140 Characters Killed The Blogging Star
Will Blogging Be Replaced By Updates?
There is a great article at *GAWKER that discusses Blogging and its future, in relation to other Social Media tools (Facebook, Twitter). It questions whether blogging was a fad, and will go to the wayside much like HAM radio gave way to corporate production of radio.
While many of us embrace the various ways the Internet allows us to communicate, television, radio and (to some degree) print are still strong, and deliver messages that “the series of tubes” cannot. Sure, you can update your friends and family in 140 characters or less, but it doesn’t offer the same insight, nor impact, that a blog post can.
What I do think will peter-off is the cacophony of MySpace/eBlogger/Charming-Thing-My-Kid-Said-Today blogs – some will linger, but many will migrate to the quick update that a Facebook status / Twitter post allows for. What will remain are the industry-specific news driven blogs, and the creativity outlets – blogs that allow for the author to share their message in a way only a blog can, via a story, imagery, and sound.
Two such creative outlets are BreakfastCritic.com, and Dioramawatch.com. Both are public, welcome the comments of visitors, and are expressions of their respective authors, but neither carry the assumption that they will reach a mass audience. They allow for an outlet to express, and to have fun. If anyone reads them, that’s icing on the cake.
So there probably won’t be a new Buggles song that is a blogging epitaph. There will merely be more status updates from your Great Aunt.
*The GAWKER article is an excerpt from the book “Say Everything: How Blogging Began, What It’s Becoming, and Why It Matters” by Scott Rosenburg.