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Blogging Is Dead. Oh, Really?

March 4, 2011 •

You can always tell when it’s been a slow news day. There’s yet another provoca­tive news story, pro­nounc­ing the death of email, or blog­ging, or Twit­ter. You name it.

Sev­eral weeks ago the New York Times wrote that blog­ging among young peo­ple was on the decline, accord­ing to research from the Pew Center’s Inter­net and Amer­i­can Life Project. Later, more thought­ful com­men­taries appeared, not­ing that blog­ging isn’t dead; it is just evolv­ing.

The obser­va­tion I found most per­ti­nent is from GigaOm:

Blog­ging… has evolved into much more of a con­tin­uum of pub­lish­ing

My expe­ri­ence, although far from sci­en­tific, is that blog­ging and tweet­ing have become part of a con­tin­uum of con­ver­sa­tion. Peo­ple choose the means of expres­sion that is most com­fort­able, per­haps most con­ve­nient at the moment — the means that best suits what they want to say — and to whom.

With both my per­sonal blog and my pro­fes­sional blog, I’ve been sur­prised by the num­ber of com­ments that arrive via email rather than as com­ments posted directly in the blog. It takes an extra step or two for some­one to con­tact me by email, rather than Word­Press’ built-in com­ment forms. This sug­gests some­thing about the person’s moti­va­tion.

The more thought­ful the com­ment, or the more it per­tains to the writer’s spe­cific busi­ness issues, the more likely it is to arrive in my email in-box, rather than appear as a pub­lic com­ment on my blog. More than once I’ve found myself encour­ag­ing the comment’s author to share it from within the blog, because I believed it would res­onate with oth­ers.

I also rec­og­nize that, at times, people’s only recourse is to com­mu­ni­cate with me via email, because the oppor­tu­nity to com­ment on a post has expired.

Sadly, I’ve been forced to stop accept­ing blog com­ments within a month or so of post­ing a new entry, to avoid inces­sant spam­ming by the East­ern Euro­pean link farms. Some­how I just haven’t been able to swal­low the need to add a Captcha form, the auto­mated alter­na­tive to fend­ing off the spam­mers.

The fact that spam­mers have become so active says that there’s con­tin­u­ing value in blogs.

And then there was the mes­sage on 2/26 from pro­lific tweeter Jere­miah Owyang:

Tweet more than 20 times a day? You should blog. Pay your­self first.

No, blog­ging isn’t dead: it’s just part of a con­tin­uum of con­ver­sa­tion options.

About This Blog

Reflec­tions on life, travel, books, and yoga. Think­ing out loud about the pur­suit of mind­ful­ness and well-being.

Learn­ing how to recover from the loss of a beloved spouse, and then to find a trans­for­ma­tive path for­ward.

About Me

Semi-retired marketing exec, transitioning from a career in high tech. Now "managed" by two Tonkinese cats. Missing travel and friends on the West Coast. Avid reader and foodie. Staying active with long walks, biking, kayaking and yoga.

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