Essay - Blogging: a great pastime for the elderly

[mouser]

I find the rise of twitter and the decline of blogging sad..  It seems like the amount of aggregate writing on the web is staying constant, we're just now getting a lot more one-line off-the-cuff throwaway comments, and less thoughtful considered commentary.

I remember when it was kind of cool to be a blogger. You'd walk around with a swagger in your step, a twinkle in your eye. Now it's just humiliating. Blogging has become like mahjong or needlepoint or clipping coupons out of Walgreens circulars: something old folks do while waiting to croak.

Did you see that new Pew study that came out yesterday? It put a big fat exclamation point on what a lot of us have come to realize recently: blogging is now the uncoolest thing you can do on the Internet.

http://www.roughtype.../blogging_a_grea.php

[MilesAhead]

we're just now getting a lot more one-line off-the-cuff throwaway comments, and less thoughtful considered commentary.

I don't even have a Messenger type application installed for that reason.  I don't see the attraction of trying to type in some comment before what you are alluding to scrolls off.  It's like, everyone talk, nobody listen.

What we need are random semi-intelligent comment generators. Comments are appended after a quasi-random delay to make you think somebody is reading the stuff.

Kind of reminds me of those parties where everyone is totally hammered.  Each person in turn makes a comment only funny to them, that they laugh at, then on to the next person.  But they are all too smashed to realize nobody is absorbing the humor.

[TucknDar]

Your post is far too long, mouser! 

[jaden]

Twitter and Facebook updates are also much harder to keep up with than the occasional (even frequent) blog post.  I still don't get how people keep up with Twitter when they follow a few hundred people, or with the Facebook activity stream.  If I subscribe to a blog, I like to glance at every post.  There's no way to do that with Twitter (nor would I want to).

[app103]

There are more people than ever blogging. Twitter is a means for spreading links to blog posts, whether they are your own or someone else's. Without blogs, most people would have nothing to tweet about that is worth reading. Who cares what you had for lunch? Unless you are going to write an interesting blog post about it and tweet the link, or supply a link to a recipe, don't bother.

Of course the link to photos posted elsewhere, of the unidentifiable mutant chicken part, is ok, too.  

I kind of look at twitter as being similar to an RSS reader, that gives you only the shortest summary (or title) & link to posts, sprinkled in with some comments. At least this is primarily the type of people I follow.

And if you take a look at DC's twitter page and compare it to the blog's feed, they are identical. 

Twitter and Facebook updates are also much harder to keep up with than the occasional (even frequent) blog post.  I still don't get how people keep up with Twitter when they follow a few hundred people, or with the Facebook activity stream.  If I subscribe to a blog, I like to glance at every post.  There's no way to do that with Twitter (nor would I want to).

-jaden (February 06, 2010, 05:13 PM)

I have everyone on lists. It makes it much easier to handle a lot of people. Not everyone posts the same kind of content, so sorting them makes it easier to stick your mind in one topic mode, scan over the latest posts for that list, then switch to another topic of interest and scan that list, repeat.

I also import the tweets of everyone I follow into a private group on friendfeed, to make it much more searchable when I am looking for something.

Most of the people I follow on Twitter, I also follow on either friendfeed, facebook, or both. Sometimes I miss something one place and it pops out at me somewhere else, even though it's the same exact post, just autofed to other services.

[Tuxman]

Twitter is the new way of blogging for those who only blogged to spread links or "funny" stuff. It can (and probably will) never be a replacement for blogs. You just can't put too much of a story into 140 characters. Maybe the number of "click these links to see something reeeaaaaally funny" decreased because of Twitter. I don't miss them.

[doctorfrog]

Twitter is the new way of blogging for those who only blogged to spread links or "funny" stuff. It can (and probably will) never be a replacement for blogs. You just can't put too much of a story into 140 characters. Maybe the number of "click these links to see something reeeaaaaally funny" decreased because of Twitter. I don't miss them.

-Tuxman (February 06, 2010, 06:55 PM)

I agree. Offloading linkblogs onto an equally shallow platform designed for such a thing is an overall Good Thing.

I find the rise of twitter and the decline of blogging sad..  It seems like the amount of aggregate writing on the web is staying constant, we're just now getting a lot more one-line off-the-cuff throwaway comments, and less thoughtful considered commentary.

