20 Something Bloggers: talkin about their g-g-generation
Blogging among 20 somethings has never been more popular. In fact, bloggers and other contributors to user-generated content are behind Time magazine naming their 2006 person of the year as “you“. That was three years ago. The number of bloggers since then has grown exponentially and intrepid entrepreneurs like Derek Shanahan and his partner Lisa Farlow have given many of them a platform to become acquainted with each other and share their work and ideas. Their brainchild is 20 Something Bloggers and with articulate voices and sheer numbers they clearly have much to say.
Shanahan describes himself as an “early adopter”. He’s interested in issues like trust and authenticity within communities. He was recently named to the Top 30 Under 30 Tweeters Mentor List and occasionally consults with prominent PR and advertising staffs about how to engage online. True to the multi-tasker handbook, he also puts out a monthly mix tape called [twenty-nine], which is a synopsis of what’s been catching his ear lately. Not long ago he used to manage a handful of Chicago bands. So the music is in his blood, too. And to make sure that nothing is left to chance on his day clock, he owns and runs a financial planning practice in downtown Chicago. He’s your classic type double A.
We’re blown away by the success of 20 Something Bloggers. With the number of bloggers joining growing at a rate of 1000 bloggers every five weeks, we felt like now was the perfect time to reach out to him and ask how all of it began.
We have to know how all of this began and has the growth surprised you?
20 Something Bloggers was started by Lisa, who at the time had just turned 20 and found it difficult to find bloggers she identified with. I don’t want to put words in her mouth, but back then the mommy blogging frenzy was in full force, and it would have been easy to assume that only moms and newly-weds wrote personal blogs.
So Lisa started a community on Ning and invited the personal bloggers she was reading at the time, and thus began what’s become a pretty darn cool place for bloggers to hang out!
As for the growth…I think in some ways it’s surprised nearly everyone who was there at the beginning. Watching something cross 1000, 2000, 8000 members is a pretty nutty thing to witness. If you were on Twitter a couple years ago, you might know what I mean.
On the other hand, I think it’s easy to see that more and more twenty-somethings are using blogging as a personal outlet, and the value of a vibrant community around writing about your life online (which can be tricky, frustrating, and incredibly rewarding all at once) is immeasurable. I think most of us would be surprised if the growth slowed, at this point!
The growth of 20 Something Bloggers is staggering with thousands of new bloggers coming in every month. What do you attribute this to?
Well, we’re just outside the 1000/month rate right now, but you’re right, we’ve been really fortunate to see so many young personal bloggers find us in their search for community and support.
Our growth has been completely organic. For the first six to nine months, we were a group of about 100 or so, getting to know one another and picking through one another’s blogrolls. From there, and largely due to our active forums and some early “blogger events” we started seeing more membership applications.
Now, just over two years later, we’ve put a team of three on the task of membership approvals and management!
20SB was born of the notion that there wasn’t a place for typical twenty-something personal bloggers to meet and share their experiences with one another. Communities always centered around common experiences like marriage or having children…which left out everyone who didn’t fit those categories. What we found was that even the moms and newly-weds were looking for a community like ours.
The need to blog is often intensely personal and in an aesthetic vein for many. Do you see blogging as a kind of emotional canvas?
I think blogging is different to everyone. The “need” to write in front of other people is a unique one…some do it to release pressure, some to have some fun. There are varying levels of privacy employed by everyone who puts their fingers on the keyboard, and social media is a driving force in how online writers interact with their audience and peers.
If I were to say that personal blogging was an emotional canvas, I’d only do so to the extent that each blogger decides to express their emotions. Having now set eyes on literally thousands of personal blogs, I can assure you that the canvas is being painted in so many different ways, with so many different motivations, that it would make your head spin.
The commonalities I see are in bloggers that persist. Anyone who persistently blogs, through the times when they don’t feel like writing, and beyond the honeymoon period after which many fall off the map, reaches a point at which they settle in to a way of public writing that suits them. They find their voice a bit, and you can actually see them endeavor to find it further.
That’s an interesting experience for most bloggers, and in my mind it marks a very personal connection to the form of writing and to the audience reading it.
Who comes to 20 Something Bloggers and why?
We approve every single membership by hand. We get some very interesting applications, let me tell you! Nevertheless, our community is one for personal bloggers in their twenties. It’s that simple.
Be the right age.
And write a personal blog.
They generally find us by way of another member or Twitter, I’d imagine (because we don’t advertise) and they join for the party. They may or may not realize how active our members are, or how many events we have to participate in, but I think that’s why they end up staying.
In the end, we’re nothing without our members, and the level of respect, friendship, support, and excitement within our walls is truly heartwarming. People ask for help and they get it. New bloggers get friendly wisdom from seasoned vets. Relationships online spawn true friendships offline.
We like to say that everyone befriended on 20SB is an Opt-In Friend…blogger friends are taking time out of their life to read about yours, and to give you feedback, support, or encouragement. It’s an active decision, as opposed to your workplace friends or childhood friends, who are certainly wonderful and hugely important and at the core of your social system…but they may not need to hear all the details. That’s what people find when they spend time on 20SB…lots of Opt-In Friends!
Did you imagine when you began that it would become the entrepreneurial adventure that it is?
Haha…I don’t think I did. I will say that we reached a point at which the community was too big to not have some people looking at it from a bird’s eye view, and as we worked on planning a larger offline meetup issues like ‘liability’ and ‘business partnerships’ started to happen on conference calls.
I had started a business, so I approached Lisa to formalize the community so that we might make it a better place for the bloggers within it. She and I complement one another well…I like thinking about ways to make blogging cooler for bloggers, and she is phenomenal at preserving the community’s values. When we come together we usually have some really great ways for bloggers to get more out of blogging, without piercing the authenticity that I think is so important to strong communities.
Ultimately, where do you want to see the platform go?
We want 20 Something Bloggers to be the best community online for personal bloggers. We want to be a large community that feels small. We want friendships, weddings, jobs, and truly incredible experiences to have their roots in our community.
Ultimately, however, our members will dictate where we’re headed, and we’d have it no other way.
