A private conversation among a group of bloggers opened with the question “Does Blogging Matter?” Is is a waste of time?

A public conversation among a group of bloggers addresses similar questions. It began with Stephen Carlson’s Academic Blogging: Publication or Service?, to which Mark Goodacre responded with Academic Blogging: Publication, Service or Teaching?, as did Opus Imperfectum with Publishing For Dummies: Blogging as Research/Teaching/Service? Jim West reframed the questions with Blogging: To What End?, and Mark Goodacre reacted to that with Why blog? Likewise Airton José da Silva with Um blog é uma ferramenta democrática. Missives from Marx reacted to Jim with Why Blog Anonymously? This morning Tim Bulkeley weighed in with Should blogging count for academics? Each of these has interesting threads of comments as well. No doubt there have been other contributuions I have not yet seen.

Could this conversation have happened in another medium?