Monday, February 21, 2011

Blogging in the age of Facebook and Twitter: Is it DEAD?

After reading this article in the Times today, the one thing the writer points out which I believe to be the crux of the issue is that 'the blogging industry' is all a semantics game. Tumblr is nothing more than a photo blog and twitter is a micro blog. The thing is that the term "blog" has gone out of vogue.

The most concerning thing I find about the above mentioned services plus Facebook is that the focus has gone self promotional and derivative. The beauty of the long form blog is the analysis and thought put into the words you are writing--- the synthesis of ideas and creative wit. Where has that all gone?

The unfortunate thing is that Facebook doesn't have a strong blog platform (FB Notes IMHO doesn't count). The reason why an ability to blog on Facebook would be great is that it would solve the central problem every blog has: readership. By leveraging your existing social graph, which you gathered for reasons other than blogging, translates into immediate followers directly increasing your readership. The obvious downside to this model however is the lack of openness of your account. The "old" blog world where anyone could come along and read your opinions and analysis, which Blogger and Wordpress provide, is lost since anyone can't really stumble upon your blog on FB. A possible solution to this is when someone comes to your public Facebook page you could set your privacy settings that your blog would be public and give people the ability to friend you as blog reader, solving the whole privacy issue around accepting strangers as friends. The added benefit of this approach to you would be that your blog posts could show up in your new "friends" news feed. Zuck you should get on that!

The other relatively obvious site that could fill this void would be LinkedIn. Since your basically accept anyone on that site given its business type focus and the goal of a blog to promote your opinions and knowledge of a subject the marriage seems ideal. Most people using LinkedIn are either looking for a job or new business so what better place than that to show your analytical muscles and your expertise in your purported space? Again, I am unaware of any blogging capabilities in LinkedIn. And while I am on the topic of LinkedIn, the entire status aspect just doesn't make any sense to me. I can barely tolerate the status updates on Facebook about a friend from high school who I don't really talk to anymore going to take a shower. I doubt a potential employer or recruiter wants to read that you hiccuped and made minor changes to your profile.

Given the current state of things it seems to me that either LinkedIn and/or Facebook (business blogging and/or personal blogging) need to try to fill this gap or another service which marries the social network aspect and blogging aspect needs to fill what I would consider a huge hole in the system.

Is there something out there? I for one would definitely be interested--- call me a philistine but I've never taken to tweeting or modern FB.

Friday, February 18, 2011

Puccini's Armida Libretto

"Armida you have taken all my strength."

"You have imprisoned me in your eyes."