Blog is Dead? Blog remains Dead?

Paul Boutin’s recent Wired article, Twitter, Flickr, Facebook Make Blogs Look So 2004, suggests that the blogosphere is  too crowded for a lone blogger to make a difference, and it it time to fold up shop on blogging:

Writing a weblog today isn’t the bright idea it was four years ago. The blogosphere, once a freshwater oasis of folksy self-expression and clever thought, has been flooded by a tsunami of paid bilge. Cut-rate journalists and underground marketing campaigns now drown out the authentic voices of amateur wordsmiths. It’s almost impossible to get noticed, except by hecklers. And why bother? The time it takes to craft sharp, witty blog prose is better spent expressing yourself on Flickr, Facebook, or Twitter.

I thought I would post a blog about it, and I hope that it draws more comments than those haranguing hecklers Paul references. In many ways, I tend to agree that microblogging and many 2.0 apps have changed the face of the personal publication model. To me, all of these tools become facets of my online persona, but the blog is central to this online presence.

Although it is possible to have superintegration across blog/facebook/twitter/freiendfeed/linkedin/youtube/flickr/etc., each of these personal promotion channels, have seperate communities (despite the crossover). After feeding tweets to Facebook for some period, it became clear that my tweetquency was too high for my conversation to be meaningful to Facebook friends. For me, the blog becomes the central hub of my online persona to all of the spokes (or channels) of social media.

Many activities that were formerly blog content now appear as tweets.  I write blog posts once or twice a week as opposed to once or twice a day, but I am actually publishing/retweeting/linking more content than ever before. Tweets are pithy. They may even have misspellings or ramblings. They generally are not thoughtful and well edited like blogs. However, with my posts, I try to think before I type. Therefore, blogs become more informational, reflective commentary, and the more pedestrian commentary happens in these other outlets.

Despite this Zarathustrian proclamation, blogs aren’t dead, and we didn’t kill them–at least not in 2008.


Jeremy Floyd

Jeremy Floyd is the President at FUNYL Commerce. Formerly, he was the CEO and President of Lirio, Bluegill Creative, a marketing and communications firm in Knoxville, Tennessee. In addition to managing the digital strategies, Floyd was an adjunct professor for the University of Tennessee Chattanooga MBA program teaching digital strategies and social media. Floyd blogs at jeremyfloyd.com and tweets under the name @jfloyd. Jeremy is licensed to practice law in the State of Tennessee and holds a law degree from the University of Tennessee College of Law and a Bachelor of Arts degree from MTSU in English and Philosophy.

  • Jeremy! Great material bro. I have a blog out there that I am going to begin using. Maybe the case is, blogs just haven’t been used correctly yet. Maybe there is a breakthrough. Maybe our society isn’t ready for it yet. After all, I would think the majority of those using Facebook and Myspace are well behind Bloggers and Tweeters. Furthermore, the blogging culture seems to be one of its own… and they will never die. In fact, you have resurrected this here blogger.

    Jesse Olive
    President
    Sensible Marketing Solutions
    http://www.sensiblemarketingsolutions.com

  • blog is not dead! i wrote a post last week to say why.

  • Nice post. I obviously agree–the medium is just so different. I had an interesting exercise the other day when I went back and read my tweets from April, and then I went back and read blog posts from the same time. The blog posts were thoughtful and relevant, but many of the tweets were conversational (and out of context), relevant to that time but not timeless, and cute, not insightful.

  • Truthful words, some truthful words dude. Thanx for making my day!