Shorter, Faster and Louder: The Future of Blogging

Filed under: Blogging, Social Media

On October 20, 2008 writer Paul Boutin ruffled feathers all over the Internet by quipping, “Thinking about launching your own blog? Here’s some friendly advice: Don’t. And if you’ve already got one, pull the plug.” He made this claim in Wired Magazine in an article titled, “Twitter, Flickr, Facebook Make Blogs Look So 2004.” This left many people wondering what exactly the future of blogging is. I’m inclined to disagree with Boutin’s bleak view and narrow definition of what a blog is.

Shorter
One of the replacements offered by Boutin for blogs is the service known as Twitter. This “micro-blog” offers users the chance to share their thoughts in 140 characters or less or the equivalent of about two sentences. These bits of data can convey headlines from the day’s news, links to interesting articles or sites around the web or broadcast to the world what you’re up to this instant. This seemingly mundane concept has caught on like wildfire and over 2008 Twitter experienced 752% growth in traffic according to www.mashable.com.

So Twitter isn’t a blog killer so much as it is a metamorphosis of the blogging medium. It’s still a text-based form of expression that you can share with others. You can follow other folks and they can follow you. The main differentiating factor between Twitter and a blog created using software like WordPress or Blogger is that the data set is homogenous. This allows software to sort the data generated by millions of people creating text on Twitter easily. They can identify trends and watch a virtual fishbowl that tells you what’s hot on the web right now. Using a website like www.twitscoop.com one can find out what people are talking about in real time. This can be powerful when assessing the public relations damage done by a Hollywood star or when a president is looking to gauge the popularity of an economic stimulus package. You can use Twitter to be nimbler, by blogging shorter.

Faster
When trying to convey a message to your audience online speed is crucial. Social networking sites have taken away the customization options offered by flexible programs like WordPress and Blogger and offered stripped down blogging platforms instead. Facebook’s “Notes” section is just a blog with a different name. The social networking site creation tool Ning also provides a simplistic blogging tool as part of its offering. The advantage is that you can type out your thoughts quickly and have a tidy package to present to your readers.

We’d be remise to omit Twitter when talking about speed. Nothing is faster or more timely. People love the instant gratification it provides. The future of blogging will certainly be tied inextricably to creating entries faster and distributing content instantaneously throughout your network through “one click solutions” offered by widgets like Share This.

Louder
Text is great for blogs but users on the web hunger for audio and video. One needs to look no farther than the success www.youtube.com and www.music.myspace.com to grasp this. New mutated blogs are seizing upon this potential and taking it to the next level. Services like Seesmic offer a video-only answer to Twitter. Seesmic users can upload video directly from their phone to enhance the speed and intimacy of their entries. Their fans can reply with videos of their own and the site goes out of its way to limit the amount of typing their users do. Across the Internet users are getting louder and engaging their audience on a more visceral level.

What does this mean for those firms with a web presence? These changes can be a positive evolution for many companyies who blog.
• Use your micro-blog of choice to share a positive review your company received on a local business site to attain great public relations exposure in seconds.
• Want to stimulate end of the month sales? Create a coupon code and distribute it to your Facebook Fans to see results in hours, if not minutes.
• Show the quality of your products through a live demonstration on a video blogging site. Let your prospects see the benefit of your offering with their own eyes.

Has all the air gone out of the blogosphere? I don’t think so. Blogs are an integral part of what experts term Web 2.0 because they represent the forefront of content creation, sharing and audience interaction. They’ve gotten shorter, faster and louder but at the end of the day they’re still blogs.

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