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More reflections on the loss of the 'Personal Blog' | |
Posted May 27, 2011 - 9:26:17
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 So recently I've been complaining on Twitter about the drop off in personal blogging over the past few years, as people have moved their social networking from sites like LiveJournal to modern social networking sites like Facebook. I had planned on writing a lengthy blog post about the matter today, but when doing a quick search of my site I realized something very important...
I already wrote that exact entry less than a year ago.
Combined with my earlier bemoaning the loss of the small website community to centralized social networks in an entry from almost a year and a half ago, I realized something very important this morning.
I seem to complain about change a lot.
I mean, here I am, doing what I've always done - blogging on my almost fifteen year old website - being nostalgic for a platform that I used to mock when I was a younger, slightly more elitist version of myself ("Back in my day, we just built our own website! Using a blogging service is lazy!"). I mean, I used to hate LiveJournal, and here I am repeatedly lamenting its loss.
To be fair to myself, I used to just dislike it because some misguided pride in technical skill, which I let go of quite some time ago. Eventually I embraced websites-as-services, and learned to love blogging communities. To also be fair, I have no problem with Twitter and Facebook as services (as I use both heavily) and if people were still writing long spools of text on these new platforms, I wouldn't have a problem.
I guess the only hope on the horizon is Tumblr, which I have (in good humor) referred to as "Hipster LiveJournal." But as much as I joke about it, it really is a nice blogging platform for the average person... and it's gaining popularity. So here's to you Tumblr. Maybe you can save us from the premature death of long form personal blogging.
...even if you apparently dislike the letter E.
- Traegorn
Well then let's start hoping Tumblr is the solution because Twitter is getting on my nerves, I still don't like shortening my thoughts or making 2 tweets.
Maybe I'm just old..but I quite enjoy using Live Journal, although I've noticed a drop in activity there over the past year.
And get off my lawn...
(heh sorry couldn't resist)
I'm still on the fence about the concept of blogging. On one hand 90% of it is useless chatter, on the other it's an interesting cultural concept to have millions of people placing their entire lives out there for everyone to see. Provided the data doesn't disappear it should be a very interesting look into society in a fifty years or so.
As far as build/buy of blogs go I think the idea is that you have a much more personal investment for something you create yourself versus something you just sign up for. What was the number I heard a few years back, something like 80% of all blogs are inactive.
(ahh here it is: http://www.businessweek.com/the_thread/blogspotting/archives/2007/04/blogging_growth.html)
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