“Better to write for yourself and have no public, than to write for the public and have no self, “Cyril Connolly. Connolly has perfectly phrased the reason for why the future of electronic writing will lead to a loss of self and lowering of value. Let me step back a bit because that wording sounded very broad. Basically because of an overexposure to media and quickly written information, the quality and professionalism of the writing world will be lowered and fewer people will make the effort to create a well-crafted article.
So what does this have to do with losing oneself? Well one could argue that the whole act of writing is essentially one’s self expressed through words and phrases. In the future it will be of crucial importance to help quality writing strive by writing for oneself not necessarily always for the public. It’s when we start writing for the convenience of others that we are facing a problem. Electronic writing is faced with this immensely because the whole purpose of it is so it will eventually become widespread news that millions can easily read with the click of a mouse.
There are three ways that I see it having an impact: the individual impact, impact on schools, and a global impact. The individual impact could arguably be the most important, although it wouldn’t have any true significance unless all these individuals impacts combined to create a large scale global impact. The impact on our schools is especially important because that is where we receive the majority of our foundation of education and how we learn or interact with others for the remainder of our lives.
I’m not going to go further into the specifics of how it will be affecting our world because this paper is going to be focused on the exact direction electronic writing is going to take; the impact is not necessarily relevant as this time. Nevertheless, I feel it is important enough to mention earlier in the paper, thusly I have made a point to present this information.
So now to understand the actual direction that electronic writing will take. As I mentioned earlier, the level of professionalism will undoubtedly be lowered. To say more specifically, words are no longer going to be prettily phrased or creative sounding. Electronic writing will serve as an outlet for streaming information. Phrases will be concise, factual and to the point. There would be no point in creating nicely sounded phrases as padding for an article because that will essentially be useless. People are going to be unbelievable impatient in the future. We will be capable of multitasking to an unbelievable level and speed, we will not want to waste time doing something un-useful. That will feel unnatural and insane. Thusly, why would we want to waste time reading a nicely written article if there wasn’t any important information in it or if it took too long to read? We wouldn’t. Therefore writers are going to accommodate to our impatience and release articles to the Internetto get straight to the point.
Sure this will help us to become more productive and efficient, but is this really a good way to become? Couldn’t one argue that we are in fact becoming less human as we are capable of multitasking and processing information at a faster and faster rate? Humans are based off emotion. The future of electronic writing will have as much emotion as a blackboard, just facts, plain raw data that is written in a casual or direct fashion. Emotion will not be evoked from a powerful phrase or beautifully crafted wording. This is in fact turning us less human every day, as Jean Arp said,“Soon silence will have passed into legend. Man has turned his back on silence. Day after day he invents machines and devices that increase noise and distract humanity from the essence of life, contemplation, meditation...tooting, howling, screeching, booming, crashing, whistling, grinding, and trilling bolster his ego. His anxiety subsides. His inhuman void spreads monstrously like a gray vegetation.” Sadly, Arp is right. If technology continues like this and we continue to ignore the things that make humans, humans then we will begin to lose track of who we really are and what we can accomplish, “One machine can do the work of fifty ordinary men. No machine can do the work of one extraordinary man,” Elbert Hubbard wrote in his 1923 book, The Roycroft Dictionary and book of Epigrams. The most emotion we will have in the future is being frustrated that our web browser isn’t loading faster. Frankly this kind of setting and world makes me very sad. Coming back to my original quote, we really will lose ourselves essentially. We will be capable of so much, however we won’t be capable of the most crucial aspect of all: being in tune with ourselves and our human aspect.
Hundreds of years ago, Shakespeare wrote words that influenced an entire continent and later the world; his words are still felt today and even in some of the farthest reaches of the earth. Since the dawn of the 21st century, there have been few writers who have come out with any works that have rivaled that of our classic authors. Sure there has been the Harry Potter craze and the recent phenomenon with Twilight, but none of these works rival those of the past, and its doubtful that they will be remembered a hundred years from now. We can presume that if this trend persists, which is most likely due to the continuing advancement of our technology dependent culture, then we are heading in a direction of less and less quality writers. Authors today, such as J.K. Rowling are weary of this new technology as well, saying herself “Never trust anything that can think for itself if you can't see where it keeps its brain,” Rowling is one of our few remaining authors who has tried to avoid this influence, she herself began her world renowned Harry Potter series writing on the back of napkins.
