hm. from last month's new york times. what do you think?
Slow Blogging is a rejection of immediacy. It is an affirmation that not all things worth reading are written quickly.
This approach is a deliberate smack at the popular group blogs like Huffington Post, the Daily Beast, Valleywag and boingboing, which can crank out as many as 50 items a day. On those sites, readers flood in and advertisers sign on. Spin and snark abound. Earnest descriptions of the first frost of the season are nowhere to be found.
In between the slow bloggers and the rapid-fire ones, there is a vast middle, hundreds of thousands of writers who are not trying to attract advertising or buzz but do want to reach like-minded colleagues and friends. These people have been the bedrock of the genre since its start, yet recently there has been a sea change in their output: They are increasingly turning to slow blogging, in practice if not in name.
“I’m definitely noticing a drop-off in posting — I’m talking about among the more visible bloggers, the ones with 100 to 200 readers or more,” said Danah Boyd, a doctoral candidate at the University of California, Berkeley, who studies popular culture and technology. “I think that those people who were writing long, thought-out posts are continuing, but those who were writing, ‘Hey, check this out’ posts are going to other forums. It’s a dynamic shift.”
Technology is partly to blame. Two years ago, if a writer wanted to share a link or a video with friends or tell them about an upcoming event, he or she would post the information on a blog. Now it’s much faster to type 140 characters in a Twitter update (also known as a tweet), share pictures on Flickr, or use the news feed on Facebook. By comparison, a traditional blogging program like WordPress can feel downright glacial.
4 comments:
Interesting & thought provoking article. Thanks!
I've got a blog on Blogger and I guess I would be lumped into the middle of the pack. I've also got a facebook page and my blog feed is published on it to keep my peeps up to date on the random things going on with my life. There are those folks who are old school and just have a blog who post regularly, then there are others who dig Twitter and tweet like no bodies business. And there are those who mix things up, like myself. I think it just comes down to what you feel most comfortable using.
Thanks again for sharing!
E
Hmm. I know that I blog, generally 3 times a week, but the holidays have thrown me for a loop...I'll be back on track in January. I do keep my blogs, for the most part, 2 to 4 paragraphs. But I do try to follow like minded blogs and those that interest me, and even once or twice a week postings are great. I don't generally follow in detail anyone who blogs 3 or 4 + times a day---those I skim in google reader and keep going. Google reader has really helped me scan thru for the ones I want to read. Teri http://www.sandtcreations.com/wordpress
I think there's room in the cyberworld for both blogging and twitter. The formats are quite different, and can be used together to effectively communicate both "immediate" messages and longer, wordier blog posts.
I have my Twitter on my blog, and my blog and Etsy shop feed directly on twitter & facebook. I blog regularly, and having the posts transmitted out to the other sites keeps me from having to repost. Twitter and Facebook have also driven more people to my blog.
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