13 replies to this topic

[Michael_Martinez]

I read this article from Gaping Void the other day and have been mulling it over. It has received over 170 comments as I write this.

The writer starts out the post thusly:

Earlier today I told everybody on Twitter and Facebook, that I’m leaving Twitter and Facebook.

Why?

Because Facebook and Twitter are too easy. Keeping up a decent blog that people actually want to take the time to read, that’s much harder. And it’s the hard stuff that pays off in the end.

Besides, even if they’re very good at hiding the fact, over on Twitter and Facebook, it’s not your content, it’s their content.

The content on your blog, however, belongs to you, and you alone. People come to your online home, to hear what you have to say, not to hear what everybody else has to say. This sense of personal sovereignty is important.

Now, I do post to both Twitter and Facebook. I don't really care what they do with my posts because, frankly, I don't post anything substantial to either service. I keep the bulk of my content on my own Websites (with a very small number of exceptions).

I have integrated both Facebook and Twitter into some of my sites to increase my visibility to people who follow me in various places. Hopefully, they know how to find me.

But I have noticed -- as have many other people -- a relative decline in old school blogging. It's becoming more and more challenging to find interesting blogs to read that are kept up-to-date. Aggressive marketers and marketing gurus are the people most likely to be blogging every day -- and journalists.

The rest of us seem to find other things to do with our lives.

So is the problem really that people have moved on to social media (blogs are, in fact, defined as social by many metrics companies) or is the problem that people have simply gotten tired of blogging? It becomes a chore when you commit to do it every day. I know. I did it every day for a long time. There came a point when I just couldn't do it any more.

So is it as simple as turning one's back on Twitter and Facebook?

I'm so frustrated with the limitations of Google+ that I hardly look at it any more; and yet, many of the people I used to see information from on Twitter appear to have set their Twitter accounts on autopilot while they chat about kids and vacations on Google+.

Frankly, the lack of conversations that interest me are the real downfall of Google+. I could chomp through any technical limitations if I were really interested in what people are sharing over there.

So if they're not using Google+ to "blog" and they're not using Twitter and Facebook to "blog" and they're not using their own blogs to "blog", is the problem really that social media has siphoned off the bloggers or is it that the bloggers have just gotten tired of "blogging"?

[jonbey]

A lot of blogs are dying. Maybe blogging is no longer as glamorous as it once was. Maybe the younger generation are just not interested in blogging at all, preferring to use FB, Twitter etc. and the older generation are just retiring.

Earlier today I was seeking new sites to work with and came across so many dead blogs - either just abandoned on dead links from other sites.

[Black_Knight]

All that has really 'gone' is the buzz, which I think was overdue.

Blogging was just one form of website, of many, yet for so long was such a buzz-word that it was frankly a bit ridiculous. Just like websites, when you include all the amatuer's homepages out there, the majority were of very limited interest indeed.

Twitter is still riding high on the buzz, and just like blogging, is in reality more retweeting and personal trivia than anything actually remotely original or interesting.

There are still good blogs around, but yes, many of the great bloggers have almost burned out, covered all the immediate great topics, run out of new twists on the same old discussions, or moved with the buzz to twitter and other social media.

In the same way that there are very few good forums left, with a lot less buzz and excitement about them. People follow fads and fashion.

There still are thousands of great blogs in reality, but you have to find them, just as we found the earlier waves, but this time we don't have the tide of excitement and buzz pointing us to a new blog every 5 seconds.

[Michael_Martinez]

Maybe the younger generation are just not interested in blogging at all, preferring to use FB, Twitter etc. and the older generation are just retiring.

I was really referring to the people I have been following over the past few years. A lot of established bloggers just don't do it any more. Moms, Dads, Grandpas and Grandmas. I don't know that I've spent much time reading blogs from younger people.

Maybe it's just that the flow of one's expressions through life are modified by new venues as they make themselves available and I'm stuck in the past.

