Short. It's Not Necessarily Better, but it is Faster.
Picture taking by Steve Maller
I'm back from SF after three intensive days at the TechCrunch50 conference, and I have one main conclusion from this whole event: Blogging culture has changed. Actually, it's still changing and bloggers will figure it out sooner or later.
Now, I'm not saying that blogging is dead. But I can say that most of the bloggers at the TechCrunch50 conference were focusing on Twitter/Friendfeed/Facebook, than their own blog.
Why? It's faster.
My guess is that last year, at the TechCurnch40 conference, live blogging was way more intensive than this year. However, the LIVE CONVERSATIONS at Twitter were probably much higher this year.
The way I see it: it's either you make conversations with friends and readers in real-time or blogging live. You can't really do them both. I've chosen to create more conversations about the companies on stage, than to blog about them while I'm there, because I can simply blog later about stuff that I saw and care about. And it was more exciting to actually transfer the feeling to people who couldn't come to this event.
The problem is that this web behavior doesn't stops at TechCrunch50 or at any other conference/event/meetup. I know for sure that I'm using my blog less and less because sometimes it's just easier to submit short message than to write a whole story. And the more people read short updates, the more they get used to this reading habit and suddenly long posts are too long to read (like this one for example).
When this is became a real problem?
When people are not visiting your blog as often as before, when people are not linking to you back, when people are writing you a comment anywhere else but your blog, and when people are smiling at you when you know for sure they didn't even read the story you posted.
I'm not making money from my blog, but their are lots of other people that do blogging as a day job, and this can be a huge deal for them. So please remember that, and link back to a blog source instead of their username on @twitter or whatever. Same goes for comments - Most conversations should be inside the blog and not outside of it.
As for the conference itself:
For me it was less networking this time, and more hearing the companies on stage. I think the tech blogosphere has enough new companies to explore, test and write about for months to come.
Kudos to TechCrunch team for outstanding event.
Now, I'm not saying that blogging is dead. But I can say that most of the bloggers at the TechCrunch50 conference were focusing on Twitter/Friendfeed/Facebook, than their own blog.
Why? It's faster.
My guess is that last year, at the TechCurnch40 conference, live blogging was way more intensive than this year. However, the LIVE CONVERSATIONS at Twitter were probably much higher this year.
The way I see it: it's either you make conversations with friends and readers in real-time or blogging live. You can't really do them both. I've chosen to create more conversations about the companies on stage, than to blog about them while I'm there, because I can simply blog later about stuff that I saw and care about. And it was more exciting to actually transfer the feeling to people who couldn't come to this event.
The problem is that this web behavior doesn't stops at TechCrunch50 or at any other conference/event/meetup. I know for sure that I'm using my blog less and less because sometimes it's just easier to submit short message than to write a whole story. And the more people read short updates, the more they get used to this reading habit and suddenly long posts are too long to read (like this one for example).
When this is became a real problem?
When people are not visiting your blog as often as before, when people are not linking to you back, when people are writing you a comment anywhere else but your blog, and when people are smiling at you when you know for sure they didn't even read the story you posted.
I'm not making money from my blog, but their are lots of other people that do blogging as a day job, and this can be a huge deal for them. So please remember that, and link back to a blog source instead of their username on @twitter or whatever. Same goes for comments - Most conversations should be inside the blog and not outside of it.
As for the conference itself:
For me it was less networking this time, and more hearing the companies on stage. I think the tech blogosphere has enough new companies to explore, test and write about for months to come.
Kudos to TechCrunch team for outstanding event.
15 Comments:
Orli --
If this means everything is getting faster and faster, shorter and shorter, where do you think we'll end up? Where do you think we'll be next year even?
I totally agree... I was never a heavy blogger like you, but I can still see that since I started to use twitter I write less and less in my blog.
In an age where we have too much information than we can actually consume, twitter is the easy solution for many of us. It's the what MTV was for our generation as kids.
At our age it's our own instant pop culture.
Is it bad?
I think there are multiple sides for that.
On the good side, it allows us to track many more stories, meet more people and be connected to them much more easily.
On the other end, we are definitely starting to get used to digest shorter news and Don't look deeply into things. As Omer, one of our programmers told me once, "twitter is blogging for the lazy ones". I will add that it is also reading for the lazy ones...
Thank you for the very interesting insight.
