Scobleizer - Latest Comments in TechMeme list heralds death of blogging?

Re: TechMeme list heralds death of blogging?

Paul Chaney — Tue, 09 Oct 2007 09:34:55 -0000

Forgive this late reply (I'm catching up on some of my feeds.), but Jeremy Wright just Twittered, "I'm now following more twitterers than I'm reading blog feeds... And twittering more than blogging... Not sure what to make of it!"

If Jeremy is blogging less, then I think that must mean the sky is falling so far blogging is concerned.

There are just more options now and everything is finding its place in the conversational media spectrum.

Re: TechMeme list heralds death of blogging?

David Binkowski — Wed, 03 Oct 2007 18:26:05 -0000

I'm going to go out on a limb here, Robert, and say that most people who've switched over to Twitter have run out of things to say or are tired of the drain that "professional" blogging can bring on. Alternatively, maybe their "blogging as therapy" has worked and they're much healthier individuals as a result of it. ;)

Those of us blogging around passion points have plenty to write about.

Re: TechMeme list heralds death of blogging?

Andrew Parker — Wed, 03 Oct 2007 03:36:35 -0000

@46 - My blogging has fallen off as of late. That's why I wrote the post. Prior to the post, I blogged about 1-2 times a day. Now it's more like 2-3 times a week. But, sometimes I binge and post like 4 or 5 times in a single day. While working I Twitter about 4 times a day, but on the weekend its much less. And, I see the trend skewing even further towards Twitter. Thanks for taking a look at my stats though.

Re: TechMeme list heralds death of blogging?

GraceD — Wed, 03 Oct 2007 00:00:49 -0000

As I told your panel at the May Cybersalon with Andrew Keen, "I don't know what Internet YOU GUYS are looking at."

(http://www.wordyard.com/200...

The blogospheres (the spheres within the sphere, as Tish wisely observed) are alive and well and carries on without these sort of doomsday predictions from myopic A-list tech bloggers. I mean that in the nicest possible way, Robert.

Anyway, Twitter is "lite" beer. A good blog piece is a pint of stout. There will always be a need for both brews. It's a well stocked tavern, this World Wide Web of ours.

/cheesy pub analogy

Re: TechMeme list heralds death of blogging?

dogslol — Tue, 02 Oct 2007 16:25:19 -0000

That's an interesting observation. I was also wondering about top blogs being works of journalists because when you review the lists of top blogs under different blogging platforms, many belong to journalists/big media outlets.

Re: TechMeme list heralds death of blogging?

Jake Ludington — Tue, 02 Oct 2007 13:05:57 -0000

The TechMeme list says nothing about the death of blogging and everything about the way large percentages of people continue to get their news. 60% of the top 10 on that list are old media companies. Even TechCrunch is growing into a larger news outlet. Like most businesses, the business of blogging is pooling more talent in fewer places because it's easier to get your voice heard if you are part of one of the trusted sources (something you surely understand as an aggregator of original tech video). That doesn't mean people aren't still blogging as individuals, just that the places people read most are multiperson efforts.

Re: TechMeme list heralds death of blogging?

insomniamg — Tue, 02 Oct 2007 12:23:05 -0000

I totally agree. I just think the list is pointless and is just as relevant as the "top 50 bloggers of alltime list", etc.

Re: TechMeme list heralds death of blogging?

Vero Pepperrell — Tue, 02 Oct 2007 10:38:33 -0000

And in addition to my comment above, I wouldn't have believed it either a few years ago if you'd told me my blog would lead to getting a job in mobile blogging!

Thankfully, it all happened, and I'm loving it!

Re: TechMeme list heralds death of blogging?

Vero Pepperrell — Tue, 02 Oct 2007 10:37:48 -0000

Bah! I still feel both Twitter and my WP blog have a purpose. Twitter is for brain farts and short statements. Blog is for real posts or longer comments.

Not everyone likes writing run-on 10-tweets messages, Robert ;)

Re: TechMeme list heralds death of blogging?

krsnaKhandelwal — Tue, 02 Oct 2007 08:59:14 -0000

The blogging is going to develop in to some thing invalueable.The material with permanent value would be discovered without any body making effort and there would be identifiers of such material for the spread of wisdom covered in such blogs.Give it time and let no body interfere not even the govt.. Through such open books no body can have a damaging effect on society and the sobreity would be seen in blogging . You do not find people ridiculously dressed on road although there usually is no prescribed dress code.

Re: TechMeme list heralds death of blogging?

Vincent van Wylick — Tue, 02 Oct 2007 03:27:09 -0000

And considering there's about a million blogs out there, covering a range of topics, I think it's difficult to draw conclusions about the state of blogging from a list that only shows a 100, who are focussed on tech mainly.

Re: TechMeme list heralds death of blogging?

Vincent van Wylick — Tue, 02 Oct 2007 03:25:37 -0000

Hmm, I checked Andrew Parker's posting rhythm on his blog, and it seems pretty healthy. Alternatively, he posts like once a day on Twitter, as far as I can tell, pretty healthy too. So what is the point exactly?

As I commented on in Andrew's post when it came out, I think it's pretty impossible for Twitter to kill blogging. We will always need people like you, Scoble. But what we are seeing is the death of bloggers without business-models, which has been going on for several years. Scoops + blogging takes money, as sad as that may be.

Re: TechMeme list heralds death of blogging?

Graham Jones - Internet Psycho — Tue, 02 Oct 2007 03:04:43 -0000

It all depends on your definition of blogging. Number 8 on the Techmeme list is the BBC. Not, by your definition a blog, but essentially using blogging type software. Indeed, all the news sites on Techmeme's list will use some kind of blogging software - because blogging is really content management. Defining blogging as the single voice is restrictive - even simple old Blogger allows more than one person to contribute to a blog.

