Niches: Blogs versus Facebook/Twitter/*

Yes, the blogging fad is over.

When it was invented, blogging was a giant leap beyond "creating your own website" by hand-coding HTML or using a program to 'publish' your site. Suddenly, you could type out your thoughts, embed images and let some other program handle all the layouts, storage, archiving, and hosting. Blogging exploded.

However, blogging is lonely, hierarchical. Comments made it better, allowing you to engage with other people. Still, it's not a *conversation*. It's like standing in a room with one person yelling statements and thoughts, then yelling 'Whatta ya think of that?'

So, sites like MySpace (*shudder*), Facebook (yay), and Twitter flattened that all out. You weren't the tip of a conversational pyramid; you were part of a web of conversing people. Sometimes, you can be blabby; other times, you can just hang out.

So where did that leave blogging? The 90% of blogging that was "here's what I'm doing today/right now" moved to twitter/facebook. Vibrant blogs withered.

Still, I see a role for blogs: Facebook & twitter updates have no value hours after they're posted. When I read my blog entries from 2004 or 2005, I get a much better sense of who I was and what I was trying to accomplish there.

So, in that niche, I see blogging living on.

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