I don’t know about you, but I’ve begun to notice a trend. Some of us who are familiar with the term “blog” and who consider ourselves to be internet savvy are starting to claim that the term “blog” is old fashioned. However, if we take a look around, mass media is still on the cusp of embracing this wonderful thing called blogs. Part of the problem (if you want to call it that) lies in the fact that the early adopter crowd who went crazy with blogs has now moved on to something else. Blogs appear stale as if they were no big deal to this crowd. Meanwhile, there is a large section of people who are just now jumping on board the blogging bandwagon and having a great time doing so. To them, this is brand new.
Are you noticing the same trend? Do you think blogging has reached its peak and is now on the other side of the bell curve?
15 thoughts on “Are Blogs Old School”
twitter/friendfeed etc. People’s attention span keeps getting shorter and shorter, so it’s inevitable.
Personally, I like the blogging for the public concept, we do it all the time at opsamericas.com, the number of our audience that also uses twitter-like services is less than 5%, so like you noticed, the vast majority are just getting into blogging, so it’s good to stack or overlap the services…
Of course, that would be easier if there weren’t 30+ different social networks.
Sigh.
Ross
I still think blogging is strong as well, but the term ‘blogging’ sometimes seems a little outdated. As for replacing it, nothing that I know of right now can replace a blog.
If blogging has become passe, you didn’t really offer a suggestion for an alternative. I don’t think it’s a fad, just that there are lots of other social media things going on. Blogging, I think, is still pretty strong.
I’ve been noticing that more young people who formerly used IMM, Facebook and Myspace are discovering blogging.
I think that may be an example of how different segments use blogging as a communications tool.
I echo earlier comments about blogs as CMS systems which are drying up revenue for “traditional” web designers, but then it’s also spawing work in new areas as blog specialists, blog site risk management and security specialists, etc.
I think they are here to stay and will continue to morph iinto new directions.
i do think i’ve been noticing an evolution in blogging. the friendly chat type blogs will probably be taken over by things like twitter. and even, i use twitter as a supplement, and a quick way to keep up with whats going on (aside from being sucked into a reader). and then there is phlogs and vlogs which dont have much text at all…
i’m always looking to develop my blog in new ways, as i find the current format, scrolling, single posts, static information to be really confining. it’s only a matter of time before someone comes up with something that will blow us all out of the water.
I do believe “old school” might be somewhat the wrong term here. I’m thinking more along the lines that blogs have finally become “established” as a legitimate way to present content on the WWW. And although blogging certainly didn’t exactly foster the idea of social networks per say, it gave it one hell of a push.
“Erin A” made some excellent points which run parallel with my own thoughts.
“Danny” makes a good point also in that the “non-internet savvy” folks are finally catching on to the art of blogging although I’d have to differ somewhat in the fact that people can be very Internet savvy but completely non-tech which I believe is the key to them previously balking at anything like blogging.
Some time ago I consigned my rather older geek type self to being eyebrow deep into WordPress and all it’s technical splendor (if my wife didn’t get after me I would have starved a long time ago) and I have to say that a major reason that the non-tech folks are just now getting aboard the bandwagon is that the blogging platform, WordPress for example (both flavors), associated themes and plugins have become much, much easier for the novice to learn, install and update then it was even a year ago. Then you had to know some HTML in order to get the post you were writing formatted properly, you had to know some PHP in order to get a plugin to work correctly and both CSS and PHP as well the case of themes. Even the “Admin” side of things have become much easier to get around.
“Nice to have a sidebar but widget? What the heck was a widget? Code it in baby!” No wonder they stayed away.
It’s not exactly a “set it and forget it” thing these days but it’s getting awful close to it.
I’m not sure if there’s a next best thing as it relates to blogging itself as far as being able to fully express yourself online for all to see. It’s nice to have your own piece of the Blogosphere and have the neighbors drop by once in awhile and it’s a great thing to see one of your posts get “Stumbled, Dugg or Slashdot’d” now isn’t it?
If only they had called it something else. “Blog” sounds too much like something you do in a pasture or a marsh (“I was bloggin’ through the marsh t’other day…”).
I’ve been designing for the web for approx 9 years and feel as if I woke up just yesterday from a mass sleep. It appears that over night in some web conference Tim O’Reilly (famous for the O’Reilly books I so often read and need) coined the phrase Web 2.0 and knocked us old school designers off the roller coaster ride. See Wikipedia results on Web 2.0 / O’Reilly »
Web 2.0 in mass definition encompasses a new Internet of social-networking and community type sites such as myspace, facebook, blogs, etc. As a result I’ve been buried with re-educating myself in the web design world as “Web 2.0” has trickled into best design practices of such site types (new code!?!). Sending myself back to kindergarten has been a bitter-sweet ride to say the least.
