Bloggin’ in the free world
A note to our readers: As you may have noticed, the blog hasn’t been updated in some time. But that changes starting now. So in honor of new blog posts, it’s only fitting that we kick things off with a few words on the subject.
Remember when blogging was new? Sure you do. It was circa 1999. TMZ didn’t exist. Shakespeare In Love won an Oscar, and no one could say “blog” without putting air quotes around it, or – even worse – calling it a “web log.” A person who had a blog was a person seriously on the cutting edge. Now, it’s considered strange if you don’t blog in some form – whether it be microblogging on Twitter, posting status updates to Facebook or waxing poetic via a “traditional” format like Tumblr. Everyone and their dog literally has a blog. Not everyone loves this form of expression. Critics of blogs have been around as long as the medium. Way back in 2005, Forbes ran a cover article proclaiming blogs “the prized platform of an online lynch mob spouting liberty but spewing lies, libel and invective.” The same year, Vanity Fair columnist Michael Wolff proclaimed that in 18 months, “we should be looking back at this and all kind of embarrassed to say the word blog.” We’ll pause while you laugh. Clearly, those critics have been outvoted. So what’s next in blogging? Technorati’s last State of the Blogosphere focused on professional bloggers, a phrase that would been considered a contradiction in terms back in 1999. Twitter has made microblogging the trend du jour, but as Leo Laporte recently discovered there may be a distinct value to a personal blog of more than 140 characters. One thing’s for sure: Whatever the future of blogging brings, it will probably be much different from what we currently predict. Want proof? Google “future of blogging” and see what people thought blogging would look like 5, 6, 7 years ago (hint: vlogging) was supposed to be the big thing by now). You might laugh. And if you do, you’ll probably blog about it.
