The end of blogging as we know it, Part 2

A while ago I wrote a rather downbeat assessment of where blogging was headed, wine-blogging especially. (Here.)  I noted that short bursts of information were undermining the feature-article model that has prevailed until recently -- Twitter, Facebook and a raft of single-focus social networks as well.  

So I read with interest this article in the NYT, "Blogs falling in an empty forest":  link.  

Here are some crucial paragraphs from Douglas Quenqua's story:

...Many people start blogs with lofty aspirations — to build an audience and leave their day job, to land a book deal, or simply to share their genius with the world. Getting started is easy, since all it takes to maintain a blog is a little time and inspiration. So why do blogs have a higher failure rate than restaurants?

According to a 2008 survey by Technorati, which runs a search engine for blogs, only 7.4 million out of the 133 million blogs the company tracks had been updated in the past 120 days. That translates to 95 percent of blogs being essentially abandoned, left to lie fallow on the Web, where they become public remnants of a dream — or at least an ambition — unfulfilled.

Judging from conversations with retired bloggers, many of the orphans were cast aside by people who had assumed that once they started blogging, the world would beat a path to their digital door.

(My emphasis.)

Early in the article the author spoke with a woman who felt she had written too personally for her own good, or for the good of her relationships with friends and family. How odd.  If you're posting it to the worldwide web ... no?

The Times article also makes it plain that most aspiring bloggers want to be taken seriously -- seriously enough to, say, go into mainstream and into the money.  (Does this ring a bell, wine-bloggers?)  

I'm amused by the fatuity of people who started a blog expecting, eventually, to live off the income the blog generated.  (Off what?  A few banner ads?  Writing puff posts for your sponsors?  It is to laugh.)  Experienced journalists can scarcely make a living any more, let alone some geek with a dream.  

Blogging as bait for a book deal?  I'd like to know often that's worked out for the 7.4 million active/semi-active bloggers.  Has anybody taken a look at the publishing industry lately?  Dream on, geeklets.

And in the story there is an acknowledgment that Twitter and Facebook have indeed drawn away plenty of "old-style" bloggers as well as given new ones access to a pithier form of communication with a built-in readership.  Not that we've all ditched our Typepad or Blogspot accounts, but we are no longer using them as our exclusive means of communicating with our target audiences.  Facebook, Twitter and so on encourage brevity (aka "the soul of wit") and are having an effect on the length and types of posts that appear in the blogs or, to be more precise, the standard blog sites.

I think blogging will be around as long as the technology exists and the human need to express oneself must be satisfied.  But in a few years I think it will be roughly as mainstream as using a rotary dial phone. 

Comments

[Benito]

I think blogging has a good life left in it--it might be called something else, but as long as people enjoy reading something longer than a text message and shorter than a magazine article, there will be an audience for this kind of writing.

Blogging also tends to have a long tail, i.e. the posts and comments are available months or years afterwards to the internet community at large, whereas Facebook updates or tweets may be only visible to a select few.

If you look at the history of internet communication, you'll see ebbs and flows over time. BBS messages tended to be short. Usenet allowed for essay-length posts, as well as easy commenting. I haven't visited a newsgroup in years, mostly because the spam and trolls got out of hand. But on a blog, the author can exert the control to keep the discussion at a certain level and avoid lots of ads for Viagra.

People have been predicting the end of the human attention span since radio came out, but we still read novels, we still watch 2 hour long movies, and we haven't reduced our dinner to convenient capsule form. I think the additional forms of communication and social network are more likely to enhance and assist blogging rather than overtake it.

[gianpaolo]

Blogs can be a disappointment if your ambitions are to make a living out of them, as it is rightly pointed out here, but if that isn't your goal I still find them unique in the fact that they are the simplest way to communicate thoughts that are longer than 140 characters (not that I have many of those anyway).

[fredric koeppel]

when i started my wine website (koeppelonwine.com ... now defunct) in Dec. 2004, i sold subscriptions at $48 a year, thinking, hey, i'll get 1,000 subscriptions easily because of my veteran print wine writer rep and cred; didn't happen, i never had more than maybe 35. with the blog, 98 percent of us are absolved of the illusion of making money. only a few -- Dr. Vino, Vinography, Fermentation -- actually carry the weight to sell ads and make dough. Like Tyler Coleman and Alder Yarrow, you have to devote your life to blogging and to writing books to mount up the slope of fiduciary prowess. so fine. i, for one, keep on doing what i'm doing (w/ 25 years of experience behind me)and getrting a gratifying if not hyper-exciting response; nice comments and an average of 30,000 visitors a month. (and a bunch of free wine.) i wish it were more, but that's ok. are facebook and twitter actually "undermining" what i and other bloggers do? or is it just something different intended for speed-readers and the visually oriented? i don't think people who really want to LEARN about wine will do so through facebook and twitter, which, as Benito points out, have real limitations as to time, survival and scope. are wine blogs "influential"? do we make a difference? those notions are difficult to measure. i know that compared to two years ago, i'm getting more inquiries from wineries, importers and PR people asking if they can send me wines. if that occurrence is a measure of success or influence, all the better.

[Morgan]

i am pretty sure i have the market cornered with my blog. no one in the world seems to cover ohio state athletics, my three softball leagues, and late 90s pop music aside from me - and i think people need that in their lives.

no, but really, i dont know what i'm talking about.

[TH]

That's the beauty of blogging. You don't have to know shit. In fact, I think the less you know the more popular you become.

Are you ready for that book deal yet?