Are blogs dead? The New York Times would have you think so (you old codger)
February 22nd, 2011 by Ann Dalrymple
It’s a familiar trope to declare something ‘dead’ when really you’re declaring your own boredom or waning interest – in a cultural meme, a philosophical point-of-view, a once-hot company, a must-have technical device or even a designer label.
So The New York Times, no stranger to ‘calling it’ on all things zeitgeist, has put a sell-by date on blogs, citing a drift to Twitter and Facebook by Millennials and Gen Y, those arbiters of modern culture.
Citing results of a report from The Internet and American Life Project at the Pew Research Center, titled ‘Social Media and Young Adults’, the Times notes that children 12-17 are blogging less (homework, perhaps?) and tweeting more, while blogging among Boomers (46-55) has risen five percent and among plus anciens (65-73) is up two percent. Not surprisingly, the article chronicles a similar drop in the status of blogging platforms Blogger and LiveJournal (although, apparently, WordPress is doing just fine.)
What are we to take from this? Top level, it’s a lot easier to push out content of 140 characters a pop rather than slave over posts composed of considered opinions, full words and complete sentences. Twitter rewards the attention-deprived and syntactically-challenged by according them a place to share random thoughts with a cast of thousands. Facebook takes it further by supporting random thoughts accompanied by video and richer media types. Arguably both platforms provide a simulacrum of conversation but discourage what SNL aptly parodied as ‘Deep Thoughts’.
Bloggers, writing in the hopes of influencing others, work alone, and may not be able to attract sufficient readership to reward the effort. Nevertheless working with bloggers is a must-have skill for PR pros – so many journalists have made the switch from publications to blogging that ignoring blogs would compromise coverage.
Of course, while it’s easy to take a poke at the Times for its essay on the fate of blogging, it’s impossible to ignore the power and influence of Twitter and Facebook in these fractured and challenging political times. So here’s a compromise – blog, tweet, post on Facebook, write an article, whatever. Just don’t stop communicating. Then we’ll all have lost.
This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 22nd, 2011 at 1:28 pm and is filed under Blogging, News & Commentary, Social Media, Social Networks. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
February 22nd, 2011 at 1:44 pm
Hmm…children 12-17 are blogging less? I didn’t know they were blogging at all!
I don’t feel offended when I’m called a millenial (because I am) but I do feel put off when the Pew Research Center suggests we can’t string complete and grammatical sentences together. Plus, to tweet effectively, you have to at least understand how to point to good content. Blogging won’t go away for a really, really long time.
Sorry, NYT – this wasn’t your best prediction.
February 22nd, 2011 at 2:15 pm
This NY Times story is going to generate a lot of conversations. Check out Chris Crum’s article on Webpronews http://bit.ly/epVxAX
Chris interviews Matt Mullenweg from WordPress who says that the NY Times story title was probably created by the editor, not the reporter, in an effort to push up page views with a spicy headline. The best way to read the Pew study is proof that we’re all living in a multi-media and multi-channel marketing world. To reach your audience, you need to use a mix of social networking, blogs, email, etc. Some channels may be on the rise and some may be waning, but I don’t see any funerals coming soon.
February 22nd, 2011 at 2:41 pm
I confess – the comment about complete sentences and grammar was mine
. Apologies to all literate Millennials.
February 23rd, 2011 at 5:44 pm
I agree that The Times missed the mark on this one. Blogs still have a valuable place in the marketing mix.
More at http://bit.ly/gNcy93
February 23rd, 2011 at 5:55 pm
Excellent post, Dave, and thanks for the comment. I like your observation about diaries. Remember when those were kept locked and hidden? Some things really are better left unsaid/unobserved. For the rest, blogs work just fine.
April 17th, 2011 at 10:00 pm
[...] 2. Tech PR Gems – Are Blogs Dead? The New York Times Would Have You Think So [...]
April 17th, 2011 at 10:02 pm
[...] 2. Tech PR Gems – Are Blogs Dead? The New York Times Would Have You Think So [...]
July 29th, 2011 at 4:18 pm
Absolutely !
There is no way on the net to search for Blogs that you may be of interested to you.
If you can not find a Blog that interests you then the Blog will die !
August 20th, 2011 at 7:15 am
Agree with Frank. Blogs became popular because they provided a medium to express and get feedback. Personal blogs became boring just after couple of posts. Even corporate and celebrity posts became boring after some time because they did not have enough time to come up with consistently good posts.
Most celebrities have moved on to Twitter. Personal blogs are replaced by Facebook.
I doubt Google is making money out of Blogspot post searched. But with their other cash cow they can keep this going.
November 15th, 2011 at 8:20 am
[...] then the posts become less and less frequent, until…DOA. With the rise of Twitter and Facebook, even the New York Times sentenced blogs to death. But the beauty of blogging is that you can always pick it back up [...]
December 4th, 2011 at 1:24 pm
[...] I don't believe the kinds of headlines that scream "Blogs Are Dead" because people no longer possess an attention span. The reality is that blogs are very much [...]
January 1st, 2012 at 8:43 am
Has Blogging Reached Its Peak? No. There is Lot of Headroom Still.
There is lot of headroom for blogs to increase readers and page views. Bloggers are to be made aware of the opportunity and have to given some more encouragement to promote their content. Presently blogs may have 15 billion page views per month. The potential for 50 billion can be easily visualized.
http://nraoblogs.blogspot.com/2012/01/has-blogging-reached-its-peak-no-there.html
January 28th, 2012 at 11:25 pm
Is blogging dead? No. One of my projects for the students involves blogging. They create their own blogs and get graded on the comments they leave on each other blogs. This introduces the student to use the proper etiquette when blogging. Yes, Facebook and other web 2.0 tools are killing the concept but not the educational use of it.
January 29th, 2012 at 9:16 pm
Blogging is not dead, I just think it’s not being used as it should. Blogging was created to share knowledge and information via the internet, to post opinions and ideas. It is a shame that more students are not using it to their advantage, but instead would rather post comments on Facebook where they lose their touch with grammar by using shortcut words such as lol, byw, etc.
Blogging should be required to be used in the classroom to prepare our students for real world life skills where discussion and input will be required via blogging.