Death of Blogging

[dotinthesky]

I've been thinking today if blogging and livejournaling is dead. Dead in the sense that most people who used them before have gone on to acquire many more social networks, and because of the increase in their personal admin (checking Facebook, checking Twitter, checking Instagram, etc) they no longer can tolerate long pieces of writing.

Twitter, to me, seems of the time. Tiny digestible nuggets that can lead you to longer articles if you so desire, but there's no pressure to read - you can easily just move/scroll on.  Before, with blogs and livejournals, there was the online social pressure to at least skim read.  Make some noise that you were paying attention. Now, they lie unread, uncommented, unnoticed. Or saved for "later" reading.

The age of people keeping blogs to document their lives as policemen / ambulance drivers / sex workers is also dead. Again, I think personal admin has got in the way and that type of cultural product is resigned to the noughties much like a lot of reality shows.

For myself, I sat in an old cemetery for lunch today and read some Walt Whitman.  I now know that Livejournal will never be the same, but I'm Ok with continuing to write here, for myself and for the few that still read this.  I've also started writing letters to friends who refuse to use social networks, and on Monday mornings I find a cafe before work and do a bit of fiction writing.

Comments

[steer.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure blogging is dead. I read more blogs than I ever did... and the blogs I read are more influential than they were. Maybe I am wrong.

I think the LJ model is dead because the majority of people prefer the quick gratification of posting something super short and getting a "like" or a "retweet". That has instant gratification. It's much easier to miss things on twitter or facebook so an important life event announced on those is likely to just go past. Twitter has more density of information... a lot of LJ entries are a few points and a lot of waffle. Twitter, or at least the people I follow, tend to be making a point or a joke or linking to something with every sentence. So it's easy to read LJ as "Blah blah blah" because the signal is so much less amongst the noise.

[rockingthemike.livejournal.com]

i tend to agree with all of this. unless you're blogging for someone else, or already an established blogger with an audience, long-form is essentially dead. however, that's not to say there's no future for it. i know of a couple people recently who have become so disenchanted with facebook and twitter that they're coming back here. does that mean they'll write more? maybe. will they write more focussed? possibly, but we won't know until the paradigm shifts just a little more.

[commonpeople.livejournal.com]

I really really want to leave FB...

[commonpeople.livejournal.com]

I read more blogs than I ever did... and the blogs I read are more influential than they were.

But could it be that you are an example apart? And that your blog reading increased in accordance with a decrease in LJ posts from others...? I just remember all those people who had LJs or Blogspots for very weak reasons (and did little posting of any worth) - they now seem perfectly content with Facebook.

Your second paragraph is spot on.

[steer.livejournal.com]

I thought of that and checked some figures. Blog writing is growing steadily up to 2011 but I can't find more recent figures. It may be that there has been a decline more recently but up until 2011 there was very healthy strong growth.

I think fewer people have a "hello I'm Dave" blog... but instead people have blogs pointed at a special purpose attracting only readers for that purpose.

[commonpeople.livejournal.com]

That's good to learn - i'd also be interested to hear of more recent stats on blog writing. There are some really good ones I love and wouldn't want to see disappear (like Nickel in the Machine, for example).

[steer.livejournal.com]

I suspect it's harder to tell now from a casual browse because many blogs look so professional or are part of aggregator sites e.g. blogs within huffpo and the like.

[commonpeople.livejournal.com]

Ah, that's a good point! I hadn't thought of Huffpo - was thinking more of the oldies like Blogspot and Wordpress.