is that most blogging software isn’t well suited for live blogging. The blogger needs to continuously edit and save the post, using a potentially clunky interface involving form submissions. A better solution would be a chat-like interface where the blogger simply types in the next bit of news, and the post would be automatically updated in place with a timestamp without the need for a page reload. Mac Rumors probably cooked something up on their own for their AJAX live blogging page.

Live blogging is a great tool for instantly disseminating information. With the addition of comments, live blogging creates a virtual forum in parallel with the unfolding events. In many ways, this is somewhere between static blog posts and IRC. It would be interesting to peruse a whole network of live blogs, where you can peer into events across the world in real time.

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Categories - Trends, Blogs, Live Blogging |