Waxing And Waning Of The Blogs

Scott Rosenberg corrects the New York Times:

Social networking is changing blogging. ...More of us are using Facebook and Twitter for casual sharing and personal updates. That has helped clarify the place of blogging as the medium for personal writing of a more substantial nature. Keeping a blog is more work than posting to Facebook and Twitter. So I wouldn’t be surprised if, long-term, the percentage of the population blogging plateaus or even declines.

Maybe we’ll end up with roughly ten percent of the online population (Pew’s consistent finding) keeping a blog. As the online population becomes closer to universal, that is an extraordinary thing: One in ten people writing in public. Our civilization has never seen anything like it.

So you can keep your “waning” headlines, and I’ll keep my amazement and enthusiasm.

Scott Esposito piggybacks on his argument. I've stayed off Facebook for obvious reasons.

But whenever I've dipped into those waters, the more constantly updated chit-chat Facebook pages do remind me of mini-blogs. I often note to my hubby that he's a great blogger, and all he has is Facebook. And when I recall the early days of blogging, the audiences are of a similar size. But of course, Facebook is more restricted in audience and, in most cases, subject matter. But there are no rules here - just the liberation of self-expression. Democratized.