Earlier this week, Wired Magazine announced the death of blogging. “Pull the plug” it advised.
We lost him! Stat! Or something...
I disagree.
Blogging’s not dead. There’s no “dying of the light”.
And Flickr, Twitter, YouTube and Facebook are not going to kill blogging. There are 2 reasons why. Firstly, blogging is simply writing on a website. And the irony is that essentially Wired Magazine’s article is a blog post. Yes, it is. There’s even a space to comment on the page that hosts the article. Let me say that again: a blog is simply a website. So that means if blogs are dying then websites are dying too.
Secondly, blogging is part of the symbiotic relationship that exists between all social-media. Blogs, Twitter, Flickr, Youtube and Facebook co-exist with one another to create one mega-channel. They’re like Lego pieces. You need them all to create a finished product. And they’re consumed like M&M’s. Some people like a variety but others like Ozzy only like the brown ones (obscure Wayne’s World 2 reference). Diff’rent strokes for diff’rent folks. C’mon people, it’s social marketing 101. Meanwhile, blogs haven’t stood still against the march of progress. They can host Youtube clips, Twitter streams, Flickr images and can link to Facebook. FriendFeed much?
And yes, there’s a miasma of worthless content out there. But what will impact more positively on the lifespan of a website: 90 pieces of drivel or 30 pieces of quality content? People will negatively select the blogs that don’t appeal. I bet that the trolls that rely on shock factor tactics and lowest common denominator humour will probably close up shop after losing the will to post. Stupidity takes effort, after all. The journalist blames these trolls for adding to the demise of the blog. “That’s why Calacanis has retreated to a private mailing list. He can talk to his fans directly, without having to suffer idiotic retorts from anonymous Jason-haters.” It’s worth pointing out that Calcanis’ mailing list experienced its genesis out of the original blog. And that’s what comment moderation is for anyway.
So what do you think: has Wired Magazine hit the nail on the head or are blogs here to stay?
The Batrachian Chronicles 
Pingback: Books and Magazines Blog » Archive » RIP Blogs: 2004 - 2008.
Thats a very good point, I never thought of that. He is criticising blogging on essentially a blog.
I agree with your point of view on blogs. They are nowhere near dead because they are an easy application to write with. Since when has writing died? I ranted about the same article on my blog, plus linked to a few other blogs that discussed the issue. Your post was sent to me by a commenter. Alive and well, we all are.
Blogging in action! Comments. Referrals. Links to follow. Yup. The death of blogs has been greatly exaggerated. Mark Twain would have been proud. Thanks for the comments.
The author of your source article is absolutely and 100% wrong.
I recently made a post (contains strong language, probably) about another incorrect assertion about blogging. The incorrect assertion was based on a post by Iain Dale, who is one of the UK’s top political bloggers. As you can see in his article, by far the biggest number of active, influential blogs are one-man-band blogs.
My best guess is that Calcanis and Boutin have failed as bloggers.
That’s a fairly harsh indictment on Messrs. Calcanis and Boutin.
That said, I followed the link to your blog-post and I agree with your sentiments, especially this one: “It’s not a lack of funding […]. It’s a lack of wit, intelligence and above all, a lack of anything useful to say.”
So perhaps in the tail-less fox scenario: they can’t have it, so they try to convince everyone else that it’s not needed.
True Obnoxio, they probably are bad at blogging. Which says allot cause I get an average of 77 views a day and most of my posts suck. Which also shows that the idea that you can’t get people reading your blog cause there are to many of them is crap.