The lessening quality of our writers is not entirely the fault of the writer. Mostly the waning quality of our writers is due to the fact that the readers are not in high demand for well-written articles and books. Readers in our modern age are focused on the quick fix, immediate relief from the real world. They are not interested in reading great poetry or well written and thought provoked articles on the War in Iraq. Readers today want their novels quick and to the point; with action and adventure so that they can find an escape from reality, however “The machine does not isolate man from the great problems of nature but plunges him more deeply into them,” Saint-Exupery. Readers also want their news articles to give them the facts as quickly as possible and without fluff. The modern newsreader simply wants to double click on the article and see what’s happening in the world.
Of course with this change of high speed news and less fluffed articles, readers will be able to obtain more information and at a faster rate, inevitably it will lead to people being more informed with news around the world – which is a good thing. However, the reading comprehensions of our world will greatly decline and the ability for people to think for them selves. With all of this information simply being regurgitated to the masses people will only get the dry dull facts, but if history has taught us anything, the facts in history books are not always truth in life, and with these dull facts people will find it difficult to make up their own mind. This will lead to a more informed world, but an overall dumber one too.
In a world that is seeming to lose many of its morals and abilities to love, it is sad to see that emotion is being absent in our writings, if this continues there will be far less ability to love in our world, leading to an increase in violence and war. It would be very sad if we lose the greatest ability of humans, the ability to love and feel compassion, words has always been mans way of expressing that love. With the furthering of technology we will see a sad decline in our ability to feel emotion and feel empathy toward our neighbor. Like Einstein once said “It has become appallingly obvious that our technology has exceeded our humanity.” Einstein knew this lesson only too well, being one of the inventors of the atomic bomb; Einstein felt great remorse and guilt for his part in the Manhattan Project. He knew that technology was not only making a more dangerous world, in the sense of weapon technology, but also a world of declining morals and less imagination, and as the genius said himself “Imagination is more important than knowledge.”
This advancement in technology has lead our civilization down a strange path. No one can say for sure where modern technology will be in a hundred years, but I can guarantee you that the quality of writing and the expectation that our readers have will be at an all time low. Peoples dependency on the machine is outweighing our dependency on each other, “Where there is the necessary technical skill to move mountains, there is no need for the faith that moves mountains,” Eric Hoffer. If we do not deviate from this course we will find ourselves in a world of silent nature and deafening machines. It is my hopes that our future authors find new reason to reawaken the art of writing and to allow the world to appreciate the beauty of words. In the old world, which ironically we call savage, they treasured works of art like Shakespeare. We must find that joy and respect again for well written stories and unlock the great human potential that a couple hundred years ago was an important part of everyday culture. I know humans have great potential; we just have to take these blinders we call technology off and replace them with a new sense of the world and ourselves.
Friday, December 5, 2008
Who Knows?
Online writing is a new and revolutionary medium, a product of twentieth century technology. This newfound ability to write and publish things online is greatly under appreciated by people in general. At the click of a button, your writing can be read worldwide by anyone with Internet access, how cool is that? Only Gutenberg’s invention of the printing press is a bigger breakthrough. Although we may not realize it, our generation has been the witnesses to the birth and growth of the child named electronic writing. This new form of writing has come so far since its debut, and it is hard to imagine where it will be in another ten years. However, one thing is certain, and that is that we have not yet seen the best of electronic writing. It will continue to grow and change in front of our eyes, incorporating itself into our lives more and more as time goes on.
Improvement in technology is the main reason why electronic writing will be able to continue to grow. I know this from looking at the history of the Internet and online writing (the two go hand in hand). Ten years ago, far fewer people were able to own computers because the technology was not there to make computers affordable enough for every family to own. Or, perhaps the technology was there, but the computer market was not ready for such a drastic change. Either way, now that the computer has virtually become a household object, much more people have access to the Internet. Furthermore, we are able to connect to the Internet so much faster now that the days of dialup are over. Both of these factors contribute to an increase in ease of use, which will definitely continue to be a big factor in the growth of the Internet (and electronic writing). Naturally, with the growth of the Internet, comes the growth of electronic writing. More readers mean more writers. As time goes on, the technology will continue to improve, and more and more readers will come, leading to the continuous expansion of writing online. Think of all the 1,330,044,605 people in China that do not have the money to afford a computer and do not have the technological means to access the Internet. In the future, virtually everyone will have a computer as well as Internet access, which will expand online writing and lead to new innovations online.