-mouser (February 06, 2010, 12:35 PM)

I'll put forward that this might also be a good thing, there's very little on the internet that's actually worth commenting on, or carrying forth on. Take this article, for instance. I'm spending about three minutes or so replying to this post of yours and this article. Neither my nor your lives are very enriched by this exercise, and these minutes basically contribute nothing to my life or my understanding of anything important. Now, let's say I actually took half an hour to read the article, think about it, then write a long, conversational piece about it, in other words, blog about it. For the most part, this isn't a very enriching exercise for anyone either, I'd just be spinning my intellectual wheels. In fact, I'd be much better off studying and chewing on Shakespeare, and giving that a few hours, days, or years of thought, and then writing about that. So, these minutes I'm using would be better put to use analyzing even a tiny portion of something much more enriching to you and me.

Diffusing serious critical bloggery into little Twitter droplets doesn't result in much of a long-term loss, because most lengthy blogging is fleeting in meaning anyway. I follow dozens of blogs, read a few of them, then instantly forget about them. This doesn't happen when I read a good book and really pay attention to it.

Speaking for myself, if I blog at all, it's very often me avoiding actual hardcore thought and more enjoying the sensation of having written something, anything. It's close enough to Twitter already that if I went ahead and joined the ranks of Twitter Nation, it wouldn't be that much of a loss.

So, let's see those great steampunk pics, youtube videos, and half-baked nutritional breakthroughs. You can still talk about Foucoult's Pendulum or whatever if you want to, but it's not like you were going to anyway.

[nudone]

well said.

[Tekzel]

  The article laments the decline of blogging amongst teens. My take is, who cares? When have teenagers EVER had anything of ANY interest to anyone other than themselves and a few close friends to say? Let them tweet away uselessly, it is just like putting them out in the yard to play because you are tired of hearing their incessant yammering about the stupidity of their weird little lives. Get off our internet, the adults are talking.

  You might have caught the not-so-subtle hint that I have no interest in, or use for, twitter.

[zridling]

Twitter is a means for spreading links to blog posts, whether they are your own or someone else's. Without blogs, most people would have nothing to tweet about that is worth reading. Who cares what you had for lunch? Unless you are going to write an interesting blog post about it and tweet the link, or supply a link to a recipe, don't bother.

-app103 (February 06, 2010, 05:33 PM)

Exactly. You are in control on twitter, and it's only as useful as the people you're following. I mostly follow tech bloggers, so when they make a blog post, it plinks the headline/link to the full blog post. Other people I follow are those whose interests are broader than mine -- on science, hardware, kernel, security issues -- and link to far more interesting posts than I have time to find on my own. As April says, I immediately unfollow trivial twitterers. Thus I treat twitter as a signpost -- pointing me to content.
__________________________

• Mind you, I only use twitter in the early mornings. The rest of the day I'm busy. Sometimes I'll check it at night, but most of the people I follow are posting before 8a. So you don't have to be on twitter all the time.
• Twitter can replace -- or complement -- your RSS feeds if you want.
• I use the  Brizzly twitter web client for a better experience.  http://brizzly.com/
• I "Favorite" interesting items rather than trying to check out everything semi-intriguing in the live stream. Then I can go back later and check them out.
• Quality over quantity. The best twitter newspaper, for example, is the UK Guardian. Every other newspaper tends to tweet EVERYTHING they post online, which turns into a useless flood.

[jaden]

I have everyone on lists. It makes it much easier to handle a lot of people. Not everyone posts the same kind of content, so sorting them makes it easier to stick your mind in one topic mode, scan over the latest posts for that list, then switch to another topic of interest and scan that list, repeat.

That makes a lot of sense.  Thanks for the tip.

[SKesselman]

 The article laments the decline of blogging amongst teens. My take is, who cares? When have teenagers EVER had anything of ANY interest to anyone other than themselves and a few close friends to say? Let them tweet away uselessly, it is just like putting them out in the yard to play because you are tired of hearing their incessant yammering about the stupidity of their weird little lives. Get off our internet, the adults are talking.

-Tekzel (February 07, 2010, 09:01 AM)

My sentiments, exactly! Very funny...