Two questions/thoughts;
1. Are the Live Conversations evolution of live Coverage as we know it from TV?
2. Event coverage now has a social dimension, interesting how this will effect news coverage?
The big problem is that Twitter and Friedfeed are ready by very few people while blogs had a much wider audience. with all honesty it seems as if Bloggers started blogging among themselves and kind of forgot about the semi-common people...
I am a Twitter and FriendFeed user but still look for quality content on blogs.
It also seems as if the latest technology for sending messages around is more important than the content or the readers themselves....
just something to think about...
This is exactly the reason I launched my blog in Video Format, It's so much quicker for me to speak out what I'm thinking than to type, edit, re-read and so on. I love the instantaneous feedback I get with video post. Take a look!
www.seovice.com
Promised to add a comment here, so here i am :)
I think we're talking about two different aspects, one is more technical (IMO) the other is more of a cultural one.
From the technical aspect, the whole discussion around a blog post was origianly placed inside the blog (literarly as comments on the same page) this has changed for sure, the variety of communication tools and their distribution on one hand the the creation of aggregation platforms on the other hand distribute the discussion way beyond the "post/blog" traditional place - this will mean that the discussion around a post will/should be now aggregated from different sources and somehow attached to the original post if the discussion is to preserved (we can see many interesting blog posts which does not create the type of deep discussion we used to see, just because no one actually sees the whole landscape of comments.) - i look at it as a technical side, which will be solved by the blogging platforms, aggregation, new products etc.
The second aspect (and IMO impossible to tell which have a stronger impact) is the one @Shahar notes, the "flattening" of discussions. Ideas are turned into copywriting. it is much easier to throw a sentence then to write an elaborated blog post, it is easier to "shout" or twit without building a thoughtful argument - "lazyness"? well in many ways yes, IMO - "dynamic","fast thinking", "agile" and other nice adjectives are simply excuse to get things "moving" without any in depth thought.
I'm take the risk of labeled as "old irrelevant mammoth" but from what i see with my kids on the personal level, and in the industry (aka "feature companies", "endless beta") etc. doesnt end up in better/improved things in shorter time - it takes the same time for something to mature enough, it just adds all the noise of half baked things in the middle.
Just to make sure, i'm not into "must have long and tedious process" i just think we are so "happy" with the new "sharp;fast;right now;quicker is better..." counter-thinking that it blinds us from finding the "golden path" which, as usual, lies somewhere in between. - quicker
(i do apologize for the lengthy 1.0'ish answer :), on the other hand in hebrew it was much longer:))
I've noticed this, too. I think people are more likely to use something like Twitter or Facebook status because its so much easier to update than a blog.
I personally love blogging, as a way of keeping in touch with friends, fully developing my ideas, having a voice online and keeping up with web technology. Plus, I think that using a combination of blogs and social media (photos, videos, tweets, tasks, LinkedIn, etc) provides a means of more fully expressing yourself online, which makes the web a more attractive community.
The upside of sites like Twitter and Facebook is that they simplify contributions to the web enough that anyone can do it, which brings more people into the mix. The downside is that simplifying the process draws some people away from operating their own sites.
I don't plan to stop blogging (or tweeting, etc) anytime soon.
Interesting comments.
I'm not sure that I'm ok with the fast way of blogging. In fact, I'm a little bit concern.
However, we can't avoid it due to the massive content overload (like Shahar said). In order to consume more content, we need to react fast (reading/commenting/sharing). But what I really think we should try to avoid is the pattern web behavior that we're getting into, other wise blogging as we know it, will be dead. On the other hand, there is something right about this fast reaction, and it's even exciting to see such change in terms of web communication, but as long as we know where to use it.
Naor, I agree with what you said about the blogging platform services. If they'll support this kind of commenting system and know how to bring back to the blog all its lost comments, things might have looked different.
BTW, anonymous: I have to say that you are right. But eventually people will use similar products to twitter or friendfeed (you can include Facebook to the list with their new lifestreaming), this is part of the new web that is not going anywhere. It will just get bigger.
"discussion around a post will/should be now aggregated from different sources and somehow attached to the original post if the discussion is to preserved"
Trackback for replies and streams! Great idea naor!!!
Can somebody here wright a script for that?
Thank you Orly for the warning sign.
I have mixed feelings here... It seems most of the movement in the world of Twitter, FriendFeed and other similar "fast services" is generated by the same group of people. Early adopters, basically. But we seem to jump into everything new that's out there. While I don't want to say Twitter will pass away with time, I'd rather ask a question: "What's the real value for the rest of the world?" Blogs were / are mostly about content. Personally, I don't see much sense searching for knowledge on Twitter. I will search for information there though. Same goes for FriendFeed. It's a different cake.
