At a time where a good number of folks have been validly questioning the future of blogging as we know it, and perhaps venture into what that future may hold for such an important aspect of social computing as the Act of Blogging itself, both Internet and Corporate Blogging, or at a time where most of the knowledge workers out there are starting to move into social networking sites a la Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, etc. etc. trying to keep up with the various different lifestreams that keep coming out of nowhere, it’s always refreshing to know that what you have been doing all along still holds… And rather strongly!
Intriguing start of a blog post, right? Yes, indeed! I know. Done on purpose. For a good couple of years I have always been very certain that blogging, both corporate and Internet blogging alike, would always keep an important and relevant place within the social computing realm, despite the ever increasing trend of moving into other, more popular, social networking or lifestreaming sites. That’s probably why it keeps surprising folks that I still get to blog on a more or less regular basis on stuff I am really interested in and that I would want to come back to at some point.
My good friend Bill Ives calls it Personal Knowledge Management, a term I tend to come pretty close to in describing how I perceive my own blogging all along (Coming close to nearly six years now!). Harold Jarche calls it "Where’s your data?", a very thought-provoking article where he details the dangers of lifestraming through social networking sites you don’t have full access to, because they are all sitting up in the cloud.
I rather prefer to call it "The Second Coming of Blogging". I may be wrong about it. Maybe not. We shall see. But with the recent instances of how poor our data, effort and energy are being managed by applications like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc. etc. I am starting to sense (From a few months back already!), how all of this lifestreaming up on the cloud is going to backslash as soon as people start getting exposed to more and more deteriorating experiences from those social networking sites. And how, as a consequence of that, they would want to still keep using social software to share knowledge, ideas, and collaborate with others in an environment where they have full control of it. With no regrets.
And that’s why very soon I am sensing we will be seeing what I have called that "Second Coming of Blogging". And the funny part is that the one and only, Seth Godin, also hints this very same trend, in a recent event whose video was recorded and distributed through YouTube not long ago. My good friend Jon Husband blogged about it already over the weekend under the title "Blogging – Still Good for You and for Organisations" and just this morning I bumped into it, as I was catching up with Twitter from over the weekend and David Gurteen tweeted about it.
Since my good friend David always shares plenty of really interesting golden nuggets, of course, I had to check it out. And that’s when it hit me. Pretty much the same way it will hit you, if you have been blogging in the past and perhaps may be thinking about quitting altogether. Well, maybe not.
Take a look and spend the next one minute and thirty-seven seconds watching this video clip in YouTube with Tom Peters and Seth Godin, and be tremendously inspired by Seth’s words. Yes, I know and I realise he doesn’t call it "The Second Coming of Blogging", but I do, because after watching that video, and after experiencing more and more frequently constant hiccups on our overall social networking sites experiences, there is something that tells me we will be back to blogging. And pretty soon! Perhaps in a new and evolved form. But it will be back nevertheless.
We need to have that personal space, where we reflect on ideas not completed yet; where we engage in much more meaningful and lasting conversations that most of the times are even better than the original article!; where going along with the flow of the lifestream every now and then we still enjoy pausing for a bit, ponder things around, come up with something really cool and move on; finally, a place where the act of writing online for yourself (And perhaps others, too!) becomes an art through your own blog. And at long last an online 2.0 space that you manage and that helps you, day in day out, improve not only your social capital skills, but also your own personal brand.
Yes, I realise this is an incomplete thought (Still thinking about it some more…), but judge for yourselves. Have a look into "Seth Godin and Tom Peters on blogging" and get ready to be wowed, because you will …
And just as I am writing this blog post in my own personal business blog, here I am as well starting to play this week some more with a rather interesting new social software tool that has caught my attention last couple of weeks and which I am going to be exploring plenty more this week and see how it may transform the act of blogging and lifestreaming (Altogether!) as we speak. Yes, welcome to Posterous!
Oh, yes, my Posterous site is over here, but guess what? I realise I haven’t started yet to share content in there, but it looks like at the time I am putting together this post, it’s down. Can’t access it. I have yet to remember when it was the last time any of my blogs were down for a period of time … Still think that blogging doesn’t have a bright future amongst us, knowledge workers, as our preferred Personal Knowledge Management tool of choice?
Think again!
Tags: Blogging, Metablogging, Blogs, Weblogging, Corporate Blogging, Internet Blogging, Blogosphere, Act of Blogging, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, MySpace, Lifestream, Lifestreaming, Bill Ives, Personal Knowledge Management, PKM, Harold Jarche, Data Management, Data Protection, Data Ownership, Cloud, Cloud Computing, Social Networking Sites, Second Coming of Blogging, Seth Godin, Tom Peters, Jon Husband, Wirearchy, David Gurteen, Gurteen, Branding, Personal Branding, Brands, Posterous, Enterprise 2.0, Social Software, Social Networking, Social Computing, Social Media, Collaboration, Communities, Learning, Knowledge Sharing, KM, Knowledge Management, Remote Collaboration, Innovation, Networking, Social Networks, Conversations, Dialogue, Communication, Connections, Relationships, Productivity, Knowledge Workers, Social Capital, Social Capital Skills
I quite agree with you, Luis. Had seen the video, thanks David, and there is quite a bit of the context which comes out when one blogs, which probably is not there when tweeting, for example. Which is why, when you start following someone on twitter, for some time, unless you know the person, you need some time to figure out the context of what the person is writing … not so blogs, though.
