How microblog upset practices Blog

July 27, 2009

Since the advent of blogs in the early 2000s and their very strong empowerment (thanks to players like Skyblog in France), it took roughly 5 years, speaking to the blogosphere to structure (showing 3 subsets: high-tech, politics and life style) and professionalization (see Change of time for blogging?). It is a crude summary but this is not the purpose of this article.

Everything was going well until the explosion of social media (with its myriad of services) and the sharp rise of the micro-blogging (Twitter he reached the tipping point?). While we thought the blogosphere all-powerful, now that both services have come overturn the deal: Twitter and FriendFeed. The first is used to publish messages ultra-short (even in mobile situation), the second is to aggregate production on social media. You could say (rightly) that this is a tempest in a teacup, he does that, over time I have seen a radical change in practices blog, and especially among actors "historical" from the blogosphere:

Robert Scobble which completely abandons his blog to focus on the production of video and sound streams Friendfeed.com / Scobleizer;
Steve Rubell who abandoned Micropersuasion for a new lifestream on SteveRubel.com (So Long Blogging, Lifestreaming Hello!)
Pete Cahsmore of Mashable has surpassed Techcrunch inflating its traffic through Twitter.com / mashable (Move over Techcrunch, Mashable is now Bigger than you).

In short, things have changed irrevocably after maturation of tools and social platforms complementary (cf. Blogging vs Microblogging + + Lifestreaming Social Networking). How to explain this change: Weariness readers? Saturation of the blogosphere? Want to test other media? It's a bit all at once, but especially the multiplication of media: Blogging Is Evolving Into Life Streams?.

Today the configuration I meet most often is:

The business intelligence / filter daily on Twitter (or FriendFeed);
Tickets longer on blogs.

There is logic behind this evolution: the blog is no longer the preferred medium for information hot, it has been supplanted by the microblog. Illustration last week with the announcement of the launch of Chrome OS: I hurried to write a note on the subject just hours after the announcement, result: nothing (very little comment and virtually no connection). I have a few days later took the time to write an article more complete with a more reasoned debate and the result is much more satisfying (Review richer, full of inbound links). The lesson I draw is this: I stop permanently to race in hot news, fewer tickets but more thoughtful articles (which I would term "warm info"). Finally it is Jakob Nielsen was right before the time advocating writing articles instead of ticket (Write Articles, Not Blog Postings).

Obviously this does not apply to all blogs, humor tickets are still widely popular, but by those who want to read!

The question now is how blogs will evolve. On this issue are possible scenarios (What is the Future of Blogging?)

A transformation of blogs lifestream (note that lifestream and blogs can coexist perfectly (that's what I'm doing with my sidebar);
A transformation of blogs social platforms (through social bar like Google Friend Connect or Strib);
A transformation of web TV blogs (unlikely because it is all the same equipment, but maybe platforms livecast we can help);
A redefinition of blogs (a site like any other?)
A new model yet to be defined (Google Wave is a good starting point).

As you can see, the options are many. In any case I remain confident that we can no longer afford not rely on only one format: making speech on the web should be considered as a set of publications on various formats (notes, articles, tweets, videos, slideshows ...).

For now I remain faithful to my original media (my 7 blogs) but I'm starting to see things quite interesting with hybrid platforms like Tumblr and Posterous allowing to publish with different formats from different sources.

Finally, perhaps the right choice is that of Steve Rubel, a lifestream modular production daily and occasional feature stories published on the media to a large audience (Mashable ...).

...

Though it may lack a bit of interactivity it all ... maybe a touch of Facebook / LinkedIn above and it will start to be good.

When in doubt I ask you: do you prefer more tickets (1 per day) or further analysis (left to fall to 1 or 2 articles per week)?

Fredcavazza.net