[DonnaFontenot]

As more people stop blogging, that just leaves more attention available for the blogs I create.

People hope to find good links in the tweets they read. Those links need to point somewhere. If they used to point to blogA, blogB, and blogC, but those blogs no longer exist, then that leaves more room available for people to point to blogDD.

[jonbey]

Maybe blogs are getting a bad rep too. Today while searching for some new blogs to contact I came across so many in the high SERPs which were only made to drive traffic to other sites. There appears to be a growing number of blogs with no adverts at all which serve no purpose but to dump people on pages covered in adsense.
Maybe this is not such a new thing, maybe I am only just discovering it. But this does not help improve the rep of blogging. No wonder people prefer the relative safety of Facebook and Twitter.

[EGOL]

<sarchasm>I think that the number of bloggers has not changed a bit. When blogs first became available they were touted as a "silver bullet" for making millions. Everybody everywhere started "blogging"... but most of them were typing drivel. The real bloggers who have something to say are still blogging - and some making a little money. The wimps have packed it in to twitter because 140 characters is about all they can compose - but most are still typing drivel. </sarchasm>

[Michael_Martinez]

Maybe that's so, EGOL. However, what may be true of the Web might not be so true for individuals. The signal can be refined on a very personal level and it would seem that those who share(d) my interests blog less.

Maybe I should change my interests.

:violin:

[A.N.Onym]

Earlier, Ammon said that the Internet has always been social. Naturally, that applies to blogs as well.

People used blogs as a form of expression and a way to get feedback, among other things. Now, they can chat via GTalk, Skype, Twitter and Google+. They can only blog substantial information pieces, if they feel like it, but it leaves out a good number of bloggers, who were mostly blogging to share ideas, without any obvious purpose.

I think that blogs die is a good thing: it'll be easier to identify devoted, professional individuals, who know what they are doing/writing about.

Edited by A.N.Onym, 25 August 2011 - 12:57 AM.

[jonbey]

Yeah, the main reason why I moved from static files to a blog for my site was so that people could ask questions and talk. Everything else just came as a bonus really.

[maleman]

I would hate to see blogging totally die without a viable replacement. Personally, I find invaluable the ability to go on-line and read blogs concerning the topics I am interested in. If you are like me, you can not afford to be running around the country attending every seminar to find out the information you need. Of course, I am speaking of business uses. With the advent of webinars and blogs, we are enabling more individuals with limited budgets the ability to glean and share!

[Michael_Martinez]

I think one of the problems is that people become accustomed to seeing new technologies in the social Web and they now sort of expect that. So if it were easy for us to video blog a lot of people would probably be video blogging (it's mostly done on YouTube as I understand it, but that's a closed environment).

What if you had a cell phone app that allowed you to create a video for your Wordpress blog?

What if you had a cell phone app that allowed you to easily piece together a collage of images for your Blogspot blog?

No writing text -- just sliding stuff around and dropping it on an icon and POOF! your blog is updated.

People might cheat and focus on photos and images, but they could also do audio blogs and speech-to-text blogs. We just need the right technology to reintegrate people with the blogging experience.

[mrgoodfox]

I think blogging lost a lot of its values when a most well known bloggers started blogging for profit and only one out of every 5 posts would be a legitimate blog article with the rest being .... simply put, ads.

There are also a lot of blogs nowadays so its harder for either one of them to make it to the spot light and be known to others.

I do think political blogging is still very much alive and getting stronger (specially from third world countries)

[A.N.Onym]

True about political blogging. In here, Internet is the only place, where most voices of reason can be heard, because govt controls the TV, newspapers, etc.

Also, I like that there still are some quality publications out there. Though they im to earn money from ads, they some of them do produce top quality content, at least for their niches. Some blogs have this model as well.

Then again, I'm sure there will be thousands of blogs, between the extremes of a casual family blogger and a hardcore top quality publication. Unfortunately, according to the Sturgeon's Law, the latter will be very few.