This whole buzz might be the result of novelty then. After some time, good ol' bloggin' might get the attention it deserves.
Or something new will emerge... ;-)
In my case, microblogs & lifestreams did quite the opposite, made me read more blogs in general.
When i was over worked i found RSS Readers to be Hectic & slow. FriendFeed and Twitter made things fast and more reliable, i trust people i know (most of) to edit my news and culture. Liking, commenting and hiding are a second layer of editing which is fun because you converse & meet new people.
With each day of "addiction" to friendfeed i find myself considering a blog of my own (still in debate :-)
I agree that blogs are simply gonna change in direction of quality, more roundups with focus, conclusions and less short frequent posts.
While I might agree that missing trackbacks/links to sources while twittering is a problem, I'll never agree to a saying that "most of the conversations should be inside the blog". I mean, on a very basic level, we want more conversations. Yes, it might be a problem that it becomes multi-threaded, on the other hand it is also an advantage as it reaches wider audience.
It is always possible to pool all the comments back to the blog (integration of FriendFeed, for example), if one really wants to.
And, finally, commenter owns the comment. And it's up to him where to leave it. In most cases, I want to leave a comment for content, not for the author, so why shouldn't I be able to leave it wherever I find the content, and wherever I can expect more fruitful discussion on my point? (For example, maybe I even should post this comment on FrienFeed, as most likely it would gain more attention there, and I'd like to hear opinion of general audience, as it's a conceptual topic).
Yes, I might care about author's stream of income. But I care about the quality of discussion so much more...
[uch, I feel a bit agressive :) Hope did not offend anybody]
Aurimas,
I want to point to the fact that I meant: "most conversations that are related to a blog post should be inside the blogs". Same as you comment me here, and not on this link on FriendFeed: http://url.ie/pgh
It's not possible to pool back your comment from FriendFeed into Blogger for example (maybe if you know how to write a code). But as I've said: The blogging platform should recognize the need and support it themselves.
I'm sure you're talking from a user point of view (are you also blogging?) because you referred to content examples that are probably not related to blog topics (all those other links that runs in FriendFeed) therefore, sure you can leave them anywhere you want to. And yes - Users can leave comments anywhere they want to regardless, but it will be a hard to track them. Actually, I think we're going to see lots of comment systems & tools this year that are trying to focus and solve this problem.
Orli,
I think I got your point correctly, and it is exactly the point I disagree with. It's true that I am talking from a user perspective (although I run a blog, but it's totally a "leisure project", and I can only dream from monetising it), but in the end, it is the users that generate the comments.
As for technical part - well, in general it is possible to pool comments back (RWW does that, for example), and here I totally agree with you - it's a platform issue, and we'll definitely see various tools helping to mitigate this problem.
But I'm not that sure if that is _a problem_. Many bloggers were very happy with friendfeed, as they got many more comments there (some say that they received more in a week than they did during all their blogging career before FF). And those comments were related to blog topics.
Furthermore, talking about general trends - you pointed out that microblogging is here, and is gaining popularity (or did it already). I'd like to add - not only bloggers become "microbloggers", but they become "commenters", too (as well as simple users). I'm tracking this conversation with Commentful. If was a blogosphere star (which I am not :D), there would be people subscribing to my Commentfull feed. Then, my job as a "commenter by profession" would be to comment as much as I can, and it's so much easier for me to do it on friendfeed, or any other aggregation service.
So, when you say - conversations outside blogs are bad, as they give less value to content authors, I disagree. They do give more value to commentators, to the discussion, and in the end to the author (after all, it was her content that fuelled the discussion, so she could expect her RRS readers number to increase, for exmpl).
Authors will find a way how to get back the monetary value from those conversations in the cloud, it's just a matter of time. I'd even expect a universal comment API to appear, so comments could be easily tracked.
But before that we will have to decide on some very interesting issues: does a blogger have a right to put ads around comments? (which is partly answered by) Who owns (and what rights has to) the comments? Can a blogger claim for ownership of them if he wants to synchronize the discussion in different places? and so on.. Comments should be a hot topic (as we see here :])
Orli,
Interesting insights, which I see are happening to me. It's easier (not to mention faster) for me to tweet rather than blog. And the ability to microblog from anywhere, anytime, gives microblogging (twitter, friendfeed, whatever) the edge.
I like Naor's idea, of coming up with a way to aggregate all the 'lost' microblogs into a blog. In context. Such a service has a potential.
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