As Life Gets Real Time Where Does it Leave Personal Blogging?
First of all, this question didn’t crop up because Twitter has remodeled itself to be a real time search engine. It arises however, because of reports that are floating around, and adoptions that people who earlier powered blogging are now making. Personal blogging, which goes beyond the definition of chronological arrangements of posts is facing what can perhaps be called an adolescent age, and it is changing.
The questions in front of us are not straightforward to my mind, or maybe their answers are not.
- What is the relevance of a personal blog in today’s Facebook and Twitter driven world?
- What do people blog about if it has gone beyond daily notes?
- Where and how does blogging demarcate itself from Lifestreaming (ala Posterous)?
The answers to these will definitely be varied and subjective.
However the other side of the coin presents an even more interesting point of thought. The side which is now getting into the world of blogging and realizing its potential beyond rudimentary thoughts, circa 2004-05 for us older bloggers. The Fake IPL Player for instance brought blogging and following blogs to partial mainstream by picking a topic close to almost every Indian. Though it is far from a personal blog itself, at least it gave the notion of a blog better to the ordinary Indian than any print or TV coverage ever could. And this is just one instance, there can numerous small but impactful stories persuading people to adopt blogging.
While the question of content can still be debated upon, the more important point is that of platforms that enable blogging. Being synonymous with blogging for a lot of people in India, it wouldn’t be easy to push Blogspot away as a strong platform. However, how can it fight the combined might of self hosted blogging, lifestreaming, social networking, all of which offer the same services in one way or the other?
Will platforms like blogger and Wordpress.com cease to exist in the suture?
I don’t know really. Still, the way I see it, they would begin to dig deeper. And form the core of the tribe creation that people will pursue online. The idea of tribe being that we blog, tweet and network with the intention of finding people who share our interests and views thus creating a community with a united thought – tribe. So while Twitter, or Posterous or even Facebook with its myriad ways of interaction will continue to move ahead, they will essentially remain baits to attract fellow tribesmen. While the ritual of making them bonafide tribesmen will b done at the altars of a blog. Where Web 2.0 will converge with 3.0 and information overload will be unburdened.
With that line of thought personal blogging will also evolve to a more calculated, consolidated aspect of a person’s online life.. say a sign of maturity over the brow of a rebellious teen. The tricky adolescence phase shed like a snake’s skin.
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