I cannot predict what these innovations will be, or else I would be a millionaire, but they will be similar to the invention of the blog or the wiki. The future innovations will come as revolutions, as opposed to steady change. All the big time online innovations to date, such as the wiki, have been revolutionary, and future innovations will continue to be revolutionary. Growth of the popularity of electronic writing will also happen in revolutions. The reason for this is because there will be revolutions in technology which will allow a large population of people who could not previously read online to access the Internet. As far as the writing itself, the sheer volume, or amount of writing will increase. As I mentioned earlier, more readers equals an opportunity for more writers.
Soon, communication will be completely paperless. This paperless movement will fit in nicely with the “Going green” idea that is currently taking over businesses and will be a large part of our countries future. Online social networking sites such as facebook and myspace, which allow you to communicate with anyone who has a their own page, will continue to grow. Other traditionally hand-written forms of communication, such as the thank you note, will continue to disappear, thanks to e-mail and the ability to send things like thank you telegrams online. Other forms of communication in the same category as thank you notes include any hand-written letters, cards, and invitations. Also, in the future you will never have to sign your name when using a credit card, thanks to those electronic signature pads.
With all communication becoming paperless, the environment will benefit. Less paper will be needed for things like school textbooks and notebooks, as well as newspapers. As a result, fewer trees will be cut down. More trees will lead to a plethora of benefits including more air to breathe, more wood available for construction purposes, and more wildlife for tourists to observe on their trip to the rainforest. Imagine all the room that will be saved in the landfills, and smoke from when the paper is burned that will not enter the atmosphere. Although these benefits may not seem like much, when you consider the distant future, say 100 plus years, these environmentally healthier habits will make a huge difference.
Contrary to the environment, the growth of electronic writing will end up hurting the economy. Along with the decrease in the amount of paper needed, will come a cut back in the amount of jobs. Every imaginable aspect of the paper infrastructure will be affected, from the lumberjacks, to the packing companies, to the Dunder Mifflin paper company employees. Unfortunately, the downsizing in episode 7 season 3 of The Office will become a reality some day, and on a much bigger scale. However, even though the paper world will suffer, more jobs will be created from the growth of the electronic technology industry. Generally, with any advance in technology comes an increase in jobs, and the future advances in electronic technology will be no exception. Our economy will receive a boost from the new jobs that will outweigh the loss the economy will suffer from losing paper industry jobs.
When the people who cannot afford a computer right now get access to the Internet, they will have an abundance of information at their fingertips that was not available to them before. The information online will allow them will to educate themselves in a particular trade that can be used to make a living, There is so much information online that they will definitely be able to find something useful. Online writing will provide the people of these less fortunate countries the opportunity to make something better of their lives. With a larger workforce, these third world countries will be better off economically and also as a country overall. Not to mention the fact that more people working means less time for doing nothing, which can often times lead to criminal activity. Less criminals and more learning going on will help to create a better environment that will help the country become steadily better over time.
Future generations will become more and more attached to electronic devices, as they will be used for even more then they are used today. The future advances in technology are unknown and unlimited, but one thing is for certain: these technological advancements will continue to affect the growth of electronic writing. Computers cannot get much smaller without becoming inconvenient, however they can develop the software to put everything you could ever want on to that computer. Soon, there will be a device that is small enough to fit in your pocket, but has every function you could want or need. For example, there will be a small device that acts as a computer, phone, and game system all in one. Ease of use is created from having everything on one tiny device. As a result of this increased ease of use, electronic writing will become the main source of information.
Electronic writing will play a much greater role in schools than it does today. Less importance will be placed on handwriting, and learning cursive will be a thing of the past. Instead, kids will be learning about different ways to write electronically (wiki’s, blogs, typing classes, etc.) in the third grade. Advances in computer technology will enable most third graders to have his or her own computer as well. Also, textbooks may be published online, saving tons of money in the replacement and textbook damage fees. In the future when computers cost less money, the money saved by not buying any textbooks will more than make up for the cost for every student to be provided with his or her own computer.
With computers becoming more common, there is a new paradigm for the age at which children are getting computers. This new trend of children using computers at a younger and younger age will lead to a generation of much more computer efficient people. Many elderly people who did not grow up with computers still have not learned to use a computer, probably because they spent most of their lives without using one. With the elderly population dying out, in the future, a greater percentage of the population will be computer savvy. For example, my seven year old cousin, who already has his own computer with access to the Internet, can hold his own when it comes to using a computer. On the other hand, my Grandma is a stranger to computers, and is slowly learning how to use all of it’s features. This fundamental difference in the way each generation views computers is a result of the age at which the two generations were introduced to computers. The young childrens’ generation will be able to do so much more with electronic writing than any generation before.
