The Future of Blogging
As you know there hasn’t been a whole lot of blogging activity around here lately except on Twitter. I’ve been reading and watching, and then some from the sidelines. I’ve been searching for something to rekindle my passion for blogging or some new trend that will get my juices flowing again.
Well, … I’m still searching and it all comes down to these reasons:
Family and Health:
As you might remember I’ve had my share of health and family issues. My health has been inconsistent and then my marriage fell apart. I’ve been trying to repair it and part of the problem was the amount of time that I was blogging.
So I cut back a lot on blogging but there is still a huge void that hasn’t yet been filled. You see .. blogging was my life, and after blabbing all these years it’s not an easy thing to give up.
Commenting:
You might also remember my bitching sessions about comments going up and down like a yo-yo. It’s been frustrating seeing a thriving community turn into a ghost town, only to recover then followed by a drought again.
Watching the social media trend it could be easy to predict the demise of blogging. So will blog platforms survive the next decade you ask?
Personally I remain hopeful because speaking our mind is as human as eating and breathing, and I believe people will always want a podium. Freedom of speech is a right that previous generations had fought and died for and what better medium is there to deliver it than from a weblog?
I remember when I was a writer for Blogcritics and I said something that I regretted later. I asked the admin to remove a comment I had made and they refused. You see, they owned the website and therefore controlled the content.
That was a frustrating wakeup call and a mistake that I vowed I would never make again. I realized very quickly that I should be publishing on my own blog where I had total control over my content.
A lot of people don’t realize writing on Twitter or Facebook isn’t really blogging at all. They are only providing content to a corporate website that can arbitrarily do what they want with it. They can change their TOS (terms of service) whenever they want and there’s nothing we can do about it because they hold the keys to the kingdom.
Of course websites like these will appeal to those who lack in technical skills or the wherewithal to create and maintain a real blog. But once they mature and grow in the technology they will be looking elsewhere for a more powerful solution (or at least I hope they will).
I can’t see civilized people giving up on such an enabling technology, and as people get burned wise-up like I did they will gravitate back to a personal publishing platform that will give them total control over their design and content .. rather than a website that imposes itself on our rights with a controlling TOS like Facebook does.
After all, do we really need 10,000 virtual ‘friends’ that will never read us and who we will never get to know? Hmm, let me think on that…
The Future of Blog Bloke
The future of Blog Bloke is still up in the air. My family problems have knocked the wind out of me and my passion for blogging has been waning.
My “blog tips” niche is saturated with hundreds of copycats and I’m not into cheating, link baiting and gaming Google with recycled content like they do just to keep ahead of the pack.
If I can’t be true to my ethics and compete then I’ve toyed with the idea that perhaps it’s time for me to pack it in. I’ve even considered reinventing myself with a brand new blog. But that would take a lot of work that I don’t feel like doing right now.
When I got bored with Blogger and moved over to Wordpress my passion was rekindled for awhile as I sharpened my programming skills with PHP, JSON scripting and Web Design skills on a platform that was completely foreign to Blogger.
Like I always do I jumped in wholeheartedly with all the gusto of a kid on a hot summer’s day. Sink or swim is my motto and I love a good challenge, but now that I’ve learned what I set out to accomplish I’m finding myself bored all over again.
I wish I could say the recent Social Networking trend has rejuvenated my passion but it hasn’t. I just look around and ask myself “where’s the challenge”. I see no new technologies that I can get excited about. Most of the new apps it seems are designed to game Twitter and Facebook and get more fake “friends”.
I’m reading the same content over and over again. I see new self-proclaimed gurus popping up who are rewriting tips that I wrote or have read years ago. Instead of the using the keyword “blog” they just replace it with “Twitter“, “Facebook” or “Social Media”. It all seems the same old same old to me.
Take for example that website I mentioned earlier they call Facebook — you may have heard of it (started by a geek bitching about girls, or the lack thereof ). It’s the king of the castle and clogged with spammers, sploggers, (crazy people like my raving sista-in-law) and disingenuous internet marketers pretending to be my friend so they can make money off me.
Whatever becomes popular the parasites are never far behind to exploit it. What a joke, and the 140 characters offered by Twitter isn’t doing it for me either.
So what’s a blogging bloke to do? That’s the million dollar question.
I know it’s only a matter of time before my passion returns again. Can you relate?
Filed under: Blog Tips, Featured Articles, New Media, Social Media
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Interesting article, its true that social media websites are really begining to become the latest trend of information publishing and blogs have started to take a slight u turn in terms of popularity.
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@Bloggingguide, let’s hope that “trend” will take another u-turn back to real blogging again.
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Blog Bloke (@blogbloketips) reply on September 17th, 2009 12:02 pm:
Hey bloke!
