Why haven’t I been blogging? In short, Twitter.
I have been insanely busy. Too busy to deal with the strange invisible rule telling me that I have to write long, profound blog posts.
I know, it’s silly. It’s my blog. While I’d love to inspire a few minds, this is my mental output. I don’t have to do anything but what I want to. So why do I feel like I can’t write a paragraph-long post about my day?
At the Social Media Club Workshop I attended on Monday, there was much discussion about why blogs did not become “the next big (social) thing”. Experts had predicted blogs would rise up as the predominant online social tool…and then they didn’t. After the surge in popularity, blogs became a common sight on the social web…but not a soaring, viral phenomenon like everyone expected.
Why did this happen? Where does this leave predictions about the next big thing? I think we sabotaged ourselves (I use “we” loosely as I only recently began doing what would officially be called “blogging”). And I don’t think it’s bad. Let’s look at the elements that contributed to this.
1. Tools
The blogging tools that exist do not lend themselves to short, light writing. Even Flock’s delightfully simple and usable blog editor has options for formatting, photos, html, tags, and more. And we still have a laundry list of advanced options that our community requests daily (Tony Fardon’s BlogPlus Extension fills this gap nicely). Even the themes surrounding many blogs makes a single paragraph look overwhelmed (Example Here). This is not welcoming to the kind of people who avoid word processors as much as possible or don’t know what html is.
2. The Over-hyped Decline of Traditional News Media
At the same time that blogging became a rising star, traditional news media began a noticeable decline. Did blogging cause this? No. It may have contributed. But what I feel was more of a factor was that people wanted (and could finally get) fast, visual, and relevant news. The proliferation of high-speed internet (fast), the rise of YouTube (visual), and the introduction of user-rated news like Digg (relevant) all hastened the decline of the 5 o’clock news hour. Those seeking the fast/visual/relevant combo discovered that “the next big thing”, blogs, didn’t always provide this. And so these people pushed blogs aside in favor of piano-playing cats.
3. Community
Again, this isn’t a bad thing. This is a great thing. The people that eventually became the blogging “community” are the people that stunted it’s growth. In the blogsphere, there is an emphasis on readers, not “friends” (including a lack of “collecting friends” mentality), and on colleagues/contemporaries rather than hookups (ignoring the rule of successful social apps: get people laid). Very few us of are friend whores or glitter graphics lovers, and thus we turn those people off. The fact is, there are a lot more of these glitter graphics kids than there are writers with the interest, talent, and focus to write several paragraphs of intelligent text for a dubious number of internet readers. We drove away the MySpace crowd.
Don’t fret! This is fantastic! We live in an idyllic community because we didn’t become “the next big thing”. We don’t have to deal with the pressure of having new companies riding their money on our success every day. We don’t have to deal with millions of “omg i luvz the blogz yo” posts or serious lawsuits. Bloggers, rejoice in not being the next big thing.
What is the next big thing? For now, Twitter and nanoblogging/microblogging/tumblogging/whatever it’s called this week. There’s much less of a barrier here. All I can do is customize my background, add a few tiny notes about myself, and write 140 characters. And sometimes, at the end of the day, it’s all I can do to write 140 characters about what I’m thinking. Is this bad for blogs? Who knows. I doubt it. After all, it says something that what began as a short excuse for not writing blogs became a whole blog post about the matter.