Computers will be utilized much more by the next generation then they are now, due to this increased familiarity resulting from the early exposure. The larger amount of people familiar with computers and browsing the web will naturally lead to an increase in the popularity of online writing. Also, with young children getting computers, more kids will grow up to be software and computer engineers due to their extensive knowledge learned starting at a young age. This increase in workers who are able to design computer chips and things of that nature will definitely benefit the United States. With more workers in the computer designing industry, there is a greater chance of someone inventing the next big computer chip that revolutionizes the weapons industry. If the United States could somehow gain the upper hand by boasting the most technologically advanced weapons, that would definitely help to secure our national well-being.
Future generations will become more and more attached to electronic devices, as they will be used for even more then they are used today. The future advances in technology are unknown and unlimited, but one thing is for certain: these technological advancements will continue to affect the growth of electronic writing. Computers cannot get much smaller without becoming inconvenient, however they can develop the software to put everything you could ever want on to that computer. Soon, there will be a device that is small enough to fit in your pocket, but has every function you could want or need. For example, there will be a small device that acts as a computer, phone, and game system all in one. Ease of use is created from having everything on one tiny device. As a result of this increased ease of use, electronic writing will become the main source of information.
Ease of use is a very important factor when it comes to electronics, if you need an example, just look at the first computers. One computer used to be the size of a classroom and now they can fit in the palm of your hand. “Where a calculator on the ENIAC is equipped with 18,000 vacuum tubes and weighs 30 tons, computers in the future may have only 1,000 vaccuum tubes and perhaps weigh 1.5 tons,” (Unknown, Popular Mechanics, March 1949). Not only does this quote highlight the importance of ease of use, it also shows that sometimes, it is just to early in history know any what will happen. Even this magazine, which is supposed to be an expert in its field, could not see what lay ahead in the future of computers. This same concept holds true when looking at the future of electronic writing. How can we know what will happen in the future? The answer is that we cannot truly know what the future has in store, and only time can tell what changes will occur. This quote from Marshal Ferdinand Foch, a French military strategist and future World War One Commander, is from 1911. “Airplanes are interesting toys but of no military value.” In retrospect, this military Commander’s professional opinion also turned out to be a little off.
Blogs are Dead: The Future of the Blogosphere
You may not remember the time (2001) when these so–called “webloggers” came with a nasty stereotype: geeks and nerds who sat in front of their computer, publicly publishing their daily diary entries to the world wide web; imagining that people actually care about their musings on when machines will take over the earth, pictures of eye-candy, Hugh Jackman, bunnies, or their ex-boyfriend’s own blog posts.
Years later, however, as 2008 comes to a close, blogging has evolved. No longer does it have the stigma it used to have; no longer do bloggers need to worry about earning weird looks from their friends and family when they mention their blog.
Making up the majority of electronic writing today, blogs are used for everything from keeping in touch with family, to exposing celebrities, to providing specific industry news, to pure evil.*
This is an essay about the future of the blogosphere. When I say future, I mean what’s happening tomorrow, not next year. In the world of the ever changing, ever evolving internet, if I tried to write about what’s going to happen next year, I’d already be wrong by the time I added my last hyperlink. So here’s what you need to know about the immediate future, the stuff that’s going to affect you know if you want to get out there and get blogging.
The idea of blogging will always be around, and will continue to grow with the Internet. However, don’t get too attached to your standard blog format, as those may not be around much longer. In short, blogs as we know them are done for.
“What does B.L.O.G. stand for?”
Electronic Writing Is:
- Written content developed primarily and specifically for publishing on the web
- An easy, accessible method of publishing media to a world wide audience
Electronic Writing Is Not:
- A New York Times article copy/pasted onto the web
- E-mail, Instant Messaging, or Text Messaging
- Merely creating text using a computer or electronic device (writing an essay in Word)
- Posts on a forum that includes “lol,” “haxxorz,” or any variation of “1337”
- Online text that isn’t the main feature of a site (navigation bars, descriptions of products on Amazon)
- Twilight Fan Fic
As far as blogs and electronic writing go, there’s no single definition of what a “blog” is. Blogs come in many different url’s and sizes, and can be used for almost endless uses. “The problem is rooted in the fact that a blog has always been a medium... rather than a product,” writes Jason Preston, on his own blog, Eat Sleep Publish, a blog about the future of publishing (Jason Calcanis, one of the blog-gods (bloggods), is actually attributed with the blog/paper analogy, but Jason Preston uses it well). What does Preston mean by product? Here’s his example:
Do you blog?
