Wired Magazine scooped it: Twitter, Flickr, Facebook Make Blogs Look So 2004
And although there is a lot I disagree with in this article the writer, Paul Boutin hits quite a lot nails on the head. Remember all those cool blogs you used to read? They’re all gone. Remember when it used to be fun to trade banter in the comment thread of blogs? We’re too snowed under anymore to keep track of any of it.
Yeah, I know guys like James McGrath are trying valiantly to keep some sort of interesting conversation going. But all the old guard is gone. All gone. And a lot of the new stars flared out before they even started to shine. Esteban Vázquez? Sublime blogger. Now he’s moved to Missouri and hasn’t blogged anything of substance in weeks. A new hotshot, Bryon, has already called it quits. The list goes on. Remember that scene in The Incredibles where Mr. Incredible sees all the heroes that have been wiped out by Syndrome? That’s me staring at my RSS feed. And I’m hanging on to the cliff by my fingernails. I post funny. No comments. I post a rant. Yawn. I post a bunch of stinkin’ pictures of cats and dogs wearing halloween costumes and the response is…zilch. So that tells me not just that my blog sucks. But blogging sucks and maybe the guy at Wired magazine is right.
The really pitiful thing is that Boutin offers Facebook and Twitter as the alternatives to blogging. I’d rather be pecked by ducks. That is not blogging my friends. That is idiotic drivel. That is Super Food Fights. That is talking about your plans for the day. I existed for three years under the impression that blogging was an edgy kind of editorializing. But now I’m supposed to drop that and tweet? This is sad. TV is beginning to look appealing again.
I disabled my Facebook account a week ago and haven’t missed it once. Twitter just runs automatic feeds off of one of my blogs. This my friends, is what Seth Godin calls a Cul-De-Sac. That’s a dead end for you not so francophone folks, and when you find yourself in a dead end you just get the heck out of there.
See ya.
Missouri, I love it. I predict Esteban will make a comeback even though they don’t got interweb in Missouri.
I tried Twitter and didn’t get it. As you saw I started another blog instead. I know that’s how you operate also.
Whoever cares about my plans for the day has something wrong with them unless they’re family or married to me.
I’m on Facebook because I had to sign up in order to download a free Christian album. I’ve built up some friends but the only time I go there is to accept a new friend. Who I never talk to there.
I’m just babbling because I’m insomniatic tonight.
Jeff
So you are saying you maintain this blog because you want reactions?
Consider me just a voice from the darkness … saying that I read this blog regularly and enjoy what you write. But I don’t comment, because it seems like commenting is the domain of people who fall into your circles, whether friends, family, or other bloggers and contributors. Comments by me would be like being interrupted by some stranger at a party, who wanted to give his two cents to your not-entirely-exclusive-but-still-sort-of-private conversation.
You still get reactions. You just don’t see them.
As for the rest of the post and the associated article … it’s a good point that the blogworld is a tidal wave of writing such that you can’t tell the good from the paid. Sometimes I can’t be persuaded to care. But sometimes blogs are surprising, delightful, or polemical or pointy in a way that makes me take notice and which no social networking one-sentence thought could equal.
So keep blogging.
What just happened?
Blogging is a subspecies of writing, and one only writes for two reasons:
1. He cannot NOT write.
2. Money.
Not being compelled to do something has its advantages. I see all these people on their cellphones constantly and wonder how many will leap out a window if tempest or terrorism takes the cellular network down.
Besides, as Pirate points out, and ancient Internet wisdom (circa 1995 or so) maintains, only a miniscule percent of your readers actually comment. The rest are Lurkers. (Cue Babylon 5 intro).
And some of us comment, and then get incredibly busy for a month or two, but they’ll be back. Promise.
I think Facebook has it’s place. But, as Church said, blogging is for those who cannot not write. Whilst it’s a strike against the ego when you’re not getting comments, or even if your hits has dropped, I don’t think any blogger will stop simply because of that.
We don’t really have a choice.
And Twitter, Facebook, and whatnot really have absolutely nothing on your spot to say whatever the hoot you want.
But, why did everyone get busy, that’s what I want to know?
And Pirate – seriously, just barge in. That’s how the rest of them met each other. You don’t need to be as educated, just big-mouthed and open to being corrected
.
Try to find the gray. The Wired author has a black-or-white, all-or-nothing mindset – if you’re not tops in Google search results, it’s not worth writing. I just looked at five pages of Google results on “bible translation” and not one blog showed up, but I’ll dare to say that what I’ve learned from the various blogs I’ve interacted with for the past year or two surpasses what I’d find on those top links.
Facebook et al. do not offer the same level of discussion that a specialized community can. And that’s really what blogging is: community. But you have to remember what holds the community together. When you post “off topic” with rants and humor, you might get some hits, but it’s tangential to the community. If you post “on topic” and don’t get interest, then maybe you’re not reaching the right community!?
I think a dirty little secret is that “being Christian” is not specific enough to maintain a blogging community.
