Remember blogging? That quaint, old-fashioned hobby of keeping a regular, text-based online journal about your life and interests? Remember how blogs used to allow reader comments, and were archived in reverse-date order?
It was my friend’s younger brother who first introduced me to blogging in 2004, writing the Blogger URL on a paper napkin at a party. He and his friends formed the nucleus of my new online community.
But as I settle into my porch rocking chair 10 years later, tucking my crocheted rug a little more snugly around my withered old legs, I don’t even have to yell at the Kids of Today to get off my lawn. They don’t blog anymore.
Indeed, most of the personal blogs I once followed have vanished, or haven’t been updated in months or years. The blogroll in my sidebar reads like an honour roll of war dead. But I keep on blogging because, compared to tweeting for thousands of followers or posting to hundreds of Facebook friends, the single-digit pageviews my blog now attracts are a paradoxically private way to express myself.
The melancholy ruins of this digital Pompeii recall The Onion’s joke about internet archaeologists excavating the lost "Friendster" civilisation. But just as Friendster users migrated to MySpace and then to Facebook, teenagers are now fleeing Facebook to get away from their embarrassing older relatives.
So, where should we go nowadays for an instant hit of youthiness?WhatsApp, Snapchat, Tumblr, Instagram and Vine. (...)
Blogging persists, of course. But it’s mostly for adults – professionalised to the point where the old "bloggers vs journalists" debates now seem hopelessly quaint. Maintaining a personal blog has become entrepreneurial: a job that earns an income through display advertising, network marketing, ebooks and blog-to-book deals.
Concomitantly, blogging has indelibly influenced mainstream news reporting, which is now much more immediate, informal, link-rich and inclusive of reader comments. When I taught online journalism at Monash University from 2009-11, students published their assignments on WordPress blogs.
So for young people, blogs are work, not play. A 2008 Pew research project found that while 85% of 12 to 17-year-olds engaged in electronic personal communication (including texting, email, instant messaging and commenting on social media), 60% didn’t consider these texts to be "writing". Another study in 2013 revealed that teenagers still distinguish between the "proper" writing they do for school (which may be on blogs) and their informal, social communication.
By contrast, my fondness for prose – and my disgusted CLOSE TAB when an interesting link turns out to be, ugh, a video – marks me as a digital fogey. I didn’t get Tumblr for the longest time. Why were people just reblogging other people’s posts?
It was my friend’s younger brother who first introduced me to blogging in 2004, writing the Blogger URL on a paper napkin at a party. He and his friends formed the nucleus of my new online community.But as I settle into my porch rocking chair 10 years later, tucking my crocheted rug a little more snugly around my withered old legs, I don’t even have to yell at the Kids of Today to get off my lawn. They don’t blog anymore.
Indeed, most of the personal blogs I once followed have vanished, or haven’t been updated in months or years. The blogroll in my sidebar reads like an honour roll of war dead. But I keep on blogging because, compared to tweeting for thousands of followers or posting to hundreds of Facebook friends, the single-digit pageviews my blog now attracts are a paradoxically private way to express myself.
The melancholy ruins of this digital Pompeii recall The Onion’s joke about internet archaeologists excavating the lost "Friendster" civilisation. But just as Friendster users migrated to MySpace and then to Facebook, teenagers are now fleeing Facebook to get away from their embarrassing older relatives.
So, where should we go nowadays for an instant hit of youthiness?WhatsApp, Snapchat, Tumblr, Instagram and Vine. (...)
Blogging persists, of course. But it’s mostly for adults – professionalised to the point where the old "bloggers vs journalists" debates now seem hopelessly quaint. Maintaining a personal blog has become entrepreneurial: a job that earns an income through display advertising, network marketing, ebooks and blog-to-book deals.
Concomitantly, blogging has indelibly influenced mainstream news reporting, which is now much more immediate, informal, link-rich and inclusive of reader comments. When I taught online journalism at Monash University from 2009-11, students published their assignments on WordPress blogs.
So for young people, blogs are work, not play. A 2008 Pew research project found that while 85% of 12 to 17-year-olds engaged in electronic personal communication (including texting, email, instant messaging and commenting on social media), 60% didn’t consider these texts to be "writing". Another study in 2013 revealed that teenagers still distinguish between the "proper" writing they do for school (which may be on blogs) and their informal, social communication.
By contrast, my fondness for prose – and my disgusted CLOSE TAB when an interesting link turns out to be, ugh, a video – marks me as a digital fogey. I didn’t get Tumblr for the longest time. Why were people just reblogging other people’s posts?
by Mel Campbell, The Guardian | Read more:
Image: Anatoli Babi/Alamy
