Is blogging on the decline? Blogging is on the decline, according to a New York Times story published this weekend:
The Internet and American Life Project at the Pew Research Center found that from 2006 to 2009, blogging among children ages 12 to 17 fell by half; now 14 percent of children those ages who use the Internet have blogs. Among 18-to-33-year-olds, the project said in a report last year, blogging dropped two percentage points in 2010 from two years earlier.
Former bloggers said they were too busy to write lengthy posts and were uninspired by a lack of readers. Others said they had no interest in creating a blog because social networking did a good enough job keeping them in touch with friends and family.
In my previous post, there were findings confirming that:
“Americans are increasingly going online just for fun and to pass the time,” the Pew Research Center said in its report, released Friday. “On any given day, 53% of all the young adults ages 18-29 go online for no particular reason except to have fun or to pass the time.”
“These results come in the larger context that internet users of all ages are much more likely now than in the past to say they go online for no particular reason other than to pass the time or have fun.”
I then explored the reasons:
Here Andrew mentions:
“A big reason why I used to read many of those blogs was because they provided very valuable links to many interesting stories and pieces of information. I expect most of them still do, but nowadays I can see most of such links much quicker through Twitter or Facebook, and often also see comment threads there which are also at least as good.
Despite all that, I don’t think we’re seeing the death of the blog by any means. I think it’s just another stage in the evolution.”
My observation was that many bloggers in the past few years have slowed down in blogging, and have shifted to Twitter, Facebook and Google + in the posting of links. Besides the number of blogs posted have decreased significantly as bloggers found it hard to keep their blogs updated with posts, and that not too many readers were willing to provide comments as part of the conversation.
I think this decline of blogging would continue in 2012, and such practice would likely be replaced by the posting using Twitter and Facebook, rather than the creation of long and thoughtful blog posts.
For me, I have blogged fairly regularly, as you could see from my blogroll. However, I am also finding it pretty hard to create new posts with exciting and emerging topics , as most of the topics have already been covered by others in the past few years. We may really need another renaissance or revolution to revive blogging.
May be Creative Learning Theory and Swarm Intelligence (my next research subjects) would be of interests to you.
Would there be any hope of saving the blogosphere? I wonder!
Learner Weblog 
Even though I found your post on Twitter I had to go to your blog to read and understand the topic. So, although numbers blogging may be in the decline, perhaps those that remain do so because they have an impact and are being read?
Thanks George. Agreed 🙂
Hi John!! You wrote: “My observation was that many bloggers in the past few years have slowed down in blogging, and have shifted to Twitter, Facebook and Google + in the posting of links.” I would add: POSTING OF LINKS TO BLOG POSTS. It’s blog posts that are appreciated, featured. What would happen with Facebook, Twitter and Google+ if there were no more people blogging. I really don’t follow your or others links. I follow your blog!!!!!!
Hi Emapey,
Yes, I agree, it’s blog posts that are appreciated, featured. I appreciate your kind words. Developing a reader-oriented and well argued blog post takes time and thus requires considerable efforts. I think it is getting harder to blog, due to the numerous other reasons as posted by some bloggers – the relative ease of the use of other tools (tweets) compared to blogs and the decrease in numbers of comments and readers who would likely be interested in blog posts. There are also challenges as to what sort of topics in posts would likely attract others’ interests.
There are people who write blog posts principally for reflective purpose, but those bloggers who could attract most audience are likely the ones who develop their posts based on consolidation of insights, together with their unique experiences and vision, which makes their argument or content compelling or touching to the audience. I speculate that prominent bloggers who are still blogging a lot are decreasing, whilst those others who continue to blog with reflective posts are still on the minority, especially for the younger ones, as revealed in the research.
Thanks again for your visit and valuable insights.
John
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Interesting observation and comments. My question is whether context curation has substituted blogging? For many individuals, curating is a way to develop an online presence rather than blogging, which is more time consuming and another media altogether.
On the other hand, if there weren’t blogs, what would people be curating?
It is a shame that there isn’t always time to add/post comments on blogs; as a blogger myself, I too don’t always post a comment/reply for lack of time. Definitely not for lack of interest, as I tend to read my favourite bloggers’ posts quite regularly.
And as always, my thanks to you John, for your rich and enhancing blog – love learning with you! 🙂
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