Blogs are dead; long live the blog

Is blogging dead? Last year, questioning the future of the iconic weblog would have had me institutionalized. But today, in the face of the dramatic explosion of real-time social media services like Twitter, the future of blogging is far from certain.

It’s not just me questioning the blog. Last week, I was in Amsterdam, with a thousand of my closest new media friends, at The Next Web, one of Europe’s biggest and best tech conferences. And the words whispered in the Next Web hallways about the future of blogging weren’t always promising for the venerable digital institution. Some pundits at Next Web – such as Hermione Way, the London based founder of Newspepper and the presenter of Techfluff – have even begun to pen their obits to the blog. “Blogging as we know it is dead,” Way told me over dinner one evening at Amsterdam’s Loup restaurant. “It’s finished.”

Are these reports about the death of blogging exaggerated? At that same Loup dinner that Way announced the death of blogging, Matt Mullenweg, the San Francisco based co-founder of the open-source blog company WordPress, announced its resurrection.

“Blogs will become aggregation points,” the shamefully youthful, soft-spoken Mullenweg explained, as he mapped out the future of blogging for me between bites of Dutch smoked salmon. “They will become our personal hub. Places where we store all our personal media content such as our flickr photos and Twitter posts.”

I suspect that Mullenweg is right. When blogging was invented in the late Nineties by my dear Berkeley friend and neighbor Dave Winer, it represented an easy self-publishing tool, a simple way to publish dirty great lumps of one’s own static text. But just as the Internet has dramatically evolved over the last ten years from a self-publishing into a real-time broadcasting platform, so blogging is transforming itself with equally dramatic vigor.

With its 10 to 15 million users and blue chip media clients like the New York Times, CNN and the Wall Street Journal, Mullenweg’s WordPress epitomizes these changes. What distinguishes WordPress from some of its competitors is its open-source foundations. This open architecture has fostered an free ecosystem of 5,000 plug-ins that enable WordPress users to do everything from incorporate their Twitter feeds, videos and photos, to even managing their own independent record label.

And last week, WordPress released two new products – Buddy Press and P2 -- that underline Mullenweg’s vision of the blog as an aggregation point for all our media information. Mullenweg described Buddy Press to me as “Facebook in a box” – technology which enables WordPress users to create their own public or private social networks around their blog. While P2 is “Twitter in a box” which, according to Mullenweg, transforms the traditional WordPress blog into a real-time media experience. 

So who is right about the future of the blog, Hermione Way or Matt Mullenweg? They both are, of course. The old static blog is indeed dying. But it’s being resurrected by Wordpress as a real-time social media personal portal.  The blog is dead; long live the blog.

Comments

[rob, BtG]

dead or alive, it's still on the best means for "full" and complete communication. i doubt that most could manage only with twitter, flickr, etc. blogs will likely remain the "tent pole" for most people.

[SDC]

Blogs are probably dead as far as their journalistic functions go. If all the legitimate print journalism outlets are dead and/or dying, who wants to bother with amateur hour? It'll mostly be people blathering on because they can't stop themselves and have forgotten you don't have to publish everything you write. People like me...

[Ike]

Andrew... maybe we can work on getting you ported over to Wordpress before you see Matt again this fall. ;)

[steve Garfield]

Makes sense.

[Dave]

Blogs have invisibly turned into the de facto format of data online. It is an increasingly intuitive format to search through and organise online data. It's not the best, or the worst way to achieve this - but we've seen lots of different systems achieving the same aim. The blog as medium is no longer a personal platform, but as a format, the shape that publishing takes, it has subsumed all others online. "Blog" doesn't refer to a personal online diary any more - there's no sense attaching this baggage any longer. It *does* refer to how online writing and publishing is structured - "blog" is not content, but structure, these days.

Traditional 'blogs' will be prominent as 'big media' outlets, where the pro journalists will retreat to maintain their visibility. Personal blogs will thrive. Will everyone deploy their personal copy of buddypress? Unlikely - blogspot and wordpress.com as providers of capacity have shown people prefer a centralised and managed solution. Will they move away from closed-gardens towards open, interacting systems such as twitter, wordpress.com, even if they're centralised? Absolutely.

[dan]

"I suspect that Mullenweg is right. When blogging was invented in the late Nineties by my dear Berkeley friend and neighbor Dave Winer"

Blogging wasn't created by Dave Winer. He was one of a handful of people that influenced and helped shape blogging. You lose credibility when you can't match even wikipedia for accuracy.