Why, yes I do. Do you paper?
This is the problem I run into whenever I try to explain what a blog is to my grandparents. It’s difficult because so many people describe blogging as a product instead of the paper we use to publish our material. Unfortunately, I usually end up steering my grandparents into to thinking a blog is some kind of boasty online diary where conceited people post their ramblings thinking that people will actually care and read about their life.
OK, sometimes that’s not that far off.
The Hobbyist’s Field Guide to Identifying Blogs
Blogs as a whole are hard to define. What’s a TV channel? Any definition that you could find to fit Bloomberg, Comedy Central, AND The Home Shopping Network probably wouldn’t be too descriptive. People use blogs for so many different purposes, it’s hard to nail one specific definition.
Here are some basic blog classifications, borrowed from Preston.
CorpoBlogs
CorpoBlogs, or Corporate Blogs, are blogs written by one or more bloggers, usually employees, for a business. Blogging may or may not be the employee’s specific jobs. The blog could even be written by the CEO. Corpoblogs can be great for internal or external use, for keeping everyone up to date on projects. For example, the Internet Explorer Development Team at Microsoft has a great blog that follows news, updates, bugs, fixes, etc., for IE. Corpoblogs don’t have to be this formal, though.
Smart companies will use their blog as a powerful PR tool.
Check out: The Facebook Blog, The Google Blog, Kodak’s 1000 Words.
MediaBlogs
Think of MediaBlogs as the virtual version of a newspaper. Compared to a newspaper with finicky editors who crush your stories and chop down your wonderfully written prose, mediablogs are rarely edited before they hit the intertubes. Sure, maybe a gloss over for typos, but I’m sure that these bloggers spend so much at the computer, that they have the dexterity of Mavis Beacon pros.
Mediablogs focus on the quantity of posts, usually linking to another blog post or website. Engadget, a popular gizmo-centric mediablog, posts over thirty times a day on average. Posts could be as simple as just relaying information from other blogs or even conducting interviews or covering life events, etc.
Different from most other blogs, media blogs are created primarily for profit through advertising on their page. I’m not saying all mediablog founders are greedy, computer pigs solely looking to make a profit, that’s just how they pay the mortgage.
Ever since blogging really hit mainstream in 2003, mediablogs have been on the rise. Powerhouse media blogs have risen, such as Gawker Media, a network of 11 quality mediablogs all owned by the same company. Gathering 20 million unique views, Gawker Media is the William Randolph Hearst of the twenty-first century. (Speaking of which, one of their properties, The Consumerist, is for sale.)
Check out: Engadget, Gizmodo, TechCrunch.
JournoBlogs
JournoBlogs are similar to mediablogs, except that journoblogs are edited for content, and have a sense of actual journalistic standards, like a newspaper. A journoblog is an even better example of a newspaper on the internet than a mediablog; the only differences between a newspaper and a journoblog are that the journoblog can be more topically focused and, of course, the journoblog is made for the electronic environment, while the newspaper are made for... for newspaper.
Check out: The Huffington Post, The Big Blog, The Lede.
Toplogs
Toplogs, or “Topic Blogs,” are blogs, written by any number of bloggers, on a specific topic of interest. Toplogs can be similar to mediablogs, but there are a few key differences.
Toplogs do not/cannot post as many times a day as mediablogs.
Toplogs exist more for the discussion/exploration of the topic than for garnering some green. They’re works of love... but there may be ads to keep things alive.
Toplogs aren’t part of a media organization.
As Preston puts it: “Usually you won’t find a lot of original reporting on toplogs, although you might find a lot of original thought.”
Toplogs are common among industry insiders. I follow a couple blogs of people in various sections of the film industry. Before the creation of the blog, there’s no way I could have had the chance to effectively sit down with the pros in my industry of interest and pick their brain.
Check out: ProLost, John August Blog, MacEnstein.
Personal Blogs (blogs)
Ah, the personal blog, or, the standard issue blog. It’s a toplog about you (the blogger)! This could be your personal diary on public display, it could be just general thoughts and musings. In Technorati’s State of the Blogosphere, one surveyed blogger said he uses his “to bake half baked ideas.”
