Blogging used to be something fun, but today...

The End of Blogosphere

There are so many things way much better than blogs today that you'd be considered old-fashioned if you blogged about something. Facebook, YouTube, and even Twitter are newer, faster and better than blogs. You can make short updates on your routines, or then post videos or talk to your friends through YouTube and Facebook. Why would anyone need something so old and complicated such as a weblog?


By GABRIELA ZAGO
from Pelotas, BRAZIL


Remember that time in which blogging used to be something fun? People used to blog just for the fun of blogging. Bloggers used to respond what other bloggers said through comments or trackback, and all the relations established among those blogs formed what used to be called the blogosphere.

But that was years and years ago. Today, blogging has become serious business. That are rules to be followed, professional bloggers are all over the place, and people have even tried to create a sort of code of conduct for bloggers (and failed, of course). It is so complicated and painful to have a blog (a good blog) today that many bloggers have decided to just... give up blogging.

Recently, Wired said that blogging is "so 2004". There are so many things way much better than blogs today that you'd be considered old-fashioned if you blogged about something. Facebook, YouTube, and even Twitter are newer, faster and better than blogs. You can make short updates on your routines, or then post videos or talk to your friends through YouTube and Facebook. Why would anyone need something so old and complicated such as a weblog?

The Economist said the blogosphere has become "mainstream" (whatever it means for people who just don't care about mainstream). What used to gather conversations among people has become a place for professionals (the so called "probloggers", those who blog professionally and earn revenue from their posts). Today, you are no one if your blog doesn't get something like 10,000 hits a day. If you're not taking your blog seriously, just give it up, pal. It's a lost case.

Nicolas Carr, from the blog Rough Type, went further: he declared the end of the blogosphere. What we have now is a sort of a sea of disconnected bloggers. Instead of a conversation, we have a whole bunch of noises. As he discusses in his post, nobody killed the blogosphere - it ceased naturally (which means that blogosphere is already over, and we're just losing time trying to discuss it). That's it. The blogosphere died. Alone. And all there's left is the possibility of complaining about it on Twitter.

Is there something we can make to save the blogosphere?

Let's leave apocalyptic views aside, continue (go back) blogging and enjoy while blogs are still out there. Whenever there are blogs, there still will be a blogosphere (or, at least, a blog-line between two people, or a blog-microsphere among a small group of friends). There still are a large number of people that create a blog just for fun and that are there just to talk to others (the reason for calling it "the blogosphere" is the possibility of creating a conversation among the blogs). After the blogosphere is really over we can blame something or someone (But it will be somehow complicated to argue in small tidbits of 140 characters).


(Published: 10.12.2008.)