Last Updated on June 13, 2017
Is blogging really on the way out?  To hear some talk about “social media” like Twitter, blogging is already “so 2007.”
Nowadays, in our attention-span-shortened society, reading a 200-word blog post takes too much time.  It’s better to read a 140-character tweet instead.
But for the fact that some of us don’t want to reduce what we have to say to 140 characters.  Maybe we’re too verbose; maybe we should learn a much stricter economy when it comes to words.  Or maybe it’s okay to expect a little more from our audience.  Maybe it’s not a bad thing that we expect to find peole who actually like to read and write for them.
I’m on Twitter, and you can see my most recent tweets in the sidebar.  But I don’t blog on Twitter because I feel like I’m writing crawls on CNN.  Most of what I use Twitter for is the very thing the “experts” say you shouldn’t use it for:  posting links to your blog.  The thing is, I’m still trying to attract blog readers to my blog in a new way.  Twitter isn’t replaceing the blog, it’s just promoting it.
Many bloggers use a feature called “asides” when they have something short to say on their blog.  An aside is a quick little hit that looks more like a note than a full-fledged post.
Twitter is pretty much all asides.  Or, if you’re a fan of Facebook, Twitter is little more than those “status updates” that Facebook users find so annyoing, then can’t get enough of on Twitter.
Who’d have thought?
I could never have said all this on Twitter without making about two dozen tweets.  This would accomplish two things:  first, it would annoy me greatly; second, it would guarantee that I was flagged as one of the area’s “most active” Twitter users (Twitterers?) in the Charleston area in the past hour.
Sixty minutes later, unless I found something else to make an endless stream of tweets about, I would no longer be among the most active users of the hour.
My annoyance would not be as short-lived.
So I have some questions for you:
- Do you have a blog and a Twitter account?
- If so, can you see Twitter ever replacing your blog?
- And do you feel that blogs are already an obsolete exercise?
For the record, I don’t see blogs as being obsolete at all.  I’ll still be blogging long after it’s accepted by the majority of people that blogs are as dead as AM radio.  Because I’m just stubborn like that.
But I’m curious to know what you think.  So comment away!
I should amend my previous comment. I do have a blog (noun), but I don’t really blog (verb), in the sense of posting something daily. Tried it for a while, but tired of the process, as well as the tiresome debate about which blogging platform is the best. Who cares? It’s content that matters. I’ve never been a regular reader of a blog because of the blogging service that person uses. (“I’m not interested in this person’s content, but they’re on [insert service] so I’ll keep reading anyway!” Nah.) Anyway, now I just use the blog to post my (mostly) weekly columns.
The above commenters have pretty much said what I was going to say. Many bloggers have always been twitterers waiting for a place to happen. And more than half of the blogs ever started currently lie fallow. Blogging isn’t going away. It’s just shedding its chaff. So, in fact, it’s getting better.
People who weren’t really long-form writers have left blogging for Twitter et al, as that was their natural habitat all along. So in the sense that “blog” is a hopelessly vague term, sure, for a big chunk of the blogosphere, Twitter etc. put their old Blogspot accounts out to pasture.
For the rest of us, Twitter has simply changed the way we use a blog and relate to our larger communities of interest. I blog less frequently now, but my net level of connectedness and communication is higher.
The important thing is how Social Media is changing our online expectations. Blogs are still thriving, but comment? They’re evolving so rapidly that many comment sections threaten to turn into ghettos within months. Simply put: Why leave a comment on someone’s blog, where it will be forgotten and trolled and chewed by people you’ve never met? Because with FriendFeed and Twitter, etc., I can take the conversation to MY contacts, and have the convo I WANT to have.
I had a post that went viral a few weeks ago, but you wouldn’t know it from the comments — probably fewer than two dozen. The social media convo, however, was lively and cool. Being able to connect that conversation — whereever it takes place — is one of the next cool challenges.
Actually, I have two Twitter accounts–one for my personal use and one for work that several people have access to using.
I have 13 blogs, a twitter account, and a Facebook profile. I don’t use them all for the same things. I don’t overly mix my Fb and Twitter and blog “personas” since none of them use my actual name and not everyone who reads me one place is welcome the other place(s). I like Twitter because it forces conciseness, I like the Fb updates because I can see in a flash what all my friends & rellies are doing–aside (ahem): who hates the Fb updates? I didn’t even know this was an issue! I love them–and I like blogging because I can flesh out my thoughts more fully. Right now, I don’t have time for much “thought-fleshing-out” so I’m doing a lot of tweeting and updating. Someday I’ll be able to write down more than brief thoughts on life again.
I don’t think blogs are obsolete, any more than journaling or poetry–or AM radio–is obsolete. Are blogs no longer a fad? Sure. That’s ok–a lot of people with blogs really had nothing to say after 5 or 6 posts anyway. Remember when forums were THE thing? They’re still around, but they aren’t The Big Thing anymore.
I have a blog, but I do not Twitter or tweet or whatever people are calling it. I’m familiar with how it works, and I despise it for the very reason you touched on: the ever-diminishing attention span of the general public.
This has affected TV and radio already. Fewer people are reading books these days. Too many people want too much useless information in as little time as possible, and only the smallest bits of controversial, shocking or inflammatory aspects of an important story in as little time as possible.
As for the status updates and “tweets”: Why do we need to know when someone is going to the store? Why do we need to know that someone has just returned from walking their dog, or that they’re on their way to work, or that they’re enjoying the morning coffee and paper? What are we supposed to do with this information?
We’re on a dangerous and troubling path toward the death of creativity. I think and worry about this a lot. All this technology has given us the power to share our work, but I think it’s going to backfire. (On a somewhat related note, I can’t stand the thought that something like a Kindle will replace actual books.)
I have a twitter account that I hardly ever use. I’m too verbose for Twitter. And reading those little snippets bores me silly.