I think I finally have John Dvorak figured out. He is not the uber-complex, wizard technologist and scribe that I always believed him to be through his many PC Magazine columns.

Sure, he is rarely in a good mood but that is just his writing style. Never met the man personally, but I wonder if he’s different in person and not the blowhard he is portrayed as by the verbiage in his many columns? I’ve met another blogger — no names, so don’t ask — who is similarly grouchy in his writings, and he is a blowhard in person like he is in his blog. I could be wrong about Dvorak, maybe he is the same way he writes, but I doubt it. I think it’s just a style thing.

Dvorak’s perspective and activity while actually blogging has indicated to me that he’s a better writer than technologist. Simply analyzing his blogging over the last few months, you’ll rarely see John linking to other bloggers, he has no blogroll, his advertising is scattered and mostly to prop up his employer, his blogging seems to consist primarily of snipping out pictures from everywhere and everything — and who knows if these images are copyrighted or not — and yet he writes with this authoritative, stoic tone as if he has easily figured out every blogger and the entire blog readership phenomenon in such a limited time.

Please.

Check this out from his most recent PC Magazine opinion column:

Having become a blogger myself, I feel even more inclined to write a column once in a while with various gripes and complaints. But I looked at my readership numbers over the past few years, and the fact is that most people still do not care about blogging. I’m now convinced that blogging is a niche market. Most folks online don’t even know they are reading a blog half the time, and don’t know what a blog is. This accounts for blog being one of the most looked-up words on the online dictionary sites.

I would agree that most people don’t realize they are reading a “blog” but I don’t really see how that matters? Who cares if what I’m reading is a web page or a blog?

As for blogging being a niche market? So what to that too. As a business person, what is the downside to getting into blogging? Is the upside better to shun it and let my competitors get a foothold in this “niche market?”

Really, I’m no expert on blogging either (are there any experts?) because I’ve only been blogging regularly since July 2003, but I do know that a significant part of blogging — at least the allure of it — involves carrying some sort of interactive dialogue with other bloggers.

Dvorak, based on his blogging actions to date, doesn’t seem to get that yet. It seems like he’d rather snip pictures and make fun of things with quips than actually link to and get any sort of blog-to-blog dialogue going. Yeah, I’m sure he’s linked to a few bloggers here, but it rather seems like the premise of his blog is like a news clipping service with mostly sparse annotations. He’s not really blogging, the way most bloggers think of blogging, he’s more like a glorified link dump. This activity would fit more with services like Stumbleupon or Delic.io.us.

Far be it me to try and tell anybody else what they should or should not be blogging about — this is my opinion column, after all — but maybe it’s fair game with a guy like Dvorak who has so many stubborn ideas about what is out here in the blogosphere?

It’s been awhile — maybe too long — since Dvorak penned a truly useful, positive column on anything. Can any reader point me to a recent article or piece that contradicts this? Then again, maybe it’s just me that doesn’t understand what an “opinion” column is all about. Maybe it’s me that doesn’t have a clue on the inner machinery of the publishing business and Dvorak really is the grandmaster of technology past, present and future.

Whatever. He can flame all day long in his columns and maybe that will help PC Mag’s circulation numbers — heck, it sometimes makes for an interesting read — but this same cranky egotism in the blogosphere without the content to back it up does not portend well for his blogging future.

Did this post make you go hmm?

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