In China however, blogging might be really dead.
In the west, blogs ousted bulletin boards and forums from the market. This never happened in China, where the BBS still flourish. Better yet, the discussions platforms keep growing. According to author Andrew Lih, there are two main reasons for this phenomenon.
- BBS are anonymous. Well, actually, semi-anonymous since people do have nicknames and build up reputations. For reasons well known, anonymity comes in handy in China.
- Users get more comments on their BBS writings, sometimes thousands. As for blogging, it can be lonely out there.
I’ve always thought the BBS format suffered because the software is barely competent. Only two types, SMF and vBulletin, are usable, and most people prefer the brain-dead phpBB, which is barely so.
Tags: Nerdcore