Spreading my content out Nov20 '07

It wasn't too long ago that this blog was my only presence on the web. Being my "identity hub," I included many relevant pieces of my life scattered throughout this domain.

Over the past year or two, various aspects of this site have slowly been migrated elsewhere. There are less physical pages, as witnessed by the reduced amount of "navigation tabs" along the top of the page. Overall, I've eliminated a lot of content that once resided here, but is more manageable (and socially-connected) elsewhere. (An example is my "Music" section.)

This trend has been inevitable with the rise of unique publishing platforms such as Facebook and Twitter. Content no longer needs to be formulated into an official blog post, but rather it can be simple utterances and exclamations in the form of "micro content," which not only takes less time, but is more natural and impulsive.

Other unique publishing platforms like Tumblr reduce the amount of technical management involved with setting up and maintaining your own blog publishing system. Again, instead of spending valuable time formulating blog posts, Tumblr's focus is on impulsiveness.

The latest trend on the web seems to be impulsiveness and brevity.

Is blogging dead?

As Chris Lott explains in a recent post, "blogging" is just another word for publishing. And publishing certainly isn't dead. It's stronger than ever. If bloggers are noticing less posts on their personal blog, it's probably because a lot of their content is being shifted to Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, etc. The impulsive quickness of these systems better migrates into our busy lives.

I do, however, find value in using micro-content tools to help solidify blog post topics. Quite often I'll have an idea for a blog post, and immediately post it to Twitter, by summing it up quickly in a sentence or less. This act of "pre-publishing" helps me to get the idea out of my head, and possibly receive immediate, real-time feedback from other followers in that particular social network. Twitter, specifically, is the fastest stream of content that I know of. It also has the quickest turn-around time for feedback. If you want a timely opinion right away, post it to Twitter, and your followers will almost always consider replying - and I'm talking within minutes, not hours or days, as evident with blog feedback.

Even sites like Flickr give me a creative outlet, as opposed to posting pictures on my own blog. On Flickr, I'm part of a community, as opposed to a personal blog, which is really only a one-man show. Sure, feedback provides interaction, but this is more of a dictatorship than anything else.

Is my blog dead?

As I explained, content on this site has slowly migrated elsewhere. So does that mean this site will eventually fade into nothing?

I don't believe so. There's still value in my voice on my own controlled domain. And as I explained, using other publishing tools often inspires the content that is posted here anyway.

If anything, I think eventually I'll shift away from the "blog" paradigm, and focus more on my stream of content from all over the web.

I already include "widgets" or "snippets" of content from other sites, such as my Twitter status, so you can see the trend is to encapsulate all content into one comfortable and personalized spot. The challenge is dealing with server hops, design issues, and overall user experience.

So, as you can see, publishing content has never been the problem - it's organizing it that's troublesome.

Categories: Blogging , Trends

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