Last month marked the eighth year of this blog. Since those early days much has changed in the world of blogs, blogging and social media. Between Twitter, Facebook, Friendfeed, YouTube and others there are on the one (good) hand simpler means of “being heard” and connecting with others and on the other (bad) hand simple more “chatter” out there to drawn my attention away from fulfilling my mission in creating this blog. And so now eight years later I am at a crossroad — at least in terms of what I want to do here in this space. My initial thought was to simple make it an extension of all the other social media/Web2.0 that I am involved in or play with but that idea quickly passed. So the blog has just been sitting here collecting the virtual equivalent to layers of dust due to non-use. But then I read a blog post by Evan Williams (one of the founders of Twitter) excerpted below:
1) There’s also now a commercial blogging world. Commercial blogs do not get most of the traffic (in aggregate), but they’re what a lot of people think of when you say “blog.” But the commercial blogosphere and personal blogosphere are really different worlds. Obviously they overlap, but the motivations and activity of one does not reflect that of the other. Gawker’s cost cutting has nothing to do with Cheri Block Sabraw’s desire to write things for teachers.
2) There are now more casual ways to scratch the same itch that blogging has done for many people. I.e., Facebook, Twitter, and a slew of other social software alternatives. This is definitely effecting the personal blogging world. It has effected my personal blogging — and that of many people I know. Twitter is now my go-to place to share a thought or a link. I still blog on occasion when I have something I can’t squeeze into 140 characters, but that’s rare, and for many people Twitter (or something else) will suffice nicely on its own. However, does that mean they’re not blogging? We’ve never labeled Twitter a “micro-blogging” service, but that’s certainly one of the primary use cases.
This gets to your point of being nowhere and everywhere, I suppose. There are tons of active blogs on MySpace and on Facebook (even though they call them “Notes”). Maybe these are just the new blogging platforms (among other things). I suppose it is PDA-like that blogs are being subsumed into social networks, like PDAs got subsumed into smartphones.
But PDAs went away as stand-alone devices, because there came a point where they held zero advantage over a smartphone. With stand-alone blogs, that may be true for the most casual users, but not for millions of otheres. There are still many advantages to a stand-alone blog: Your own brand, domain, design, etc. Creating a meaningful, independent voice on web, on which can be launched a movement, a brand, a career, or simply a good story, is best done with a stand-alone blog.
Ev.
My takeaway from this is that the social media apps I’ve been interested in recently should not be considered a replacement for blogging but rather a companion. Social media is like fast food (it satisfies the instant gratification urge) and blogging is like a home-prepared meal (healthy, nourishing, filling but time consuming to prepare. But why seperate them? Why not combine the two into a “super” macro-micro blogging mashup? Yes, perhaps this is the proverbial ticket, and it will be the approach I will take from here on out. I will use this space to experiment, explore, speak to and organize the world as I see it, much like my first purpose for creating this blog. Only, I will combine the short, irreverent burst-post that is all the rage today in “social software” with the more thoughtful, long posts that is/was the original blogging paradigm. Not sure how it will work out but if this blog is still churning in another eight years, I’ll surely then know the answer. Welcome then to Nahan2.x otherwise know as the blogging singularity.