It’s also forced me to ask questions such as “is this just a trend?”. I’ve learned by experience that if I allowed myself to learn how to design for all the new Internet trends, I’d never be productive or excel in one particular field – I’d never eat sleep or shower either. So I let Blogging run its course and here I am a few years later starting my own blog (more than 1 actually, as well as reading and commenting here and there on others).
In summary and in my best opinion, Phil said it best. Blogs are kings of content and just like rock-n-roll they appear here to stay. And my, are they smart and serve a great purpose – if only they were used appropriately. T Eastmen was also dead-on, where companies can’t figure out what they want in their own boardrooms, much less decide on what their new blog will be about. Touche! Do they really even need it? “Hey Everybody – let’s blog!” Ay yi yi. This is a good blog that touches on some of these topics »
There’s a proper tool for every target audience. Blogging serves the mass public with a wonderful and free tool for socializing, hence the trend. It also allows for charitable organizations to have an online presence who otherwise may not be able to afford one (has anyone seen this trend take off? Sadly, I have not). However, for companies seeking an online presence, let’s say for the first time, just a blog site isn’t the way to go. A good old-fashioned resourceful website with a possible blog option, seems much more appropo.
What I do believe is that we are experiencing the trickle effect.
1. Blogging gains public attention (Blog for free in just one click!)
2. Blogs spawned like ant hills all over the Internet.
3. The community aspect of blogging (link to me! link to you! link to my brother!) fed the community fire.
4. Enhanced blogging became a public demand
5. These enhancements such as tag clouds, categories, social linking, Google AdSense, RSS Feeds, etc. fed the search engines lots of spinach.
6. Keyword: search engines. No pun intended but hey – its all about content, keywords, placement, traffic and getting out there. And that is what I believe still makes a blog a very sexy feature.
Victim of a Monday coffee overdose, so thanks for letting me rant! Hope I’ve made some sense and happy blogging!
I guess becoming “old school” in terms of the “latest and greatest (or newest) BUT I don’t think that’s going to make them any less popular.
In terms of their novelty, blogs are old school. But not in an important way. 140 characters with tinyurls are great for a lot of new ways to communicate and syndicate, but blogs are still the “kings of content”.
A lot of my time has been eaten away from Twitter & FF, but that’s a temporary fling (eventually, I think I’ll use FF/Twitter in a more productive, less addictive way than now). But the need for content will not go away. In fact, the need will increase (in part because microblogging has a lot of credibility to establish yet).
For instance, even though the medical community has been late to the party, high quality content will still be needed. And as more MS audiences demand authoritative and interactive media to get medical info, blogs will still be a premier platform for that content.
And what do a lot of the microblogging platforms feed from and to? …None other than blogs.
In short, yes, blogging probably is old school. But so is rock and roll.
Right on Danny, that is what I tried to cover in this post. I’m right on par with you. The early adopters are naturally at the front of the line, ready for whatever is next. But if you take a look at the back of the line, people are just now hopping aboard the blogging bandwagon.
Well, I know that the early adopters are having a blast on services like FriendFeed commenting on every one else’s aggregated content. The question is, are blogs generated the content that gets aggregated, or is this content being produced by mass media which I feel falls outside of the blogosphere. I guess what I’m saying is, commenting on FriendFeed, participating on Twitter, and doing things through MySpace or Facebook looks like it is somewhat replacing the aspect of blogging.
The trend I’m noticing is that there are a lot of non internet savvy people that are catching on late. It amazes me how much time it takes for a concept to reach ‘critical mass’ to the point where Joe Blow catches on and want to be a part of it. Everyone wants a web presence and the easiest and quickest way other than MySpace is to start a blog…which you can do on MySpace as well…in short…the general public is just now catching on and now the original blogging set is ready for the next fad/trend.
There will always be blogs, but just as magazines branched off from newspapers, different types of blogs (perhaps known by different names) will branch off from the original idea.
It has already become true with the advent of spam blogs (a.k.a. “splogs”).
Those are my thoughts, anyways.
Personally, I don’t think that the term “blogging” has become old school. But I do think far too many businesses are trying to jump on the bandwagon with blogging and are corrupting the original concept, which was to share information, thoughts, and ideas. Now we have companies trying to use it as another marketing channel. How many things can you blog about if your company makes one type of shoe, or offers any singular item or service? Whenever I hear a mega company invite us to visit their blog, I always have to chuckle at the concept. These companies can’t agree on things within their own board rooms. How can they possibly cooperate and agree with the topics they are throwing into their blogs?
“who went crazy with blogs has now moved on to something else”
To what exactly? What do you think, the next big thing after blogs will be? (or already is)
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