Obviously, personal blogs have one author, and therefore, much less frequent posting than mediablogs, journoblogs, corpoblogs, or multi-author toplogs.
However, personal blogs do have their benefits. You can write about anything you want! You, your dog, or you can just spill some thoughts on the screen and let them float around the intertubes as they develop a little. They’re great for faraway family and friends to keep up to date with your goings-on.
Obviously, the author matters. Scripting News, personal blog of Dave Winer, pioneer of RSS feeds, is going to carry a little more weight than Stan’s personal blog.
Personal blogs also have the potential for the most creative, original, worthwhile content.
Check out: Rabid Space Dog, DigiDave, The Flying Tod Hunter.
Take a Breather
If you’ve made it this far, thank you for sticking through the slow part. Now, things are going to pick up. Here’s a reward: I’m going to beat you over the head with some fun facts.
FACT
Blogs generated 77.7 million unique U.S. visitors in August 2008 alone, according to Technorati’s 2008 State of the Blogosphere.
FACT
50% of U.S. internet users read blogs of some kind (State of the Blogosphere).
FACT
12% of US internet users blog, contributing to the 184 million bloggers world wide (State of the Blogosphere).
Staggering.
Now don’t you want to start a blog? Maybe an intimate personal blog to keep in touch with your family and share pictures, events, etc. Maybe an expansive toplog about all things cupcake. Maybe you want to become the William Randolph Hearst of the Interwebs and start a massive mediablog network. Then here’s my suggestion.
Don’t.
Back when the blogosphere was a “fresh water oasis of folksy self-expression,” Blogging provided a great way to get your voice out there, but now, its become almost impossible.
Is Anybody Out There?
Any blogger knows about SEO, or Search Engine Optimization, the process of making sure your blog pops up higher on Google’s search list when someone searches for something you’ve spent a long time coming up with a witty post about. It involves writing with keywords, submitting your site to websites who promise to get you into Google’s notice, and getting Google to index your site promptly. It used to be easy. “In 2002, a search for ‘Mark’ ranked Web developer Mark Pilgrim above author Mark Twain,” writes Paul Boutin, former Wired senior editor.
Now, though, its common practice to see sites like Wikipedia in the top three spots for search results. Sometimes, it’s hard for even Boutin to get his posts out, as “cut-rate journalists and underground marketing campaigns now drown out the authentic voices of amateur wordsmiths.” No matter how much time you spent writing the perfect situation to America’s Big Three bailout issue, your blog doesn’t stand a chance of getting in front of the LA Times, HuffPo, Wikipedia, or YouTube.
If you’re trying to start a personal blog where you can post your thoughts and ideas, the only traffic you’re likely to get is the internet trolls, looking for easy targets. You can’t avoid internet riffraff, no matter how popular your blog is; in fact, the more readers you attract, the more insult commenters you’re going to earn. It’s unavoidable. The only way to escape is to follow Jason Calcanis, who shut down his blog in July 2008 and moved on to something he felt would be better for him: an email mailing list.
Ever since he made the announcement at his press conference (yes, press conference), Calcanis’s email subscription list has been doing pretty well. Currently, over 11,000 people subscribe to his two to five thousand word thoughts delivered directly to their inbox. Calcanis says he made the switch because blogging had become “too big, too impersonal, and lacks the intimacy that drew [him] to it.” All true. Between anonymous commenters and the shear number of blogs big and small out there, blogging has nothing on an email list. Calcanis receives about 100 replies to each post and tries to reply to each response individually, he says.
“Today the blogosphere is so charged, so polarized, and so filled with haters hating that it’s simply not worth it. I’d rather watch from the sidelines and be involved in a smaller, more personal, conversation.”
It’s much more personal, you start to build connections, relationships, and most importantly, spark discussion, which is what attracted people to blogging in the first place.
I Had a Blog. Then I Got a Life.
Go to Paul Boutin’s formerly active blog and look at his header. You’ll find thirteen words that might speak more in their brevity than any post he’s blogged.
Blogs ignited in the beginning of the millennium because they provided a quick and easy way to publish material to the world wide web, regardless of your tech-spertise. Blog tools didn’t support audio or video, nor could the internet really handle them yet.
There was a box. You type your post in the box. You click “Post.” Ta-da. Blog post.
Of course, if you wanted a quality blog, you still had to put in time into coming up with solid content instead of blither-blather. Word choice, hyperlinking, sneaking in an alliteration or making sure you don’t fall into monotonous sentence structure is tough. Not to mention brevity. As Mark Twain is too often quoted “I didn’t have time to write a short letter, so I wrote a long one instead.”
