Wither Blogging? Not Yet, But Perhaps Soon

Earlier this week we chatted - here and on Twitter - about Shiny Object Syndrome (SOS). Our appetite for new technologies and channels is certainly insatiable, but it points to a larger trend. Perhaps we're in search of a new format (or formats) to replace the almighty blog.

What, wither blogging? Not quite. I believe blogs remain extremely powerful and I plan to be a multi-format contributor. Still, a perfect storm is brewing that could one day mark the decline of the long form blog as we know and love it today.  BL Ochman and Michael Tangeman are two that are pondering the same trend.

Let's take a closer look at what's happening. There are three big forces at bay here.

First, there's the Attention Crash. The demands on our time, be they work, family, shiny objects or all of the above loom large. This is changing our media habits. We crave what's pithy and fun. That's one reason why YouTube and widgets got hot.

Second, there's the proliferation of mobile Internet usage. I don't have the statistics handy but my gut is that the upper strata of Forrester's participation ladder includes many smart-phone owners.

As a reporter from MSNBC found, you can increasingly do a lot with these devices by themselves. On my next short trip I plan to leave my laptop at home in favor of my iPhone, especially if I can plan it all so that I am around wifi.

What this all means is that mobile platforms and devices encourages people to publish more often, but in a far shorter format.

Last but not least we have social networking. These sites and services make it easier for us to tune into "signals" - e.g. people and topics we care about - and tune out noise.

So what does this mean all for blogging? I imagine over time some erosion. We will unsubscribe from low quality blogs written by strangers that we truly don't have time for, in favor of tuning into friends and their mobile streams. Perhaps it's already happening.

Comments

[Ike]

Or - if Livejournal ever kicked out a functional mobile API - we'd be there already.

I think the more fascinating case study would look at pre-existing networks of people, and find out why they gravitated to certain platforms. Was it a "killer app" function? Was it just the best they could find at the time? How much did the platform grow the group instead of vice/versa.

I agree with the road you're traveling - but you're surrounded by a community that has one thing in common: you're all bleeding edge alpha adopters. The dynamic of this group would be Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle brought to life. I'm just asking us to slow down and literally see how it plays in Peoria and Pocatello.

[Amanda Chapel]

I only reported this last July.

To not be able to have predicted this shows just how completely irrational the zealots are. That includes you Steve.

- Amanda

[Steve Rubel]

Ike, you are most certainly right. This applies the alpha contributors. However, sometimes as they go, eventually do the rest.

[marshall kirkpatrick]

mobile comment! (not from iphone either)

[Deepak]

I agree with what you're saying, but only to a point. Perhaps it's because I am not in the tech industry and am not in the blogging demographic, but I only read a few of my friends streams (that's what Facebook is for). I read blogs for information and content. That aspect of blogging is not going to go away. It will however become more mainstream, in as much that the MSM will probably adopt it as a medium for information dissemination.

[HH]

Offtopic: Tell me the truth, you are Jeff Bezoz
Here you are at the anual company picture.

http://www.nndb.com/people/436/000022370/bezos-pubshot.jpg

[John Whiteside]

Most people don't read blogs regularly. Most people have no idea what all those "shiny new objects" even are - and they don't actually care. Explain Twitter to most people on the street and the reaction you'll get will often be, "Why would I want that?"

Perhaps one of the symptoms of shiny object syndrome is that when you have it, you think everybody else does too, when actually it affects 0.1% of the population.

[Ed Kohler]

It sounds like a great opportunity for people who are willing to spend more time organizing their thoughts into longer form content to me. Some people like news or thoughts. Others like analysis. It's hard to say that one is more valuable than the other since both draw audiences, but clearly, shorter form content leans toward the former.

[Tom O'Leary]

It's really hard to know what will happen in this space Steve. Sure, the format of publishing might change (both on the front and back ends), but volumes will still be published. Whether we require or desire it, our thirst for content is growing.

