Teenage blogging dropped by half from 2006 to 2009, with many choosing to share thoughts and feelings on the huge social networking site Facebook instead.
The blogging craze that dominated the internet just a few short years ago appears to be fading, as young people post their musings and photos on social networking sites where others are more likely to see them, reports The New York Times.
"I don't use my blog anymore," says aspiring filmmaker Michael McDonald. "All the people I'm trying to reach are on Facebook." Blogging among kids ages 12 to 17 was cut in half from 2006 to 2009, according to the internet and American Life Project at the Pew Research Centre. Does Facebook spell doom for blogging?
M G Siegler at Paris Lemon says this argument makes no sense. Siegler comments: “First of all, as the Times notes, even though early blogging site Blogger is "fading" in the US, it's "actually growing quite quickly globally." And it's just wrong to say blogging is dying because people are ditching older formats for Facebook and Tumblr. The important thing is that "people are expressing themselves more online overall."
It's incorrect to characterise this as a simple switch from one publishing model to another, says Mark St. Andrew at Cream. Real blogging, like all forms of writing, is hard work. "Reading, research, critical thinking, writing, [and] editing... isn't like posting a picture to Tumblr or texting off a tweet. They're different beasts and they deserve different forms of metrics and comparison."
Sure, Twitter and Facebook are absorbing the attention and time of many bloggers, says Dan Riehl at Riehl World View, but "the net result may actually be good for blogging." There's fewer "throw-away posts," as bloggers simply tweet the small stuff. That means that what ends up on actual blogs is more likely to be consequential and that "the medium is simply maturing."
Thomas L. Blair is a sociologist and political blogger on the Chronicleworld 'for creative renewal in Black Britain and Afro-Europe'. His work is honoured in the British Library's archive of "social, historic and culturally significant web-based material from the UK domain". He won top prize in the blogging competition on The-Latest.
Sumantra Maitra is a freelance journalist from Mumbai, India. He is a correspondent for All Sports magazine, and a foreign affairs blogger for the Washington Examiner. He has written articles for news website Merinews.com and other regional publications. Sumantra runs a blog at DailyWorldWatch.wordpress.com. He provided exclusive eyewitness reports for The-Latest on the Mumbai bombings of 2008.
Brian Usher is photography consultant for The-Latest.Com. He is a highly experienced editorial and commercial photographer whose work has been published throughout the world, appearing in many well known magazines and newspapers. Brian has featured in several books and has been a writer for the Royal Photographic Society magazine.
Heidi Kingstone has spent time in Afghanistan reporting for a number of publications. Her work has appeared in the Financial Times, The Spectator, The Sunday Times and other international journals. She has also reported from places like Iraq, Rwanda, Lebanon, Sudan, Democratic Republic of Congo, and Kenya. Heidi is The-Latest's Editor at large.
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