But soon, uploading podcasts, video podcasts, vlogs, and diavlogs became as easy as typing text. No more hours spent fretting over word choice.
DISCLOSURE: I’m not saying that video podcasts, vlogs, diavlogs, or audio podcasts are better than a text based blog. Usually, it’s just the opposite. The greatest content and material come from the people who think, not the ones who jump in front of a camera and just start spewing, though there are exceptions to both.
Never mind the fact that for each hour you spend blogging, HuffPo, Engadget, and Gawker are racking up as many as forty-five man hours. Encouraging?
And then of course, once you post your blog, you have to wait for one of the Google bots to meander across your site to get that latest post in the search results for people to find, unless you have dedicated subscribers or people search for your blog on Technorati, which instantly indexes your blog posts for searching.
But lets face it. Blogging (I feel terrible for saying this) is slow.
The King is Dead. Long Live the King.
Ok, so blogging is on it’s way out. At least, the personal blog is done for. What are we supposed to do now?
Blog.
Remember, a blog is a medium. You can still blog in the verb sense, it’s just time for a new medium.
Twitter, along with Flickr and Tumblr, are social media networks that have become part of the new “micro-blogging” sector. Twitter is based around one simple question: “What are you doing?” You provide one simple answer, in 140 characters or less.
Imagine Twitter as today’s virtual water cooler. It’s where people get together and share. They talk, they bond, they tweet. You can follow other people’s tweets, or you can browse the Public Timeline, a massive live feed of every tweet tweeted by Twitterers on Twitter world wide.
So why should you stop posting blogs and start posting tweets?
1. Twitter is intimate.
While Twitter asks you to answer the question “What are you doing,” you don’t have to stick to that prompt, just like blogging is used for more than “I ran out of cereal today and when I went to the grocery store, I noticed they redesigned the Fruity Pebbles box.”
Still, there’s something about getting the occasional small detail. “Eating soup? Research shows moms want to know,” Twitter’s homepage reads. Tweet saying you’re working at the local coffee shop, and maybe a friend stop in and say hi. Let your coworkers what you’re working on or when you’re late (or not). Let your clients know when you’re in town. According to Clive Thompson in Wired, “it’s almost like ESP.” Twitter creates what he calls social proprioception, or that sense that allows your brain to know where all your limbs are at any moment. Single tweets as a whole such as “at the doctor’s” don’t provide too much information, but as you follow multiple tweets over the course of time and notice your friend Caroline is going to the doctors a lot, maybe it’s time to grab a can a chicken noodle and swing by. It’s a sixth sense of knowing what’s up with your posse.
Even for the twitter-feeds of people you haven’t met in person, there’s something bonding in little status updates. For example, I found Daily Show correspondent and “And I’m a PC” star, John Hodgeman on Twitter. Currently he’s cleaning out his desk and talking about really old manilla envelopes.
2. Twitter is fast.
Twitter moves faster than LHC particles, faster than the Flash, faster than the blogosphere. Give a quick update, did you just have a revelation? A puzzling, deep philosophical question? Did you just find a long lost leatherman that’s been hidden at the bottom of your backpack that’s been through TSA checkpoints at least twenty times over the past year? Tweet it.
Part of what makes twitter so fast are the enablers: the devices you use to twitter. To upload something to twitter, you can, of course, log on to twitter.com, much like you would to post a blog post. But Twitter, either through its own means or one of many Twitter-centric apps, allows you to also tweet using text messaging, IM, email, desktop clients or dedicated iPhone apps.
How fast is Twitter? During the last batch of fires we had here in SoCal, the firefighters discovered they got more information (quantity and quality wise) from following twitterfeeds of residents than from traditional communication set up for tracking wild fires.
Plus, if you’re searching for a tweet, uploading to Twitter and it’s own search engine are instantaneous, so there’s no time waiting for a Googlebot to crawl over and index your tweet.
3. Twitter is about sharing.
A lot of people use Twitter for forwarding interesting links they stumble across on the internet, or sharing a picture they snapped on and uploaded to twitpic. Even some news sites like CNN have Twitter feeds.
Twitter breaks your bubble, expanding your sense of awareness. I have a set list of websites I visit daily, but their mostly film/video/computer related. Everyone posts stories they find interesting or important. In a way, you’re subscribing to their interests, as they share links. You could almost call Twitter a human powered RSS feed. There are plenty of big stories I miss, but other people on Twitter don’t. Did you know Canada’s government is about to be brought down? This is exactly how the Empire rose to power...