For years newspapers and magazines have had their columnists - essentially print versions of individual bloggers. It's not what we call the system we use that matters - it's the content that's important. Most people have given up blogging and gone to Twitter because they don't have much to say - or unlike news organisations - have no system in place to generate content.

The reason the Techmeme list has so many news sites in its top 100 is because they provide fresh, updated content, constantly. That's the secret to online success - fresh content. Whether you do that using what you call "content management", "blogging" or just "web design" doesn't matter. It's not the system that's important - it's the content; that's what readers are looking for, they don't care how you produced it or how we define it.

Re: TechMeme list heralds death of blogging?

daxell — Tue, 02 Oct 2007 03:03:01 -0000

is it really the death of blogging, when others claim it as the new revolution of voice out?

Re: TechMeme list heralds death of blogging?

Dennis D. McDonald — Tue, 02 Oct 2007 03:00:47 -0000

My use of Twitter has caused me to think much harder about what to put in my blog. But Twitter is not so good a conversational tool, unless you follow all parts of the conversation. (I actually blogged about that issue here: http://www.ddmcd.com/turing...

Re: TechMeme list heralds death of blogging?

Aaron — Tue, 02 Oct 2007 02:34:04 -0000

It's interesting [to me] how much more readily bloggers seem to jump into Twitter. Maybe it's because they've already gotten past the question: "why would anyone care what I'm doing?"

FTR, Twitter's hit me too. I'm amazed that a single app could have such an impact on attention.

Re: TechMeme list heralds death of blogging?

apetra — Tue, 02 Oct 2007 00:24:48 -0000

You misunderstand the TechMeme/Memeorandum algorithm. It uses link-rich blogs to qualify and quality rate media articles higher in the food chain. Most often that's link-sparse mainstream media articles. Less often, it's a blog article that captures the content better.

Re: TechMeme list heralds death of blogging?

Michael — Mon, 01 Oct 2007 23:21:15 -0000

I'm with Yuvi on this. Techmeme top 100 is just a list of news sites. Telling me that Forbes is a good place for news is fine and dandy, but it's not a list of the top 100 blogs.

Beyond that, I don't read blogs for my news. I read blogs for the insight and perspective of others on a recent topic.

The Twitter evangelism is getting a bit old. The value of your twitter posts are 1/10th of the value of your blog posts a year or even 6 months ago. Everytime I visited your blog, I found something worth investigating further. I don't think I've seen that yet on Twitter.

Re: TechMeme list heralds death of blogging?

anon — Mon, 01 Oct 2007 23:19:16 -0000

I wish someone would do a demographic analysis on Twitter.

Re: TechMeme list heralds death of blogging?

tish grier — Mon, 01 Oct 2007 23:12:36 -0000

hi Robert...no, *everybody* isn't moving to Twitter. Only a select few are taking on Twitter--probably the same select few who obsessively monitor Techmeme. There's huge swaths of the blogosphere that don't really care about either (check Roni Bennett's blog for some commentary on that.) What *has* changed are the 'sphere's within the 'sphere--the multiplicity of blogs and blog communities. And the multiplicity of blogs out there tell us how we can make money from our blogs. Both of those aspects are new. I'd say Techmeme's Leaderboard is just one community's way of showing who the movers and shakers are. And who's talking about them. No death just yet.

Re: TechMeme list heralds death of blogging?

Lynn — Mon, 01 Oct 2007 21:45:54 -0000

As a newbie to the internet, I find blogs like this useful to learn about the differnet technologies out there. Keep up the good work. Now I need to find out what a Twitter is.

Re: TechMeme list heralds death of blogging?

buckpost — Mon, 01 Oct 2007 20:31:57 -0000

Still don't get Twitter - and definitely don't see it as an alternative for blogging if you're looking for any kind of insight or perspective. To be clear, Twitter is not blogging or micro-blogging. It's just instant-messaging with a twist.

Re: TechMeme list heralds death of blogging?

TDavid — Mon, 01 Oct 2007 20:23:18 -0000

Death of blogging? Nope. Just shows what a lot of bloggers like to link to that are highly regarded by Gabe's algo. This is such a micro niche, Scoble, I'd expect you'd see through this (don't you?).

I am curious by your definition of blogs being "single voice of a person"? So what about group blogs? Is the group I'm a part of that has never had an editor not a blog in your eyes because we all share our writing at one place instead of having eight different less updated blogs?

Can't "single voice" bloggers band together on a publication like Boing Boing and still be considered bloggers? I think so.

Re: TechMeme list heralds death of blogging?

Jeremy Pepper — Mon, 01 Oct 2007 19:42:55 -0000

People like lists, and that's the basic premise of it. Lists help people keep things in order. And we like order.

Yes, this is a tech list - and lists are not bullshit, despite others claim - but it still is a measuring stick of influence. One that is important and valuable to a lot of various people. Robert, she wouldn't have had you come to AZ if you weren't high on that list. ;)

And while Twitter has value, the downside to Twitter is that the very stupid stuff gets buried. You stick your neck out on your blog, people notice it. You Twitter something interesting, odds are it's going to get buried or die. Or, well, get erased before becoming part of the Google cache.

One last thought - while the A list might be insufferable at times, it is a ranking of influence for certain areas. But each space has its own A-list, and those are the people that are passionate about products, spaces, services, etc.

Re: TechMeme list heralds death of blogging?

Deepak — Mon, 01 Oct 2007 18:52:03 -0000

First things first ... Francine is quite right. Tech is not the end all of blogging.

Let's also not forget that there are a lot of people airing out their thoughts on the Facebook's, Twitter's, Vox' etc of the world. I know a lot of people, especially back home in India who are not on Twitter, but are on Vox, cause they can control who gets to see what.