While researching for a future post, I came across this little missive on the future of blogging from a blog called 11-D:
I just want to write about how blogging has changed in the past six years.
1. The A-List Doesn’t Matter Anymore. I just read a really nice paper that came up with a new method for determining the top 20 bloggers. The problem is that those bloggers aren’t nearly as influential as they used to be. Their ranks in Technorati and other lists are artificially high, because they are on the blogrolls of millions of blogs that were begun and quickly abandoned years ago. People used to read the A-list blogs because they were first on the scene to tell us what the hot articles and issues were. But now we get that information from Twitter, Facebook, and Google Reader. Does anybody still read Instapundit? Most of the A-List bloggers aren’t all that influential. When I surveyed key journalists about what blogs they read, they rarely pointed to the traditional A-list blogs. They preferred the niche blogs, which brings me to the next topic.
2. It’s all about niche blogs. If you have a particular expertise and unique perspective, they you can quickly gain a following. Everyone else is out of luck.
3. Norms and practices. Bloggers have undermined the blogosphere. Bloggers do not link to each other as much as they used to. It’s a lot of work to look for good posts elsewhere, and most bloggers have become burnt out. Drezner and Farrell had a theory that even small potato bloggers would have their day in the sun, if they wrote something so great that it garnered the attention of the big guys. But the big guys are too burnt out to find the hidden gems. So, good stuff is being written all the time, and it isn’t bubbling to the top.
(Skippy-san comment: I completely agree! This phenomenon is particularly true among Mil Bloggers who just won’t look at what the rest of the world has to say-if they think it criticizes their profession. To their loss.)
Many have stopped using blogrolls, which means less love spread around the blogosphere. The politics of who should be on a blogroll was too much of a pain, so bloggers just deleted the whole thing.
4. Blogger Burn Out. Many of the top bloggers have been absorbed into some other professional enterprise or are burnt. It’s a lot of work to blog. Most bloggers, and not just the A-listers, spend 3-5 hours every day blogging. That’s hard to maintain, especially since there is no money in this. They used that time to not only write their posts and monitor their comment sections, but to read and foster other bloggers. Blogging survived based on the goodwill and generosity of others. It’s probably no coincidence that every blogger that I’ve met face-to-face is an extraordinarily nice person. But it’s hard to volunteer that much time over a long period of time. The spouses tend to get annoyed.
(Skippy-san comment-This is very true!)
5. Reader burn out. You all are not clicking on the links like you used to. I’m not really sure why. In the past, if I was linked to by a big mega blogger, it meant 10,000 new readers in one afternoon. Now, a link by a mega blogger sends over a couple hundred readers. Readers are probably tired out of trying new stuff. Maybe we’ve sent you to too many crappy places over time and you’re sick of it.
6. MSM yawns. All those articles in the NYT and the Wall Street Journal about blogging helped to drive much of the enthusiasm going among bloggers and readers. People really felt like they were part of something important. Blogging is no longer the cool, hot thing.
7. Huffington Post. It has sucked up all the readers. And HuffPo isn’t a proper blog. It is run by people who don’t link to other bloggers and do not get the old ways and norms that greased the system in the old days.
8. Twitter and Facebook. I don’t really need to explain this one.
9. Link Monitoring. In the past, I could easily figure out which blogs had linked to me and then send them a reciprocal link. For whatever reasons, Google Blog and Technorati aren’t picking up the smaller blogs, and I have no idea who’s linking to me.
So, blogging has changed a lot in the past six years. It’s still an excellent medium for self-expression and professional networking, but it will no longer make mega-stars. It’s actually a good thing that the hoopla has died down. No one should spend that much time in front of a computer. The expectations were unrealistic. Use your blogs to target particular audiences and have a clear mission, and you’ll get a following. Blogging should be the means to another goal — a rough draft for future articles/books, a way to network with professionals, a place to document your life for your children, a way to have fun. Those are very real and good outcomes of blogging and that’s why I’m continuing to keep at.
There is not a lot to disagree with here. The only point that I would add-at least with respect to political blogging is that the sphere has become more polarized. People who once were above simply repeating right or left wing tripe-now do it at the drop of a hat. If one side embraces the darkness that is wingnuttery, the other side simply echoes the other sides talking points. Especially in the comment sections. You either praise the poster-or get attacked as a troll.
Examples of this are numerous. I lurk a lot of blogs and comment a lot. I deliberately comment on blogs I disagree with-just to prove a point. You either mean what you say about wanting open discussion or not. The funny thing is-many of these same blogs that pride themselves on the high tenor of their discussion, just go absolutely bat-s**t when someone offers a disagreeing viewpoint. (For the record, I have only deleted one comment in 1742 posts-some commenters may make me angrier than snot, but if I don’t listen to them, I’ll be poorer for the effort).
Research is also the other side that has fallen off-maybe because there is too much to sort through. The was a reason though, that your high school English teacher tried to teach you the mechanics of reasoned arguement. Judging by the content of many blogs-English must have been an optional course.
Maybe the fad has run its course.