Is blogging fading?

In a word, yes!

There was a recent article on the New York Times that blogging is ‘losing its allure’. And it makes a lot of sense.

There are a lot of blogs out there with a lot of useless content. There’s a lot of people out there who are time poor and don’t want to waste their time reading content which won’t help them. There’s people who want their friends to see it all in the one place, so they shift to contribute on the FB. In the end we’re still down to the question of how do you find the good posts and avoid the rubbish ones? In the current state of play, it’s become common and useful practice to use Twitter networks and their ability to filter to find the posts which help you rather than waste your time.

Why some Twitter posts catch on and some don’t, another article in the New York times, suggests that the more often you see mentions of the same thing, the more likely it is set to become a trending topic. This is the same vein for good content bubbling up via Twitter or any platform. The more you see a mention of content, essentially a referral, the more likely you are to click. All those real Twitter people can’t be referring you if it isn’t any good!

But there are some out there who are a little bit deluded on the blog demise. Catharine P. Taylor defended blogs on MediaPost in response to the New York Times article on blogs in decline. She makes points that people are continuing to contribute to blogs which is fantastic, but what about the other side, the readers? Seems a bit like if a tree falls in the woods to me! She does go on to elaborate that blogs like HuffPo, Clay Shirky, Seth Godin and Dooce are all going strong. But these blogs are no longer categorized as a few of the voices amongst the masses. They’ve lifted beyond typical opinion and are now within the category of mainstream media. No longer part of the long tail, no longer a blog, but comparable to other big content sites. To compare these blogs to the long tail is erroneous and misguided.

We’re at a place where media and media consumption changes every day. There’s an adoption curve that goes with the embracing of those developments and then the process of evaporative cooling for the rejection process (if you haven’t read about the concept of evaporative cooling I strongly suggest that you do). Blogging is just one platform that is adapting to these changes and finding a new way to fit into the dynamic as new technologies like Twitter join the fold.

Don’t think I haven’t written this without realizing the irony that it’s on a blog. I can sense that tree falling in the woods….