There's a "flagging desire to blog that I feel in myself and see in other late-20s, early-30s people in my friend circle," says Jessica Newton, a writer based in Asheville, N.C. Ms. Newton continues to post to her blog, although she says the site "doesn't serve the purpose in my life I once hoped it would."
Michael Banks, the author of "Blogging Heroes: Interviews with 30 of the World's Top Bloggers," says that many bloggers have simply realized that the energy and dedication to maintain a blog far exceeded their expectations.
When Mr. Banks published "Blogging Heroes" in 2007, there was still a widely shared belief that one could instantly become rich and famous through blogging. Eventually, Banks says, "people sort of woke up to the fact that blogging required tremendous dedication and effort.
The best bloggers are there at the keyboard every day, 12 hours a day sometimes, no matter what." Good blogging he says, is intensive. "You can't just blurt anything out. You have to think it through."
Anthony Chung, a dentist in Toronto, says his personal blogging began to taper off in 2007. "From what I've seen online," Mr. Chung says, "few bloggers with personal blogs tend to remain interested in blogging after two to three years. This was true before Facebook, and is especially true now. Our priorities and time commitments change." Chung points out that when you first start a blog, "all who listen are strangers." But as time passes, your audience grows, and your identity is more fully exposed. "That's a pretty big throttle to the momentum of a blog," Chung says. "Blogging from that point forward requires more thought and less impulsiveness. And that requires more time."
BlogPulse, an analytics company operated by Nielsen, shows hundreds of new blogs launched every week. In fact, as the Pew study indicates, blogging has actually climbed slightly in popularity among American adults over the age of 30, from 7 percent in 2007 to 11 percent last year.
But many longtime bloggers say that the blog is entering a period of important transition – from one-size-fits-all soapbox to just one more tool in the cluttered Internet toolbox.
Facebook and Twitter, and not the blog, are now "the glue that holds online communities together," says Dylan Wilbanks, a Web producer in Seattle
Today, there is increasing evidence that the art of blog writing is losing ground to even faster forms of communication, from 140-character Twitter blasts to one-sentence status updates on Facebook and MySpace. Nielsen Media Research estimates that of the 126 million blogs counted by its crawlers, the vast majority are rarely – if ever – updated.
"I think what might be happening is that something [that] blogging wasn't very good at – instant notification, status updates, quick conversation – is shifting to the platforms where it is better handled," says Jay Rosen, a professor of journalism at New York University. "People who once started blogs to be part of the online conversation probably wouldn't do that today. They would use Facebook or Twitter. But the combination of a Twitter feed for constant contact and a blog for persistent writing over time is too effective for it to wholly disappear."
***Personally I hate facebook and I have never tried twitter, so for me my best choice is this blog, and yeap it requiere a lot of time and dedication to make a good post and most when you don't write about your personal life, people likes to read about others life***
source: www.csmonitor.com
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