Is Facebook killing blogs? The conversation continues....

I really wasn't planning on posting much at all this week, and just got on the PC now for a quick scan of email and blog stuff before heading off to the same family get-togethers all of us are about to start doing.

I see that Jeff Pulver posted a nice follow up today to my post from Friday about this topic.

Sure glad to see the dialog continuing, which really is the point of blogs in the first place, right?

For anyone following this topic - and I really think I'm hitting on something here - it's clear from Jeff's experiences that the conversations are shifting from the blogs to the social media sites, namely Facebook. What's a blogger to do? Jeff has built up a fantastic network of engaged "friends" on FB, and by rights, he should be getting great conversations going there. What's really amazing is not how big his network is - and lots of avid FB'ers have large networks too - it's how quickly he's done it. Again, nothing unusual there in the FB world, but I'm sure Jeff would agree, he's built up a large following there much faster than it took on his blog.

I don't know about you, but I'm still not sure what to make of all this. I still stand by my position that FB could well be killing blogs, but of course it's not so simple. FB is just another forum for communicating, but it's much more social, whereas blogs are really all about the writing - and for some, the photos too. That's the primary reason we go to blogs - to read what the thought leaders are saying. That's not why we go to FB - we go there to be social, and if we happen to see something interesting to read, well, we'll do that too.

It really doesn't matter where the conversations are taking place - as long as they're happening - that's what I think is important. So, again, Jeff's posing a valid question about why the comments have fallen off at his blog, but at least people are still talking - so no harm, really.

All I can say from here is that as this trend continues - and why shouldn't it? - blogs are going to just look so 1.0. For me, it doesn't matter, since I don't anticipate becoming a rabid FB user. I'm pretty old school, and the blog is where my public writing goes, and I don't see anything changing that.

For Jeff and all the others who are big on FB, no doubt this has to be creating some dissonance, and I guess you just go with the flow. As Jeff says, some posts he duplicates on FB, but only a few - you just have to experiment and see what happens. Nothing wrong with that.

The ones I worry about are those who are trying to build businesses around blogging, where the name of the game is attracting sponsors and/or advertisers. Social networking sites will only continue to fragment readership, so if eyeball and page counts are materially important to you, I suspect you have a bigger problem on your hands than what Jeff has been sharing with us.

That's my piece on this for now, but I'm all ears if you want to keep this dialog going. I'd love it if you did, but in my case, you'll have to do it here, not on FB! :-)

Over and out for now. No idea when I'll be blogging next, hopefully before the year is out.

All the best for the holidays!


Technorati tags: Jeff Pulver, Jon Arnold, blogging, Facebook