4. But most importantly...
Twitter is 140 characters or less. That’s all you get. That’s all Jason Calcanis gets. That’s all the Huffington Post gets (should they theoretically start tweeting, hopefully not too soon).
You might be inclined to brush Twitter off for just this reason. What can you say in 140 characters or less? Compared to unlimited space on a blog?
Consider cogency.
The great thing about being limited to 140 characters is that it levels the playing field. If you have something to say about Obama’s transition team or the Lame Duck Watch, not even the forty-five writers at HuffPo have a leg up on you. They would still have to say it in 140 characters.
Now the game has changed. It’s not how much you can say, it’s about how well you say it, which puts the focus back on the original, authentic thinking that arose from bloggers back in it’s youth.
Back to Basics
“Blogging is not about perfectionism. Blogging is about intimacy, immediacy, transparency and sharing your thoughts the way you share it with a friend.”
- Arianna Huffington, The Huffington Post
Unfortunately, modern day blogging has few, if any of these essential qualities the Queen of HuffPo cites, but she may not see them from the other side of her massive journoblog. The truth is, the blogosphere has grown to big to sustain itself. The intimacy is just no longer there. For getting information out there fast, Twitter, Flickr, Tumblr, all have blogging beat. As far as transparency goes, identity on the internet will always be a problem; with the intrusion of corpoblogs, its hard to sometimes distinguish blogs from PR devices, and we may never rid the internet of anonymous trolls.
So where blogs go from here? What do you do? It depends on what kind of blog we’re talking about.
Personal Blogs (blogs)
If you’ve made it this far into this post, you know the answer. I won’t even make you type Twitter.com in the address bar, just click here. It’s the internet water cooler. It’s the human powered RSS feed. It’s what you want it to be. It’s “to 2008 what the blogosphere was to 2004,” according to Boutin. Jump on over, and you’ll find plenty of good company, like Jason Calcanis, Rachel Maddow, John Hodgeman, Stephen Colbert, Greg Grunberg (of Heroes fame) and Me.
You can still keep your blog if you want, for long form posts, travel journals, etc. But if you really want to become a great “blogger,” fit it in 140 characters or less. You’ll get extra points.
Toplogs
Follow the personal bloggers on to Twitter. We still want to hear what you have to say about your topic of choice, but tell us a little about yourself, too. Come join the tweetosphere.
Mediablogs, Journoblogs
Congrats, guys. You kind of took over the blogosphere. I’m not bitter, really. Blogs work as a great medium for you. As far as immediacy goes, mediablogs and journoblogs get their stories out infinitely faster than print sources because there’s no waiting to send thing to the press. If something happens, you blog and hit send. I read all about the unfortunate/disgusting Black Friday craziness a full twenty-four hours on The Consumerist before the Associated Press got it to me in print.
Plus, you all sound to be doing well off advertising. I wouldn’t want to suggest you guys shut down and fire your writers in this econopocalypse.
Continue doing what your doing. We’ll continue to read.
Secret Side Note to Journobloggers
Don’t tell the mediabloggers, but you should come join us at Twitter. Not for hawking your stories (you can tell us when you post something new, of course) but to mingle with the people. Journalists today aren’t just bylines on a page, they’re people, too. Get out there in the public and share with us.
Corpoblogs
I’m really not sure about this one. Twitter is about people. You’re welcome of course, but lets not use Twitter for advertising. Use Twitter for transparency. Use Twitter to talk to your clients, to your consumers, to the public, and open up. We’re opening up to you.
22,355 Characters Later
I never responded to Arianna Huffington’s comment about how blogs are meant for sharing. She’s absolutely right. Sharing is one of the cornerstones of electronic writing as a whole, and it’s definitely one of the main attractions of Twitter and other microblogging social media services.
While blogging as a medium may disappear, the idea behind blogging will always exist in the future of electronic writing: “every single human being posting their thoughts and experiences in any number of ways to the internet.”
I can’t predict how. Surely, Twitter will be old news in a few years. Then we’ll be on to something completely different, but the idea will always be the same.
Electronic writing is about sharing. David or Goliath doesn’t matter, just content. The how will change, but the why will remain the same.
Hey! 140 characters exactly. Count it.
* Yes, of course I had to link to the good doctor.
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