Maybe it is because I do not get out much: all of the sudden visionaries, paid prophets, trend watchers and a gazillion would-bees are proclaiming on the web that blogging is dead. It´s over, done with. Amen. As Wired writer Paul Boutin puts it elegantly: “Don’t start. And if you’ve already got one, pull the plug” and “Twitter, Flickr, and Facebook Make Blogs Look So 2004” , all in capital letters of course. Because that is a statement you have to Shout To The World.
Well, excuse me. Blogging is not dead. It is far from. The number of people starting their own web-log still vastly tops the ones dropping out silently. And I am a bit sick and tired to hear that Twitter and Facebook are the tomorrow’s successors to yesterday’s blogs. That is like claiming that the electric Lotus Tessa is the successor of the Hummer H1. They both have wheels. They do not play in the same field. They´d better not J.
Boutin´s basically bases his claim on the fact that there are too many other blogs (hardly a proof point of it being dead and over with), that writing more than Twitters 140 characters is too much work, that professionals start blogging, and that the notorious Jason Calacanis has stopped his praised blog.
Well, if Calacanis thinks that 140 bits are enough to spread his message, that´s fine. I can live with that. Luckily there are thousands of people over there that do take their time to develop their thoughts in a more readable form. Let´s be honest, SMS turbo speak did NOT kill books, micro blogging like Twitter will not push back blogging to the dark ages.
Same with Facebook. Why would it kill the blogosphere? I´ve around 500 people on Facebook, a couple of hundreds are following me on Twitter. That hardly puts my more than 150.000 monthly blog-page views in perspective not?
I tend to agree that the web2.0 ecosystem expands. We had sites and mail, we added blogs and instant messenger. Fine. Now we´re building a new layer with Facebook and Twitter, we spice it up with YouTube and Flickr. Our online house becomes more complex. More channels to express, share, connect.
Instead of replacing and burying blogs, a plethora of other social media will add to the reach of the Web2.0 user who is able to think a bit strategic. Blogging, in my humble but very wise opinion is still the thriving motor of a big chunk of the social web. Try to convince me otherwise in 140 characters. J
couldn’t agree more. nice post. I do tend to agree with the fact that – as with all phenomenons – we’ll have a ‘self controlling- cleaning’ mechanism. Those who started blogging because it was supposed to be the thing to do, will stop. Those who liked to blg, for the sher joy of voicing an opinion will continue, and overall quality will increase 😉