Whatever happened to blogging?
Time was when every other person on the internet kept their own blog – their own “personal space on the web”, so to speak.
Youngsters and internet newbies would get themselves a Blogspot account, arty female types would get their Livejournal account, internet-savvy people and geeks would get their WordPress account, cool social-butterfly-cum-party-animal female types would get their Xanga account and so on.
Blogs were all the rage back then.
But nowadays, you hardly hear of anyone deciding to start a blog to chronicle their thoughts.
Was blogging merely a trend?
I’m no expert, but I think the general historical trend of the internet probably goes something like this:
IRC chatrooms —> geocities personal web pages —> forums/bulletin boards —> blogs —> Twitter
I suppose Twitter has done its part in partially killing off the practice of blogging.
I mean, why spend 30mins churning out a blog post when you can just post a tweet in 20secs right?
Yep, attention spans are getting shorter and shorter these days, and Twitter is just the right tool for this day and age.
Even for myself, I’ve realised that I’ve blogged far less ever since I started on Twitter.
Twitter is perfect for that totally perceptive and quirky observation, or that great one-liner that you just came up with, or that personal anecdote which you just need to share, or simply to rant or rave about something.
And if Twitter covers all that, then what does it leave for blogs then?
I suppose what’s left for blogs is more expository writing, ideas that are a bit more well-developed and structured.
But honestly, not everyone has time for that nowadays.
