Blogging’s Gone Mainstream, Baby
Maybe having a blog for three years and working for a blog network makes me biased but blogging appears to have lost its “hey-isn’t-this-cool/new-kid-on-the-media-block” novelty.
This is far from a bad thing but simply a reflection blogs and blogging have squeezed their way into the media landscape along with radio, TV, newspapers and magazines to the point where fewer people raise a fuss anymore. I mean, the “Are bloggers journalists?” question/issue seems have to have evaporated, right?
Another telling sign was the Wall St. Journal’s story earlier this month about the 10th anniversary of blogs. The story’s tone was established in the second paragraph:
“The consumption of blogs is often avid and occasionally obsessive. But more commonly, it is utterly natural, as if turning to them were no stranger than (dare one say this here?) picking one’s way through the morning’s newspapers. The daily reading of virtually everyone under 40 — and a fair few folk over that age — now includes a blog or two, and this reflects as much the quality of today’s bloggers as it does a techno-psychological revolution among readers of news and opinion.”
When you have one of the world’s leading mainstream media organizations writing about blogs as it would any other medium, you have to think something has changed - called it a tipping point, paradigm shift or any other catchy description. Of course, you would expect the MSM to write differently about blogs now given they’ve all pretty much embraced them - out of necessity if not choice.
More evidence of blogging have been accepted are discussions about where blogging is head as opposed whether blogging is a fad or a new trend. Aidan Henry has a terrific post recently that talked about how blogging is moving in two directions: micro-blogging (Pownce, Jaiku, Twitter, Hictu, etc.), which involves short messages, and “traditional” blogging, which is focused on news and opinion.
More evidence that blogging is just so yesterday (again, not a bad thing) is my belief that podcasting and video blogging will become the New Blogging as it becomes easier for people to put together well-produced audio and video posts. Look at what Loren Feldman is doing with a Casio digital camera, 2GB of memory and some Apple software.
So as much as we’re celebrating a decade of blogging, maybe we should celebrate/toast the fact blogging/blogs have become just another tool to communicate - albeit with low barriers to entry and millions of enthusiasts and professionals involved in the creation of content.
