
Blogs Wane as the Young Drift to Sites Like Twitter - grellas
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/21/technology/internet/21blog.html?_r=1&smid=tw-nytimesbusiness&seid=auto
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ojbyrne
About Tumblr: "raising the possibility that the decline in blogging by the
younger generation is merely a semantic issue."

Its like saying right in the middle of the article: "Oh, nevermind."

~~~
bonch
I think it's weird that they differentiate between blogs and Facebook.
Facebook is a blog, like Myspace was. Even Twitter is just a mini-blog.

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jseliger
_Former bloggers said they were too busy to write lengthy posts and were
uninspired by a lack of readers._

I'm reminded of this comment from HN:
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2012130>:

 _I think there are two ways to blog: altruistically or narcissistically. If
you're blogging altruistically you're blogging for others primarily and
yourself secondarily. If you're blogging narcissistically you're mostly
blogging for yourself.

Most of the great blogs that I visit are all done altruistically. They are
well maintained, post useful information, and very rarely waste my time. They
also require a huge amount of effort on the part of the blogger because they
really have to do work to gather and present interesting and useful
information for their readers.

What a lot of the press has referred to as blogging is "narcissistic." Instead
of coming up with interesting information and vetting it for their readers
they mostly just spew whatever thoughts they had that day onto the page. It
doesn't take a huge amount of effort, but the signal to noise ratio is also
very low._

It's really hard to write stuff that will be interesting to people who don't
know you and have no real connection to you. I know because I write a book
blog called The Story's Story at <http://jseliger.com> and know that producing
at least one meaningful post a week is difficult. If writing in such a way
that other people actually want to read your work weren't so difficult, we
wouldn't have nearly as many professional writers as we do.

If your goal is mostly to bask in the relative adulation of others, you can
probably do it more efficiently via Facebook. If your goal is mostly to
communicate something substantive, you're going to find that it's not five or
ten times harder than posting a 140-character message on FB or Twitter—it's 50
or 100 times harder. Twitter is easier than "A list of N things":
<http://paulgraham.com/nthings.html> and "A list of N things" is easier than a
blog post and a blog post is easier than an essay.

People who want to be real writers (or filmmakers or whatever) in the sense
that people with no current relationship of any kind will find their work
useful will probably still blog. But most of those who _think_ they want to be
real writers will probably find out precisely how hard it is to come up with
useful and interesting stuff regularly. Then they'll quit, and the people who
remain will be the ones who have the energy and skill to keep it up and write
things people want to read.

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ilamont
From the Pew Internet and American Life survey results
([http://www.pewinternet.org/Reports/2010/Social-Media-and-
You...](http://www.pewinternet.org/Reports/2010/Social-Media-and-Young-
Adults.aspx)) from last year:

 _In 2006, 28% of teens ages 12-17 and young adults ages 18-29 were bloggers,
but by 2009 the numbers had dropped to 14% of teens and 15% of young adults.
... Additionally, teens ages 12-17 do not use Twitter in large numbers – just
8% of online teens 12-17 say they ever use Twitter, a percentage similar to
the number who use virtual worlds. This puts Twitter far down the list of
popular online activities for teens and stands in stark contrast to their
record of being early adopters of nearly every online activity._

~~~
waterlesscloud
Twitter fits the way teens used blogs, to communicate about their daily lives.

The change is hardly shocking, and indicates nothing whatsoever about broader
blogging trends.

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brc
Well, I've drifted away from Twitter. I still use it for keeping in touch with
people and putting out important information. But try and view any trending
topic or search term, and it's just a vast pollution of retweets, spam and
total agreement in an echo chamber. I've seen totally incorrect articles or
news items take and spread rapidly, and virtually nothing worth following.
Twitter in my mind has become like two (or more) mobs yelling at each other
through loudhalers.

Give me a well-written blog or good community forum any day.

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jimboyoungblood
sigh. nytimes tech reporting is as terrible and vapid as ever.

there's nothing in the article to support that headline. unless you think that
facebook, tumblr, wordpress are "like twitter"

~~~
rdl
NY Times tech reporting actually used to be pretty good, but I think that was
single-handedly due to John Markoff.

~~~
greenyoda
The NY Times probably wishes that blogs would go away, since these days you
can find higher quality journalism (and a higher level of journalistic
integrity) on many blogs than you can at the Times. It's not just in tech, but
in business, politics, economics, finance and other areas. And if I wanted to
find that kind of content, I wouldn't go looking on Facebook or Twitter.

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fleitz
The article is a bit self-serving. The only thing you can do on twitter is
post a link to a MSM article or blog. It's devoid of content because it's a
communication platform, not a publishing platform. It's the equivalent of
phoning up a friend and asking them what they thought of the article in the
paper.

There is nothing wrong with being a communications platform, but it's not a
publishing platform and there are certainly needs for sending < 140 character
messages, note the popularity of SMS

The NYT would like to see more information consumers and fewer producers.
Blogs may be declining as a percentage but they are certainly not declining in
number. It's just much easier to run a cat blog with twitter + twitpic than
wordpress. There always were far more cat bloggers than people publishing
interesting content. The only difference is that now they have a platform
tailored more to their needs.

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hartror
Blogs are a whole different format from the SNSs, it is like comparing
billboards and the NYT, they both use ink and paper but they convey
information in different ways with a different focus.

In other news "old media" continually misreports news in "new media".

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laf2019
Let the kids who think the world cares about how they love ponies get rid of
their blogs and move towards twitter. There are still plenty of smart people
who have useful and important things to say that are more than 140 characters.

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code_duck
Not everyone is meant to be a writer. Those who are will continue to blog.
Others may talk on Facebook or Twitter, but it's irrelevant as authoring a
blog and talking to friends are different sorts of activities.

