First the New York Times, then the Washington Post, and now the Wall Street Journal… though this time it’s in more of a minor role. :) About two-thirds of the way through an article about people who liveblog major (and sometimes minor) private events in their lives, the Journal’s Jennifer Saranow writes:

Brendan Loy, a 25-year-old law student at the University of Notre Dame, generally writes about sports, current events, the weather and his life. For his wedding in December 2005, he asked a friend to take pictures on a cellphone and immediately upload them to his blog. The friend, Dan Seremet of Newington, Conn., posted 46 pictures that evening and night and says, “It was an honor.” Mr. Loy estimates he got almost 2,500 unique visitors that day, up from his daily average of 1,500 earlier that week.

I’ve been aware of this forthcoming article for weeks now, but was asked not to blog about it until it appeared. Here’s how the article starts:

If you hate newsy holiday letters, brace yourself for the live blog.

People are increasingly documenting the most mundane and private aspects of their lives and posting them the instant they happen. From birth — “I can see his head a little” — to death — “so many memories,” one blogger posted from a funeral — no experience is too personal or sacred not to be shared.

In November, 30-year-old graduate student Regan Ozbirn of Atlanta chronicled her first Thanksgiving with her husband online, with updates like “bring on the pie!!!” Her husband, computer-support technician Kevin Ozbirn, 33, was a little aggravated when she stopped him as he was about to start carving the turkey so she could take a picture. “I was ready to eat,” he says.

Heh. Read the whole thing.

One minor quibble: I object to the statement “until now, bloggers giving running commentary…have been largely dependent on computers.” Until now? I’ve been liveblogging since May 2002! I suppose it depends on your definition of “now,” and also of “largely,” but all in all, I don’t think this phenomenon is quite as new as the article implies, especially relative to the “age” of the blogosphere itself. What’s new is that new technologies and services are making this sort of thing easier to do (as the article points out in some detail), and that (partly as a result) many more people are doing it. But the capability has been there for quite a while; bloggers were only “largely dependent” on computers if they chose to be.

But, as I said, that’s a quibble. It’s a good article.

P.S. This paragraph is particularly interesting:

Many agree that it’s hard to fully participate in an event if you’re trying to compose pithy, thoughtful notes at the same time. Some academics say the live posts are the latest twist in the decades-old conflict between living in the moment and memorializing it from behind a camera lens, only worse. “People who are live-blogging are psychologically more distant from the event,” says Clay Shirky, a professor of social software at New York University’s Interactive Telecommunications Program.

In my experience, that can be true, if you let it. It’s a matter of striking the proper balance. Sometimes I’m liveblogging, say, a sporting event, and I realize that I’m not paying as close attention to the game as I’d like. So you know what I do? I put away the phone or the laptop and just watch for a while. Problem solved! As long as you have the capability of coming to that realization and acting accordingly, liveblogging won’t diminish your life experiences. And it can sometimes enhance them — my liveblogging of the Boise State-Oklahoma game being a classic example. I didn’t have anyone to watch the game with, as Becky and her parents were asleep, so my blog posts (and the commentary thereon) were the only way I had of sharing my feelings during that roller-coaster ride. It’s not as good as real human interaction, but it’s better than nothing in a pinch. :)

Another point the article makes is the potential for blogging of everyday events to cause other people discomfort. “While proponents say live blogging helps them experience an event more fully and provides a nice souvenir, the postings can often disrupt the event, get scant traffic and annoy those dragooned into reading them,” Saranow writes. “And that says nothing of the feelings of a person who might not relish the notion of her maternity-room utterances or wedding vows being instantly blasted into cyberspace.” That’s true, too, but again, it’s a problem that’s solved fairly easily by a bit of common sense. Just be considerate! There’s a reason I don’t post photos of people at the Backer without their permission, or whip out my cell phone during Thanksgiving dinner to liveblog Becky’s dad saying grace, or blog anything about certain relatives who I know prefer to remain more private. People who annoy others by showing a total lack of respect for their feelings aren’t suffering from too much technology, they’re suffering from a lack of common sense and common courtesy. (That’s not to say I’ve never screwed up in this regard, but you learn from your mistakes… that’s what life is all about, right?)