This month’s Wired arrived in the mail today. Yup, I still subscribe because I still like the magazine.
There was an interesting essay in it, titled Twitter, Flickr, Facebook Make Blogs Look So 2004. The assertion from the author is that blogs are a relic of the past because the personal blog will never gain any attention. The personal blog, as the author theorizes, is being overrun by corporate blogs (think Engadget) with professionals posting “30 posts a day”. There’s no competition. Personal blogs will never get any attention from Google or Technorati. And because of this, the author encourages bloggers to “pull the plug”.
Great idea, if you’re looking at blogging from the standpoint that it is a venue for getting rich, or famous, or both. But really, if you’re looking at getting rich or famous from blogging, stop thinking about it. You won’t. To that extent, I agree with the author.
There are other reasons for blogging though. Mine is to express myself. If people read my blog, awesome. If no one visits and reads my blog, that’s OK too. In the past, I used my blog as a way of letting people know what is happening with me, but that has changed. Twitter (via mindof) is where I do that now. My blog is now only used for longer compositions — reviews, long commentary.
The author also talks about how blogs are being replaced by more media rich formats: Pictures (think Flickr) and video (think YouTube). True? A bit. Pictures and video are cool, however words are still a great way to express oneself.
The author talks about Twitter being the replacement for blogging. It is, for a certain group of people.
Is blogging dead? If you blog, why?
Oct 21st, 2008 at October 21, 2008 12:46 am
I think Twitter took a fair share of the would-be bloggers away. It’s easier to type “bored lol” into your Twitter client than coming up with a great headline for that gem in your LJ/WP blog (”Dull moments in my forward passage through time”, for example).
As for the mindset: I do not consider myself in the same segment as Gawker etc. I usually blog when I feel I have something to say (the recent rant/blurb about the US elections comes to mind), or feel like I want to share interesting findings or amazement (my running pieces) or feel like showing my geeky side with the occasional semi-technical bit.
YMMV.
Oct 21st, 2008 at October 21, 2008 12:47 am
PS: Switch to Disqus, makes it easier for me to track my own comments and replies to them (HAHAHA).
Oct 21st, 2008 at October 21, 2008 7:39 am
The first post on my blog compares it to CB Radios. I still stand by it.
For me, my blog is my personal web log. A way for me to practice writing (which I love) as well as provide a bit of entertainment for others. I will not get famous, I will not get rich (at least by whoring out my blog to Google), but I have made friends and contacts. That’s good enough for me.
Plus, 140 characters is way too short for reasonable discussion.
Nov 17th, 2008 at November 17, 2008 12:06 am
I blog because I like it
Then even if I use (and sometime abuse) Twitter, Jaiku, Flickr and now Ipernity, update my status on Facebook and sometimes I also try to keep up with FriendFeed I think that ALL of those social software ‘miss’ the feature of keeping up clean and ordered the various topics one wants to discuss … and think about getting comments on ‘old’ contents, does twitter or FB help you to do so ?
A blog, and it’s comments, are instead a good way to keep a discussion on a topic focused.
Also blog = online ID and I am searching THE plugin for Wordpress or a brand new CMS that will focus it as a lifestream aggregator.
Any idea ?
(i found this http://deanjrobinson.com/lifestream/ yesterday … nice but still lacks of “comments” to single topics …)