Don’t know what the future of blogging in its true form holds. I liked blogging when I did it. But like you, my family and life prevented me from blogging regularly.
It was getting to the point of give up blogging or my family. So I quit then tried blogging again then quit again for good.
I use FB to keep in touch with my family across the country and friends. Its not a blogging service like you said.
I am growing tired of twitter and considered deleting my account. I keep it for you, Jaffer, and a few others.
If you use Myspace look me up.
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@Curtis, I reserved a Myspace account but never developed it and I never will. I don’t like it for similar reasons but we can keep in touch here or on Twitter. I don’t think I will ever quit blogging because it’s in my blood, but this lull has lasted longer than I expected.
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@Blog Bloke,
Twitter and email. You know my email right?
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@Curtis, I don’t think I have your email so you can send it to me if you like.
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Blog Bloke (@blogbloketips) reply on September 23rd, 2009 5:33 pm:
Curtis (@blogbloketips) reply on September 23rd, 2009 3:44 pm:
Blog Bloke (@blogbloketips) reply on September 17th, 2009 12:08 pm:
Excellent article. It was helpful and informative. hope to see more greats posts like this.
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@navid, Glad to hear it helped and thanks for dropping by.
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Blog Bloke (@blogbloketips) reply on September 22nd, 2009 1:47 am:
Just be true to yourself and the rest will follow. Be Happy! That’s the key.
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@Teri, well hello there! I’ve been thinking about you. It can be hard to be true to yourself when you’re still trying to figure who “yourself” really is.
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@Blog Bloke, It has taken me about five years but I’m getting there. I didn’t even know what foods I LIKED, I was so used to cooking for someone else. It is very liberating not “missing” someone and living your life like you see fit, regardless of others opinions!! You are now free to do all those things you wanted to do but couldn’t because of responsibilities to family. You and your daughter should take a trip,,,, CR sounds good!!
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@Teri, we just got back from a trip to Toronto last month. It was a lot of fun but didn’t last long enough. If I came to CR should I need to wear a loin cloth and practice my Tarzan call?
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Blog Bloke (@blogbloketips) reply on September 24th, 2009 7:22 am:
Teri (@blogbloketips) reply on September 24th, 2009 6:31 am:
Blog Bloke (@blogbloketips) reply on September 23rd, 2009 12:01 pm:
Nice article. Hope the trend will come back to blogging again.
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i am a beginner in blogging, thanks for sharing…
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Reminiscent of what I thought 6-7 years ago about blogging. I couldn’t understand why it had any advantage over putting a web page up with FTP… (-: As a result I picked up on the advantages of platforms like Wordpress rather late in the day…
I guess I’m assuming that we’re currently sitting waiting for the broad acceptance of electronic readers - and if you look at the supposed sales figures of say the Kindle this aint far away.
At this point bloggers will be competing on an equal footing with the mainstream media and it will be less of a niche sport.
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@Mike, when I first heard of blogging technology I saw the potential of blogs as an interactive (social) tool vs. old school static websites and I immediately jumped on the bandwagon. Then I discovered blogs got better pageranking from Google because it likes new content and I got excited even more.
But now the trend is taking people away from blogs over to bloated, insecure, for-profit corporate websites that are mimicking blogs and tricking users into divulging their private info. It sickens me and concerns me greatly.
We are an enhancement to the media but blogs are not on a par with mainstream media because we are different animals. They research stories and report the news, whereas we for the most part comment on the news, and sometimes we are the news.
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Blog Bloke (@blogbloketips) reply on September 27th, 2009 2:35 pm:
Is no so easy take the determination for change some things in the life more if you are really happy making this, but is things than you have to do. I hope than all go just better and better every time. Take care.
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I think a lot of the social media stuff will die a death and I see very little of it of use for turning a dollar. Facebook is OK for keeping in contact with real peole - twitter is totally annoying!
I think blogs are just gettin started - but they will diversify a lot more - I think static sites are probably going to get taken over my wordpress - I can setup a static wordpress site faster than I can fire up dreamweave and with a lot less technical knowleddge.
It the A-listers are annoying you -call them out - that’s what blogging is all about - too few people seem prepared to call people out for their crap - especially if they have a *name* - the “names” are the worst!
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@Lis Sowerbutts, I thought I did call them out. Does the term “problogger” ring a bell?
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Blog Bloke (@blogbloketips) reply on October 6th, 2009 12:38 pm:
I’m sorry to hear of all your trouble and I hope things start looking up soon. I never really got out of the whole Facebook trend and into the blog trend because I am stubborn. In fact, it took me years to get into social media at all because I am very stubborn.
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@oasis .. being stubborn or having some common sense?
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