Is blogging becoming old school?

Do you remember the old days (you know, like six or seven years ago), when blogs were at the forefront of the online world? For a while it seemed like everyone had a blog. But apparently, the blossom of the blogging rose is out, at least for today’s kids.

The New York Times recently published an interesting article, looking at a recent study showing that blogging among 12-17 year olds dropped by 50% between 2006 and 2009. This means that only 14% of 12-17 year olds are now active bloggers (a 28% decrease). A similar study from last year also found that blogging fell by 2% among 18-22 year olds between 2008 and 2010.

So what is the root of this apparent trend away from blogging? Well, history argues (and it certainly makes sense) that the rise of Facebook, Twitter, and other social media platforms has given old bloggers a host of new ways to connect with their audience, and to do so faster and more efficiently. simple. It’s much simpler to shoot a couple of sentences into a Facebook post than it is to sit down and write a one-page (or more) article for your blog. While not all blog posts take a long time to write, most bloggers who try to create a new post every day will tell you that it takes a lot longer than non-bloggers think.

When blogs burst onto the scene in the early 2000s, they provided a new way for people to post/broadcast their thoughts, ideas, and observations to the world (or at least to the small part of the world that would find their blogs). . It was revolutionary when you think about it in the context of the time. Previously, the traditional media establishment controlled the one-way flow of information and people consumed it. Suddenly, anyone with a computer and Internet access could start publishing their own content and making it available to everyone. This new capability meant that the volume of published content available to consumers began to increase exponentially. Traditional media gatekeepers no longer had absolute control over what information was suitable for print or broadcast. Anyone could become part of the “media.”

But, if we have learned anything about the internet in the last 20 years, it is that it never stops evolving. While blogging helped change the media and news playing field, as an activity it did not appeal to everyone. As mentioned above, blogging is time consuming and most people don’t particularly enjoy writing. The social networking industry burst onto the scene with new sites like MySpace and later Facebook and Twitter, all of which were created to provide simple self-streaming capabilities to the huge audience of Internet users who hadn’t jumped on the blogging bandwagon. .

Social networking sites took off by providing a way to communicate on a very informal level with friends and family. Unlike blogs, you could write something short and simple (like the oft-used example of ‘what you had for breakfast this morning’) and not spend too much time or effort thinking about it. As social media has grown, it has actually become a very effective partner to the blogging world by giving bloggers additional ways to connect with their audience and drive traffic to their sites.

So will social media eventually replace the blog? Personally, I see it unlikely in the near future. (With the Internet, I try not to make predictions too far ahead, as much of what is commonplace today would have seemed totally out of the realm of plausibility five years ago.) Instead, I think the lines between the two will start to blur even more. than they do today. The longer-form blog with multi-paragraph or even multi-page posts is not likely to be replaced by 140-character tweets, but people will have more and more options when it comes to sharing their thoughts and ideas online.

So what do you think? Will Facebook, Twitter and other future social media platforms replace blogs or will blogs continue to hold a prominent place in the field of online communication?