When two great buddhointegroblogospheric sites each, independently, comment in terms of blogging being a bygone exercise -- disappearing like glaciers, Republicans and 401(k) balances -- you know we're being informed of a threat to the worldwide web, that it's a global warning.
Cliff Jones of This is This writes, "It is dead. It died on the blog. With its browsers 'round its ankles."
Cliff cites a post in the BBC News blog of Rory Cellan-Jones, where we are told, "I do think that there is evidence that early adopters from the tech crowd have moved on, perhaps disappointed that their blogs are not reaching a mass audience - or discovering that it's easier to have a conversation in a smaller space, where the madding crowd doesn't keep butting in."
Where elsewhere are bloggers off to? Wired Magazine says, "Twitter — which limits each text-only post to 140 characters — is to 2008 what the blogosphere was to 2004. You'll find [Robert] Scoble [of Scobleizer blog and Scoble on Twitter], [Jason] Calacanis [of calacanis.com], and most of their buddies from the golden age [of blogging] there. They claim it's because Twitter operates even faster than the blogosphere. And Twitter posts can be searched instantly, without waiting for Google to index them.
~C4Chaos [pictured on flickr, under the flow of a melting glacier, above] of the (hyper)stream ~C4Chaos [and still, reluctantly, of the infrequently-posting blog ~C4Chaos] tells us, in his blog, after a ten-day posting lapse, "Long-time visitors would have noticed by now that I no longer blog every day like I used to. Not to worry. I haven’t given up blogging. I’m actually more active now than I was before. Here’s why: Life is But a Stream, Why I Do Less Blogging and More (hyper)streaming."
What do we find on ~C4's site's (hyper)stream tab? Twitter and Friendfeed posts, on & on like there's no tomorrow.
There may be a flicker of hope, though. Cliff, "reporting from the twitching corpse," tells us in a follow-up blog entry, "Actually, reports of the death of blogging are greatly exaggerated. It’s interesting to read about this in newspapers, too. It’s like horses talking about the demise of cars. Things co-exist. Horses are still around. And like newspapers they are more for fun than function, they make a lot of mess and French people eat them."
Whew! That was close. I figure anything French people eat will be around for a long time. Do frogs still have legs? Why, sure they do. Mmmm, tastes like chicken.* Do blogs still have legs? Hell, yes. They talk the talk and they can still walk the walk.
* Or, tofo chicken for non-carnivores.
10/27/08 Update: In his comment to this post, C4Chaos tells us that behind him in the pic we do not see melted glacier water. [I knew that; I am teasing.] And that his hyperstream includes Twitter and Friendfeed posts, not Twitter and Facebook, as I had written. I've changed my post text in light of C4's correction re the hyperstream but not the water stream.
6 comments:
Did you say glaciers?... (I wish they would outlast the Republicans, but we'll see).
I'll be sad if we do lose blogs, but maybe then I'd actually work on my thesis and you would write your book (?).
I have noticed that the total number of readers, of my blog, has dropped by half. But I have also noticed that the total amount of time the average read of my blog has increased by over 100%. Blogs used to be the coolest thing on the internet, and every one looked at them - but with myspace and facebook and twitter, etc, people have more options. and for those people with a shorter attention span, or less time to dedicate to their internet activities, they can do something other than look at blogs. But, there will always be an audience for more indepth, and greatly expanded thought. And blogs will be there to fulfill that need.
Peace.
Tom,
first of, your post made me chuckle. i'm glad that you still have that zen-like sense of humor.
a couple of corrections:
- not melting glaciers.
- not Facebook posts, they're Friendfeed posts. see http://friendfeed.com/c4chaos
my take on this topic. blogging is not dead. i agree with Doc Searls: "blogs have no substitute." microblogs are not journals.
then again, i find that with the recent change in my own personal sphere, i don't have the luxury to write long posts. but i'm still impassioned to share links and short opinions. that's why i think the best approach is the good ole *transcend and include*, hence (hyper)streaming. Friendfeed (and other similar services) makes it easier to swallow my blog in a single gulp ;)
that's all for now. thanks for linking to my musings.
kick ass and be still.
~C
Oh nooooooooooooo!
I'm not trendy!!!!!!
Ah, whatever.
Buddhist Philosopher [aka, Justin Whitaker]: Hopefully -- as CfourChaos tells me and Doc Searls tells me and Andrew Sullivan tells me -- blogs will defy death, rise again after about three days on Cfour's blog, and live, 4ever triumphant at the right hand of God.
Here are some of Andrew Sullivan's blogoglowing words from the latest issue [Nov08] of Atlantic:
... as blogging evolves as a literary form, it is generating a new and quintessentially postmodern idiom that’s enabling writers to express themselves in ways that have never been seen or understood before. Its truths are provisional, and its ethos collective and messy. Yet the interaction it enables between writer and reader is unprecedented, visceral, and sometimes brutal. And make no mistake: it heralds a golden era for journalism. ..."
But beyond just journalistic purposes, Sullivan writes:
"You end up writing about yourself, since you are a relatively fixed point in this constant interaction with the ideas and facts of the exterior world. And in this sense, the historic form closest to blogs is the diary. But with this difference: a diary is almost always a private matter. Its raw honesty, its dedication to marking life as it happens and remembering life as it was, makes it a terrestrial log. A few diaries are meant to be read by others, of course, just as correspondence could be—but usually posthumously, or as a way to compile facts for a more considered autobiographical rendering. But a blog, unlike a diary, is instantly public. It transforms this most personal and retrospective of forms into a painfully public and immediate one. It combines the confessional genre with the log form and exposes the author in a manner no author has ever been exposed before."
BLOGGING LIVES and will be with us forever, like the grass and the hills, the birds, palm trees and balmy weather! Yee-HA! I SHALL BLOG ON AND ON, I WILL, until they put my typing fingers into a box [ah.. with the rest of me] and bury them in the ground.
~C4Chaos,
Thanks. I was mostly meaning to twist your nose rather than delivery serious commentary. Still, I believe that it is evidence of End Times if YOU were to actually cease blogging. It would be as if Disney were to stop giving us cartoons, or apple trees were to stop giving us their fruit.
Blog on, C4.
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