Facebook is good for the off-topic stuff – the things I’d never post to my “Bible blog”. Facebook is good for connecting with people I’ve met over the years, but distance intervened. High school friends, college friends, ex-coworkers – though I prefer to drive professional relationships through my LinkedIn account. I don’t assume that those people share the community interests that drive my blogs. So Facebook is a good way to connect there. Yes, I’ve also connected with many in the blog community on Facebook, but it’s ancillary to the discussions that occur in the blogs themselves.
I’m about to embark on a major blogroll revision – trying to identify those who share the community I’m interested in. It’s easy to find a post that looks interesting and add the author to your blogroll, only to find that that post was tangential to that author’s actual community and you always hit the “mark as read” button after skimming a paragraph or two. I want the “new posts” indicator on Google Reader to be meaningful, not just quantity.
Enough of that for now. Find your community, David – you’ve been through some major changes in the real world, maybe your online voice is changing too.
you sure do whine a lot.
Here are some of my comments:
1. You’ve been thinking about this too much lately; there are some things we just we shouldn’t spend time thinking about (like the dark underbellies of all our churches; most most stuff brought up in church meetings, etc.). Otherwise they start taking on a life of their own.
2. Like almost everything else we spend daily effort on, all the efforts we put blogging right now will be totally vaporized some day – and I’m not talking about in a ‘Left Behind kind of way’. (But almost everything we do is pretty much about the present. Developing us and those we influence . . . IN THE PRESENT!)
3. To repeat something I’ve said before. If you enjoy blogging, do it. If you don’t feel like it, don’t. It’s that simple. If TV is more fun . . .
4. You are starting to sound like an old man, “This generation is so caught up in stupid things like Facebook and Twitter . . . what’s this world coming to?” Still, I’m following you. I have thought about moving of some of my blogging over to Facebook, but it just feels weird.
4. You’ve been jaded by by too much success. Some of the rest of us are just happy if 20 people show up, and we get a few comments. You know that if you devoted more energy to it, you could easily keep the numbers up. If anyone understands what goes into a good blog, you do. Problem is you’ve got a full life – even outside of blogging.
5. You are like the star athlete that knows what it takes to stay at the top of your game, and you aren’t sure whether it’s worth it to you. That’s not a bad dilemma to be in.
Yeah, and I gave up on paper books so long ago. And the radio? Well, you mentioned tv. A phone? sure, as long as I can txt and don’t have to talk.
Isn’t this technology survival of the fittest? Isn’t it laissez-faire communication? Aren’t we linguists, ethnographers, always learning the others’ languages and cultures?
(and hasn’t anyone here yet figured out that you, and Lingamish, and this post, are all motivated by technorati ratings? Or have you bought stock now in Facebook too?)
I put your blog on my RSS feed for Bible translation talk. But I keep reading because I’ve come to like your voice (though I would love to hear more about your day-to-day SIL work). I second Pirate–keep it up.
I’m like Pirate… I read every post you write but barely comment. I like your blog. You should keep a blog if you like it, it’s not about the response you get (in my humble opinion of course). Apart from a freak blog post of mine, I hardly ever get more than 1 or 2 comments per post. I sometimes get jaded with blogging, but then I have to come back to it, I have to write! Facebook could never replace it, and Twitter? That’s just rubbish.
Who has time to comment?
But, please don’t go; I follow you via RSS and link to you on occasion, as well.
Facebook is what is getting old; it is so egocentric. At least with blogging there is content.
James
Missouri?! Nothing of substance?!
…it’s okay. I love you anyway.
I’m still trying to catch up to the 20th century. I just don’t “get” facebook, twitter, etc. I am listening to Leonard Sweet this week, on campus giving old-fashioned live, in person lectures. He’s great, but he’s got me convinced I’m a hopeless Gutenbergian.
Still, I will keep on blogging my hopelessly linear string of words . . . and I will occasionally throw in an image or two.
I’m so tired of Facebook, and am glad I’m not the only one considering quitting since you’ve already taken that step. I only check it once every few weeks anyways, and to be honest, could care less about how people who I barely knew ten years ago are doing.
I’m also tired of reading hundreds of blogs each day and wasting my time that way. There’s still some good stuff being posted in some realms of the blogosphere, but I waste too much time arguing over stuff that’s been rehashed time and time again online.
I dig that I can scan through Twitter really quickly, but it offers no depth. A Twitter/Flickr mashup would be nice as long as it doesn’t become a Facebook “we have an application for everyone” type mashup. Why does my wife have to log into Facebook to play Scrabble?
I’m with most of them, but also some of you. Facebook, while good for some things – perhaps, is no replacement for blogging. Twitter I have not tried, the name is enough to put me off
It is a shame that the frontier excitement of blogging has gone, it is a blow to the ego that Google no longer loves blogs like they used to, and the traffic has nosedived. BUT where else do we generate discussion and conversation, where else do ideas get batted around?
I’ll not stop blogging, whatever the temptations, until I find something better!
So, if you have found better, tell us – put up or don’t shut up
Thx, Tim. You’re one of my faves.
[...] is dead. And I still miss it. I predicted its demise a year ago and I find that it is deader than it was back then. It’s sad for me. I enjoyed blogging. But it [...]