Hi Atul! That’s a great point, indeed! And perhaps a distinction of how we get to build relationships online through social software. I see tools like Twitter pretty much like those casual encounters with folks in a bar or a pub establish a quick short conversation and figure out whether it is worth while keeping or not. If yes, I will keep paying attention. If not, I will keep moving.
Blogging is different; it’s like being in a coffee bar, sitting with some good friends pondering things in much more detail and involvement than anything else and in most cases with most folks one already knows. At least, that’s what I am seeing through my own blogging. I am sure it would be a different story, for instance, if your blog would have hundreds of commenters. Luckily, I am not one of those 🙂
Thanks a bunch for adding further up!
I agree with you, Luis, though I have had a somewhat tortured relationship with blogging. My first foray came as a way to share my experience of adopting our oldest child, nearly seven years ago. However, it wasn’t long until I realized I didn’t have the right to publicize something my daughter may not want when she was too young to consent. After all, she’d already had much of her life turned upside down through no fault of her own.
My second offering still exists, but it was an attempt to give vent to a part of my personality that had nothing to do with business and everything to do with curmudgeonly social analysis. I haven’t updated it in a while, but may sporadically continue to do so.
My third effort is picking up steam as I struggle to reconcile my political, social, and professional values and beliefs. I still worry that sharing some of what I believe in may yet get me in trouble in a way I don’t wish to deal with.
Now, however, back to your premise. I love to communicate through Twitter and Facebook; less through LinkedIn. However, I don’t think any of them offer the depth of either analysis or feeling that a personal blog does. This is especially true of Twitter and FB, where I often find myself struggling with how to get the entirety of what I wish to say into such small spaces.
While they certainly force brevity and concision on one’s writing, there are things worthy of saying that just can’t be done in such a small space.
As always, thanks for a thought-provoking piece and the link to Seth & Tom. I wish I could forward it to some at work, but YouTube is blocked by our IT security policies which, IMO, are surely threatening to cripple us more than help us.
Hi Rick! Thanks again for dropping by and for adding further up some excellent feedback into the overall conversation! Greatly appreciated! You bring in some very good and interesting points with regards to what blogging is all about; in my opinion the first phase before you get things going with your blog is all much about finding both your own voice and style with blogging; it’s not an easy task. It takes time and lots of thinking. For instance, in my own case, it took me about 6 months to find my own blogging voice and style when I was just getting started with my Intranet blog in 2003.
Once you identify those the next step is to find the niche area that you would want to blog about over the course of the years and all along I keep telling people the best thing to start is to figure out that area they would want to cover and which they themselves find they could talk about like forever. It would be that passion for that topic and wanting to share more about it that would get things going and help spark a bunch of initial blog posts that you can then develop over time.
That’s why you see in this blog of mine over here how I cover only a certain topics that drive my passion, like Enterprise 2.0, social networking, social software, social computing, knowledge sharing, collaboration, communities, learning, etc. etc but not everything else. In fact, many many moons ago, way before I discovered Web 2.0, I realised that there are three golden rules from online activity that I always try to comply with in order to “avoid trouble”:
1. Don’t talk about politics
2. Don’t talk about sports
3. Don’t talke about religion
And, funny enough, those golden rules have always allowed me to stay away from trouble, which is why you will never see me write about neither of those. If you would want to know my two cents it will have to be through face to face contact, over a cup of coffee or a beer or two. But not online
To be honest with you that’s why I am still so excited about blogging; there will always be a space for it; it’s our own legacy to the world as individuals of who we are and what our thoughts are. It’s that way that empowers us to have a voice and an opinion on things that matter to us and without having anyone to filter for you what you would want to share. It’s our form of expressing ourselves freely on whatever the topic and whenever that would happen and certainly always much more in-depth that a short message in Facebook or Twitter, even though I realise they provide plenty of value from a community building perspective, i.e. the networking effect, I still think blogging provides the opportunity to build up and consolidate much deeper and meaningful relationships.
And that’s why I think we will be seeing a second coming of it, specially when we all start realising it’s our own content, hosted by ourselves and without any further dependencies, which is something completely different that I could say about both Facebook or Twitter, for instance…
Thanks again for the great conversation and hope you may be able to sneak in that video with Seth Godin, because it surely is priceless! Enjoyed it tremendously for how accurate it is!
there is something that tells me we will be back to blogging. And pretty soon! Perhaps in a new and evolved form. But it will be back nevertheless.
We need to have that personal space, where we reflect on ideas not completed yet; where we engage in much more meaningful and lasting conversations that most of the times are even better than the original article!; where going along with the flow of the lifestream every now and then we still enjoy pausing for a bit, ponder things around, come up with something really cool and move on; finally, a place where the act of writing online for yourself (And perhaps others, too!) becomes an art through your own blog.
Yup !
Hiya Jon! Thanks a bunch for dropping by as well and for adding further as well; great feedback! I think so, too! I think it will be in an evolved form, but nevertheless, we will be coming back to it; like I was mentioning to Rick in the above comment reply, it’s that opportunity for us to own our own thoughts and share them across with other folks who may be interested in this subject as well. Thoughts on stuff we are passionate about, that we could talk for ages about it and still keep adding further up. A space for reflection, maturing and self-realisation of ideas we have got in our heads and which sometimes it is difficult to get across unless you share them online somewhere. In our case, our blogs!
I loved your final quote with this comment: “a place where the act of writing online for yourself (And perhaps others, too!) becomes an art through your own blog” That’s exactly why I think there will be a second coming of blogging; that’s why I think we very much need such form of online expression, because, more than anything else, it’s an integral part of who we are today. Indispensable!
Thanks again for the wonderful quotes and for sharing them across! Great stuff!