RSS already provides the bite-size doses that are consumable on mobile devices - and twitter is fun - but there are too many times when we want or need four or five paragraphs of meat to suggest that we won't continue to need a larger space (call it a blog, a CJS or a splash page).

The reality is, over 1 billion people are having a great number of conversations around here and those conversations range from nonverbal exchanges of media to lengthy discussions about personal and professional issues. These conversations are taking place in many different communities - on blogs, social networks and even virtual spaces. Like in our own unplugged communities, the Internet will remain diverse. It would be nearly impossible to herd everyone in the same direction even if we wanted to. We are different - always have been.

According to a recent Harris Interactive Study, mobile users today skim small appetizers of content while on the road and consume larger chunks when they get to a computer. Only 9 percent of mobile users in the US read email on their phone, and most don't click on links in messages. It will be some time before a significant microcontent revolution ensues.

Read Mobile Email Sluggish (for the moment)

All the best

Tom

[Netanel Jacobsson]

Steve, our attentions span is definitely getting shorter and shorter. I really believe that publishing will be shorter and shorter with the proliferation of smarthphones etc. However, I think that there will always be a place for different format depending on your context. Did we stop reading books? Did you stop reading articles & reports? I think it depends very much of the quality.

BTW, I just wrote a short post on how I think that Storyboarding could be the new format for business plans : http://net.typepad.com/net/2007/07/storyboards-as-.html#comment-76403024

based on information overload etc. Would love to hear what you think?

[Shakira Brown]

Firstly, whenever I stumble upon technology I have never heard of I become obssessed with it. How do I use it? Why can't I make it work? Recently I became obsessed with deploying a "blidget" to my site http://www.pradviser.net to link to my blog. Because I am using the LIVE platform for my site it wasn't easy to figure out. But after four days and much blog research I actually got it!

Technology is evolving rapidly in the social networking arena and I don't have time to keep up. I personally see that at some point and I will be on overload and I will eventually say - no mas!

I have a linked in account and I am still trying to figure out what I should be doing with it. I hear I am not the only one who feels this way...

[Josh Bernoff]

I sense in all your posts a prejudice towards the gotta have it now, instant everything way of doing things.

Could it possibly be that this applies only to a few users, not to all?

Could it be, then, that blogging is not doomed to wither?

This is not a trend like "push" that peaked before we noticed it was here. This is a long-term shift. Blogging won't fade.

[Paul]

Yes, the attention spans are getting shorter - and the time. You see folks running out and reading all kinds of blogs. Then you see people get blog fatigue and run to aggregators within their interest areas. The social networking sites pop up like daisies in the fields. And now people can hob nob with folks with similar interests and peruse content in streams. Where is it heading? Very good question. I think it also hints to the fact that prosumers want a piece of action. They want to be a part of the conversation and create something new. Sure, there are many who just consume, but not all. All I know is that predicting where the trends will go is akin to an internet whack-a-mole. It's fun to see how this dynamic medium rolls like waves on the ocean.

[Scott Wilder - Small Biz Guy @ QuickBooksGroup.com]

I agree with you -- for all the reasons you stated and also because most business people are just too busy and want to focus on the bottom line. As my friend Sylvia Marino recently said 'blogs are like fresh baked goods. .. they can go stale unless you update them with some new stuff.' Our users -- small business owners -- just don't have the time to blog .... instead their feet are on the street and they are selling.: ) .. and using old school word of mouth techniques...

[Bruce Swedal]

I agree there will be a move to smaller platforms to access blogs, but I don't think it will cause a mass exodus from the long form blogs.

[Nathan Snell]

At this point I couldn't say whether I agree or disagree. Are blogs withering and feeds dying out or is it simply a slowdown until it hits more mainstream (I believe the percentage of people who are actually reading blogs (consciously) and actively using RSS is still pretty minimal).

I would venture, however, to throw add a second piece into the equation, thus having 2 parts to the whole 'wither' idea.

