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Blogs are dead

by Phil Barrett

Every few weeks I scan the Ad Age 150 – a comprehensive list of industry blogs indexed based on popularity and relevance.  They index over 1000 blogs, and the top 150 have been published annually in their magazine.

Two things really stuck with me yesterday

  1. Seth Godin’s blog had dropped from first to 28th.  His blog ranking has recovered this morning to second spot – but the fact he is no longer on top of the blogsphere is a seismic shift from the last three years
  2. The number three blog Micro Persuasion (also consistently in the top 5) has declared his blog dead. He’s walking away from impressive rankings in Alexa, Technorati, Google, Post rank,Yahoo, and Collective Intellect in order to start a new site he’s calling  The Steve Rubel Lifestream – which is really just another blog, but with a new POV that instead of writing long articles supported by several references he will post snack sized bits of information several times a day.

Looking at my 300 subscriptions in my RSS feed, nearly half the blogs have either stopped posting or at least reduced their frequency. Although I wrote about 5 reasons why twitter is making many blogs irrelevant here, I think it would be a mistake for people to abandon their blog in favour of a micro-blog such as twitter or a feed aggregator such as friendfeed.

Given that the most important brand you ever work on should be your own, your blog should evolve to be more than an opinion site, but one that aggregates and presents your personal brand. I was speaking to my friend Ted last night about this, and it makes a lot of sense. It’s also something I’ve intuitively done over the last year with this site.

CVs are dead – long live your personal brand aggregator!

Instead of killing your blog in favour of another platform, use your blog as the platform to other branches of your personal brand. Linkedin for business networking, slideshare for presentations, twitter for the in the moment perspectivce, facebook for the more personal connections, and youtube for videos.

While you’re at it, be sure to include a “share this” widget so that others can easily share your awesome content with their network and be sure your blog is mobile friendly – as increasingly your fans or those who stumble upon your site will be accessing it from their smartphones.

It would seem that blogs are in fact undead.


  • Great point Scott - the way i see it, the next mass appeal "thing" will be something that is dead simple for the mass consumer.

    What is that? I think when it becomes really easy to port my aggregate social graph to other platforms - which is what facebook connect and open social are starting / trying to do.

    People don't want to maintain several accounts across several platforms... so as soon as we can truly own our personal data / social graph and its truly portable, i think we'll see more mass adoption of other channels.
  • Phil - true you need the lifestreaming to get people to notice you. I just wonder what the effects are for the mainstream audience. What will be the next service to gain mass appeal - and how we will engage with that? As opposed to socialmediaites sharing content with other socialmediaites...
  • thecolor - i agree with what you are saying - but more and more people starting with snack sized bits first, where as a year ago people would start with their RSS reader. I don't think blogs will ever go away... but they will continue to evolve and therefore their role will also evolve

    Jack - i think microblogging has given some bloggers an easy way out of maintaining a regular content schedule. It's far easier to send out a RT or a witty one-liner then put the thought & effort into writing a post. I think sites like twitter is actually helping the blogsphere as the pretenders are no longer cluttering up the space like before.

    Crispin - fully agree!

    Scott - Also agreed... but you also need the lifestreaming channel to get people to notice your blog. Twitter and FF are great for sharing for example, but they are also great for publishing. Content is king like you say and at the end of the day those who consistently produce the best content will be the most relevant - regardless of format or channel
  • Hey Phil.

    Saw your article through Steve Rubel himself and glad I did. I've been writing about this subject today on friendfeed, et al, and I agree that we must not through the baby out with the bathwater.

    When I look at social media in it's current form I see the problem of content overload. There is so, so much of it, and this lessens its value. Of course there is cumulative effect when you are building community, but when someone is just posting "stuff" then *I* - the end user - is missing out the meat that I get in a blog post.

    I'm posting later today on 'Content is a Commodity', and in it I outline the fact that the most precious human resource is our ability to act. A good blog post, a post with clarity, will guide me to action. Sure, your lifestream will make me like you more, respect you more, enjoy you, etc - but it is that well-thought-through blog post that actually causes change.

    What do you think? I'm still trying to get this firm in my mind.

    SG
  • Blogs are on no way dead, they will become the medium be which more in depth analysis i.e longer structured thoughts exist. It may be that publishing ratesslows, but relevancy and quality may well increase if the pressure to publish every day (or more) is taken away. The rise of lifestreaming, microblogging etc. means we have more opportunity to run a stream of conciouosness and platforms like Friendfeed allow us to develop more structured streams of conciousness. Blogs will continue to exist but will become more filtered and therefore better.
  • Blogs aren't dead. The microblogging is just forcing people to work harder on developing more compelling content for the larger formats, such as blogging.
  • What makes little sense to me when I read this (as there are a few other posts elsewhere in the "bloosphere" ) is that tweets and pings and ffs, etc. etc. frequently point to, "blog posts". We can typically only get 140 characters in a micro post, and even if you can converse in some decently, how can any working (semi-focused) individual manage to keep up with that one, let alone all the others they may post and be further updated on the goings-on of the world? With a blog/post you can at least make your peace with the topic and let others hash it out in comments or tweets and the like and you can come back to defend it later or just let it wither and move on to new more important things. No?
  • As usual Phil great post and totally agree
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