Of course, maybe it has to do with Winer being your 'friend'. You didn't hide that fact, I'll give you that much.

[Swan]

Twitter only enhances blogs. All those posts have to contain links that point somewhere. Occasionally people have a thought that takes more than 140 chars to describe.

[Taylor Marek]

Well said. Interesting to think about as well.

[John Moore]

Blogs are far from dead. The sheer number of blogs is ensuring their very long life. The richness of plug-ins and integration points, however, are reducing their overall impact. My blog, for example, is fairly simple but leverages content from my twitter account (@JohnFMoore) as well as the fresh content I write daily.

Long live the blog.

John (http://johnfmoore.wordpress.com)

[Jenny]

I don't think blogging is dead, or will ever be dead. I DO think the personal blogs will die out. Mine is already on it's way.

[Steve]

@Swan: good point, but 21st century attention spans tend to trickle off after 140 characters.

Remember what Jeff Goldblum said in "The Big Chill" - something to the effect of all the articles in People magazine are just long enough for the average person to read while taking a crap.

Why blog on the couch when you can twitter on the toilet.

[Donna]

Blogs aren't any deader than books. Only thoughtful people will read them, but there will be fewer thoughtful people independent of the hivemind. I think the hivemind will eventually eat itself, but maybe not in our lifetimes.

There will still be searchers out there who will be looking for what you're writing about, rather than looking for the latest self-reflexive Twitter trends or recursive Facebook networks.

[Miko Bustamante]

Not another proclamation of the "death" of something just because the hot new thing is here. Crapf! Has anything ever really died? People are still writing letters. People are still reading books. Radio is still here. Sigh and double sigh.

Try and write an article like this in 140 characters.

[Matt]

@Jenny: I completely agree. My personal blog is also dying; my personal aggregator is becoming the replacement.

@Donna: Very good point. Blogs that actually have something to say (and aren't just self-reflective crap) are going to be the ones that have worth in this next iteration of the web.

[Constantine]

I think the personal blogs might be dying but the commercial blogs have a long life ahead.

Those who write blogs to make money through affiliate marketing & adsense etc have a future because there will still be searchers looking for information. Just do any search on google and the websites listed on page one are mostly blogs.

So long as google p.l.c. is still doing well the commercial blogs are also doing well!

Regards
www.dailyrunningtips.com

[Angela]

Blogs and social networks may be becoming a bit stagnant to all but avid readers, but transforming them in a way that they evolve to offer everyone more value becomes a very intriguing concept. Blogs and social networks are not dead, in my humble opinion, they simply need to be revitalized and provide more value than mere entertainment or an avenue for discussion that is just venting. Communication that yields results, now there is an idea...

[Jake]

I find it funny that this article was written on a very much "alive" blog.

[Jason Lopez]

One of the curious things about Web 2.0 media is that its famous and decorated proponents -- not all, but a good portion -- seem to be vaguely pissed off as they wage a strange battle (against whom I haven't figured out yet) to see their social media technology "win." The blog had its CB radio/Marshall McCluhan moment where the medium was the message. People wasted their time surfing, subscribing to, and reading some pointless stuff, because it was a blog. You don't need to be a technologist (in fact, not being familiar with social media technology is probably an advantage) to see that at its basic level people are attracted to what other people are doing when what those other people are doing is extraordinary. Blogs, tweets, or films and TV shows etc., are just a vehicle and nothing anyone cares about once familiarity with the delivery system sets in. Pet rocks seemed extraordinary for a brief moment. If Picasso had made one I'll bet it would be worth something.

[Saskboy]

Blogs are just heating up so far as being journalist's vehicles for informing the public. As more people become aware of where journalists are writing, blogs will only become more popular, and more of a threat to the establishment everywhere.

[Aigars Bruvelis]

If blogs are dead - why are you still blogging (in the old manner)?

[Affordable Web Hosting]

nice and informative post

[Gerard McLean]

For God's sake, quit blogging. Stop now.

http://gerardmclean.com/for-gods-sake-quit-blogging.html

[Tim Singleton]

Thanks for this post. I have been struggling as to what platform to blog on. There are some really incredible blogs of all persuasions posting here.

Regards,

Tim

[klara]

I want "long live the blog" and "long live the RSS" becouse this my life!
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[bayrak]

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