Is blogging dead?
Posted by Holden Frith Wired has published an essay proclaiming the death of blogging. Given that we’ve just relaunched the Times Online tech blog under the name Tech Central, that’s a bit alarming.
Should we have bothered? Well, according to Paul Boutin, the essay's author, sites like this are part of the problem.
Scroll down Technorati's list of the top 100 blogs and you'll find personal sites have been shoved aside by professional ones. Most are essentially online magazines: The Huffington Post. Engadget. TreeHugger. A stand-alone commentator can't keep up with a team of pro writers cranking out up to 30 posts a day.
Blogging no longer gives enthusiasts the chance to top the Google rankings with a carefully crafted post, the argument goes, and without that possibility, it’s neither fresh nor exciting.
But the “golden era” of blogging – an odd term for a period so recent and so brief – was never going to last. It was easy enough for a strong, independent voice to stand out from the crowd when the crowd was only a few rows deep. As soon as blogging entered the mainstream and the number of bloggers multiplied, the influence of each individual was proportionally reduced.
Boutin also bemoans the colonisation of the blogosphere by newspaper websites and other corporate interests, but while the rise of the salaried blogger has certainly changed the nature of blogging, the influence has not been one-way.
The mainstream media now have to be more blog-like in their coverage, responding more quickly, more personally and with greater scope for interaction. The challenge is to combine the best, most democratic aspects of blogging with the disciplines of traditional journalism.
What we see now is a maturing blogosphere. It may be a bit less exciting and a bit less unpredictable, but readers are more likely to find what they’re looking for. The excitement and the unpredictability have found a new outlet, and once that has matured too they’ll move on once again.
In the 60's, people took acid to make the world weird. Now the world is weird and people take Prozac to make it normal.
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