The 'withering' of blogs lends itself to a lacking in the medium to share. But what about the medium by which you experience what is being shared? In the same way some social networks are simply terrible due to bad, unintuitive design, feed readers (among other things) are far from having reached an optimum, or even above-par experience, I would say.

On the other hand (And I feel appropriately able to say that, given that I couldn't say whether I agree or disagree) I could see there still being a great opportunity to evolve what is the general through behind the blogging medium. That is to say, a blog is more or less a replicated written document (ala journalism). There's a title, content, the architecture of what you write, etc. The internet will certainly continue to have its hand in that, and evolve it accordingly. For example: Twitter is short blogging- there are no titles. What if we stopped titling our posts all together?

Thought provoking post, Steve :)

[Nathan Snell]

Wow, my apologies. I apparently shouldn't comment at early hours of the morning.

To emphasis my point in the 'Withering of blogs' paragraph. I was intending to say that the two elements would be the means 'deliverance' or 'broadcast' and 'receiving'. I feel both are valid parts but I am not sure whether both (although certainly receiving) need to undergo some kind of personal evolution before we move past blogging.

Last paragraph: general "thought", not through.

To elaborate on the blog as a replica of journalism- consider it a social journalism due to the internet. Kind of like the first iterance. It borrows heavily from what was non-weby of journalism and then it borrows from the speed-of-information, social aspect of the web. Thus we have a blog.

Hopefully that makes my last comment a bit coherent. Sorry about that (lousy 1am comments) :x

[Tangerine Toad]

The problem with all these social network sites (as I've blogged on my "Your Brand Is Not My Friend" series) is that they have strong appeal to a certain demographic and not much beyond that.

Most people don't have a large group of friends whom they feel compelled to stay digitially in touch with on a regular basis. So as John Whiteside correctly points out, the reaction to something like Twitter is more often "why would I want that?"

People do sometimes adapt these technologies to other purposes. IM is a great example. It's gone from being an easy way to stay in touch with your friends to a business tool that lets people in far-flung offices have conversations without having to get on the phone.

The success of LinkedIn with the over-40/senior exec crowd is another example. These people have no desire for a MySpace or Facebook type experience. They just want to know what you've done and which of their friends they can call for a reference. Over and out.

Blogging's also heading in the same direction: people read industry or interest-specific blogs that more closely resemble online magazines than they do those that resemble online diaries. And, as on the newsstand, the more interesting ones are the ones that will stand out.

Time suck, as you mention is key, as is the fact that all of these activities only become social is the user is himself ALONE. If you're twittering or IMing or blogging with someone else in the room, well, that's pretty anti-social.

Toad

[Mack Collier]

"Perhaps one of the symptoms of shiny object syndrome is that when you have it, you think everybody else does too, when actually it affects 0.1% of the population."

If that comment isn't an all-timer, I dunno what is.

[Jon Burg]

I'm in agreement is Mack (sorry Mack, I know I'm posting this thrice, your blog, my blog and here, but we're on the same page on this one). Over at Digitas we've been reffering to this phenomina as "Chasing the Shiny Nickel". These are the people who wait on line for days at the Apple Store in order to have the first iPhone when it will be available at an AT&T Store sans lines the next day (true story!). These are the companies who launch a one way online communication tool and call it a blog just because it's on the interwebs. These are the agencies who built a sim in Second Life because of the press, but didn't bother to build proper social support or buzz around it.

Typically The Shiny Nickel goes away after three to four months. When was the last time you read anything big about Second Life by someone that didn't work at Crayon or Burnett? Yet older Shiny Nickels are still alive and well, just look at the iPod and YouTube.

While it may be true that we may not be "blogging", we will be doing something similar, easier or greater than blogging. 10 years ago we built GeoCities pages. Now we blog. Now we Twitter. Now we Friend people, create LinkedIn Connections, "Tag" each other and Pownce. Tomorrow it may be something new, but all it will really be is a new wrapper on an old toy. We've been communicating for eons, and that isn't going to change.