Comments on: We’re Doomed! Dooooooooooooomed!

By: beth

beth — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 01:40:30 +0000

I think that people are consuming fewer blogs because there are so many of them it’s overwhelming. I know when I only had 5 blogs I really cared about I read them regularly. Now my rss feed list is about 250 and I don’t know where to start. How do I choose? I can’t read all of them, so I end up reading none of them (okay, not really, but you get the point). It’s the Paradox of Choice.

I’m not sure about the writing part – maybe a similar reason (so many blogs) but not sure what would cause people to write less because of that.

And Twitter – I can’t stand it. I can’t follow the intermingled attempts at conversation – I find it confusing and frustrating. I hate not seeing real opinions about topics. And again, I’m following 200 people and it’s too many. I’d be better off picking 5 and following them regularly. With 200 it’s just overwhelming.

Beth

By: The Art of the Possible » Blog Archive » A few articles I’ve been reading about blogging and online communications

Sun, 27 Jul 2008 23:55:42 +0000

[...] O’Grady claims that people are blogging less, because they’ve moved on to cooler stuff like Twitter: James Strachan asked the question, and Matt Raible echoed it: are people blogging [...]

By: People Over Process » Blogging Dead, or, The Message Becomes Just Another Medium, or, Being Beaten to Death by Croutons

Tue, 22 Jul 2008 15:43:40 +0000

[...] Our own Stephen O’Grady commented on it several weeks ago [...]

By: James Governor

James Governor — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 08:36:48 +0000

pretty much right on the money. while i realise they are unconnected (or are they?) its interesting that we moved on from blogs to some extent just as Google made blogs harder to find on its search engine. That is- one value of blogging – improving your findability, was severely damaged when Google pushed us down the list.

By: Eric N.

Eric N. — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 23:04:26 +0000

Sadly, I realized after submitting my comment, 70% of tweets and plurks are about the same things… maybe micro messaging platforms just save us the effort of reading long-winded navel gazings. Higher Signal to Noise ratios for now.

By: Eric N.

Eric N. — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 23:02:30 +0000

Here here… Once I cut my RSS consumption from 2-3000 items a day to 0. I converted to reading a handful of sites… notably gizmodo/valleywag/fark. At the same time I took up Plurking/Twittering and have even converted my blog to output my plurks.

Me, and many friends are evolving blogs into bite-sized micro blogs. How many blogs out there actually say something of interest? Seriously, 99% of blogs are about what I ate for dinner, what I plan on doing before my tv show starts, a random poetry post, pictures of a trip I took and finally uploaded… it’s very local in its context and relevance. Less words increase the value of these collections of thoughts or media.

For me the effort to blog increases exponentially with the length, depth, and breadth of a post. Some of us have developed neuroses and attention problems as it has become almost impossible to not get tricked into watching ads.

I cope with my perception that other people are having the same challenges keeping up with things by playing in the game.

God, even posting this comment was hard. What with email beeping, twitteriffic updating, an IM or two, growlr happily informing me of these updates.

By: Steve George

Steve George — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 09:06:03 +0000

I agree with Greg, the range of reasons for people blogging widened out effecting the types of content. I’m sure that they’ll find a niche, presumably there are still people using nntp somewhere and it fits a particular use case! The drop is readership is very interesting.

By: Jason

Jason — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 04:42:37 +0000

I do think you’re onto something. I believe the returns of blogging are being challenged on many fronts. Microblogging is certainly becoming more appealing, as it takes a lot less effort and folks are increasingly commenting on FriendFeed. The money side of things is always a challenge. I think ultimately, the only ones who continue to blog will be those who don’t need a lot of external gratification. I’m increasingly okay with that.

By: Anne Truitt Zelenka » Found a Job

Anne Truitt Zelenka » Found a Job — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 18:10:11 +0000

[...] I’ve lost much of my will to blog for now anyway. (I guess I’m not the only one). [...]

By: Greg Whitescarver

Greg Whitescarver — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 17:22:22 +0000

I think we’ve seen a little consolidation, refinement, and shifting of blog content. Nerdy bloggers that haven’t gotten much traction (like me), tend to reduce their pace over time. Then again, infrequent posts might be more substantive, and less likely to duplicate the content of other blogs. Personal biographical moments are moving off of blogs over to twitter and friendfeed (and even Facebook).

The popular, highly useful blogs and news services are surely continuing to pick up subscribers. While I might miss the navel-gazing of my in-person friends a bit, I also don’t see any real decline in useful content (I have just about all the useful content I can handle, actually).