In the tech world, where tools and gadgets are way cool one day and so 2004 the next, is blogging really dead? According to Paul Boutin, who ironically writes for the Sillicon Valley gossip blog Valleywag, blogging is out and being replaced by the next generation of social networking tools - Twitter, Facebook and Flickr. In a recent WIRED Magazine article, Boutin says that the mainstream media has taken over the blogosphere with professional writers, who break the big stories these days.
“Scroll down Technorati's list of the top 100 blogs and you'll find personal sites have been shoved aside by professional ones. Most are essentially online magazines: The Huffington Post, Engadget, and TreeHugger. A stand-alone commentator can't keep up with a team of pro writers cranking out up to 30 posts a day,” says Boutin.
Boutin raises excellent points about the commercialization of the blogosphere but fails to recognize that blogs are still a crucial web tool to distribute info and news even if they are not listed in the top 100 on Technorati. Furthermore, while microblogging tools like Twitter are certainly cool they are limited in telling the longer, more personal story.
What do other experts think of Boutin’s controversial claim about the death of blogging?
“No. Blogging isn't out of style,” says social media expert Chris Brogan. “Twitter and things like it are a moment in a timestream. Blogs are a bit more anchored, and allow us to stay within a context. The other tools are good, but they don't replace blogging.”
Elisa Camahort Page, cofounder of BlogHer (a network of over 2200 women authored blogs) says she thinks of Twitter more as a mega-chat and adds: “blogs continue to be the place where people introduce, explore and discuss events in their lives, ideas in their minds and the causes they care about.”
Investors could not agree more. A few months ago venture capitalists poured $5 million into the BlogHer network. They also negotiated a partnership with NBC Universal who owns iVillage, Oxygen.com, and BravoTV.vom, which will give them access to BlogHer content, as well as promotional opportunities across the BlogHer network. In January of 2008, Akismet, one of the largest blog platform providers received $29.5 million in venture funding for continued development of Wordpress. Not bad! Analysts predict that the major blog networks such as Blogger, TypePad, Moveable Type, etc will rake in $300 million for 2008. Not bad either.
According to the blog search engine Technorati 175,000 new blogs are created every single day. 570,000 entries are posted daily and reach 70 percent of web users according to a March study by Universal McCann.
While blogging still remains quite popular and lucrative for many, there is a lot more competition and major players then there were in 2004 so standing out from the millions of bloggers is a challenge.
Camahort Page and Brogan offer the following advice.
“Promoting one's blog is not much different now than it ever was...find your blogging community and become an active part of it. Read, comment, link, reference, cite,” says Camahort Page. “There are also more sites than ever to get your work and your word out...BlogHer, Kirtsy, StumbleUpon, yes, Twitter and Facebook. The list goes on. Use them, they want to be used.”
Brogan adds, “NOW is where Twitter makes more sense. Being active, being part of the conversation, commenting more are all ways to get attention and awareness flowing. Another way is to find great people doing great work and praise them for it. Do MORE than anyone else in being attentive and loving to the people in your space, and it comes back. I'm living proof.”
Truth be told, Paul Boutin is living proof too!
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Allyson Kapin is the Founding Partner of Rad Campaign and Founder of Women Who Tech.
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Recent Comments | 7 Total
October 23, 2008 at 11:09am by Shannon Nelson
I also disagree that blogging is not dead, if anything all of the social media tools out there just enhance the blogging experience and provide more layers of engagement.
I do think the face of blogging is evolving and by this I mean, blogging is tending to look more digital magazine-like than say your ordinary Blogger.com blog. More niche bloggers are also beginning to establish editorial calendars or at least following a general timeline for posts. However, the voice of these bloggers remains the same and their readership even more cemented than before.
October 23, 2008 at 11:24am by Joe Harper
Blogging is a creative an new medium for distributing information, ideas, and opinions. Much like a new spoken language it has taken time for it to evolve and mature.And afterwords languages take even more time for people to take the language seriously and learn it. I like to think of blogging as a "language" that has emerged from the development stages and the world is taking it seriously. Not everyone understands it yet, but just like first year Spanish, it is being taught in high schools around the country in the form of web development. In my opinion the "Language" of blogging has a bright and shinny future on the web and will continue to spread and grow.
-Joe Harper (joeharper.net)
October 23, 2008 at 11:47am by Rhett Smith
I agree with the commenters below that blogging is not dead...not even close. I do believe it is evolving, like it always has, and it will be exciting to see its continuous process. I see Twitter, Flickr, Facebook, etc. as just more tools in the social media chest. All of them together really enhance, and make for a powerful online experience, but alone, they don't quite have the ability to communicate effectively what a blog can communicate.
I like to use my blog in concert with the other tools.
October 23, 2008 at 6:14pm by Mark White
The blog is far from dead and indeed the rise of other social media such as Twitter which are viewed as bearers of its doom will in fact continually breathe new life into it. While the number of potential avenues for social media continues to grow, I still see a blog playing the central role for companies looking to engage with their customers using these methods.
For example, microblogging is great but a little restrictive and so focuses more on making people aware of other sources of information; social networks come and go (some quicker than others obviously); podcasts and video have their own key sites like YouTube but seldom achieve a real identity or forum on their own.
A blog, however, allows a business to bring all of these other elements together, creates a focal point for a community of customers, provides the company with its own social network hub whatever else goes on in the market and allows it to expand on the information disseminated on Twitter, YouTube or iTunes.
All the other elements are great but you still then need to have somewhere to "invite" friends back to online rather than always meet in proverbial bars / coffee houses. That's where a blog comes to the fore, bringing all the other elements together as well as contributing in its own right.
October 23, 2008 at 6:22pm by Suzi W.
Blogging *has* changed. I remember when I only knew a handful of people that had blogs and we all "knew" each other and had a community that was fairly tight-knit. With the advent of more blogs, Myspace, Facebook, Twitter, blogging is just one more online thing. I know I have fallen off in blogging--it used to be daily, now if I post twice in one week, it's a miracle, and I cannot keep up reading blogs, because everyone has one, especially in my field librarianship, focusing on children's books (which expands to parents who have blogs about kid's books, and booksellers) But on the other hand, since joining Twitter, I have found new blogs to follow (including this one). Dead? No. Different? Yes. Thanks for your insights, Allyson.
October 23, 2008 at 6:40pm by Allyson Kapin
Thanks for all of the great feedback everyone.
October 24, 2008 at 2:24am by Shashank Tripathi
First we invent a new term for information and opinion sharing (or being the first at it, because the "sofa" matters), and then when the next new term comes along, we sweat it out. Clever.
Call it what you will -- blog, microblog, macroblog, mammothblog, ultrablog, moblog, schmatazaaschtickblog -- the point is that people have something to say and use whatever tool is available to them.
Some of them will be interesting and educated and will therefore attract and retain a readership, others will come and go.
So. Get over it. Get something real to write about.