Twitter, Flickr, Facebook Make Blogs Look So 2004
Thinking about launching your own blog? Here's some friendly advice: Don't. And if you've already got one, pull the plug. — Writing a weblog today isn't the bright idea it was four years ago. The blogosphere, once a freshwater oasis …
Context & Ripple Effects
Claims that blogging is finished have circulated since the 2006 blog-epitaph debate, and a 2007 rebuttal showed the diagnosis was contested. By July 2008, coverage described a mixed blogging landscape, rather than a clean collapse.
The significance here is the competition for attention: Twitter’s user and follower-network lead, plus Flickr’s redesigned home page that surfaces member activity, make social services more compelling destinations for publishing and discovery than an isolated blog.
First-order effects
- Prospective and existing bloggers face a stronger incentive to place short updates, photos and conversations on Twitter, Flickr or Facebook rather than build and maintain standalone sites.
- Twitter and Flickr gain more user-generated activity as creators follow audiences and social feedback into services that organize discovery around accounts and activity streams.
Second-order effects
- Twitter’s follower-network advantage raises the value of publishing where an audience is already connected, putting pressure on independent blogs to find readers without an embedded social graph.
- Flickr’s activity-focused home page turns member attention into a product advantage, increasing competition among publishing venues on discovery and interaction rather than on posting tools alone.
Third-order effects
- If creators keep favoring social services, online publishing shifts from independently controlled destinations toward platforms whose interfaces and ranking choices determine what gets seen.
- The recurring dispute over blogging’s decline points to fragmentation rather than simple replacement: longer-form blogs may persist, but audience formation increasingly centers on networked services.
The trend: Online publishing is moving from standalone weblogs toward social platforms that bundle creation with distribution, feedback and audience discovery.