Is blogging on the decline in 2013?

Corporate blogging is on the decline as reported here: Study blogging in decline as social media takes over.  Here is a post relating to the decline of blogs.

Here is an update in 2012.

Blogging declines for the first time among the Inc. 500.  Fifty percent of the 2010 Inc. 500 had a corporate blog, up from 45% in 2009 and 39% in 2008.  In this new 2011 study, the use of blogging dropped to 37%.  Companies in the Advertising/Marketing industry are most likely to blog while companies in Government Services and Construction make very little use of this tool. This decline mirrors a trend in other sectors as this mature tool evolves into other forms or is replaced by communication through Facebook or Twitter.

New tools replace older ones.Facebook and LinkedIn lead the way. The platform most utilized by the 2011 Inc. 500 is Facebook with 74% of companies using it.  Virtually tied at 73% is the adoption of the professional network, LinkedIn.  Twenty-five and 24% respectively report that Facebook or LinkedIn is the single most effective social networking platform they use. Texting, downloadable mobile applications, and Foursquare are being utilized by 13%-15% of the 2011 Inc. 500.

Of those tools and platforms studied last year, there is clearly a shift in how these nimble companies are communicating.  Fewer of them are using blogging, message/bulletin boards, online video, podcasting and MySpace.  More companies are using Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, downloadable mobile apps, texting and Foursquare.

I think 2013 would see further decline in blogging, as I have shared my findings in 2011.  It seems that what was once reported is still true:

Blogs went largely unchallenged until Facebook reshaped consumer behavior with its all-purpose hub for posting everything social. Twitter, which allows messages of no longer than 140 characters, also contributed to the upheaval.

No longer did Internet users need a blog to connect with the world. They could instead post quick updates to complain about the weather, link to articles that infuriated them, comment on news events, share photos or promote some cause — all the things a blog was intended to do.

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 2013, 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.

Would this also account for the difficulties in using PLE (blogging) in the cMOOCs?

I could see the emergence of xMOOCs being well taken by the learners (of HE and those interested in HE), and as the courses wouldn’t expect them to use blogging as tools, this seems to fit perfectly well to the “consumption” of knowledge and information that have been popular in Higher Education.   This might also account for the decrease in blogging, as such blogging takes up lots of time, and would hardly be counted towards the credit or assessment in those xMOOCs.

On the other hand, cMOOCs would only be well taken by those learners who are more motivated towards deep and reflective learning, likely using blogs or other social media such as Twitter, as the creation of reflective blog posts demand a substantive amount of time.  This also requires the blogger to curate and evaluate various artifacts, information web sources and blog posts, before one could re-mix and re-purpose a comprehensive blog post.

Would HE institutions still be expecting the students to compose reflective blog posts if that is the case?  How about those HE institutions conducting xMOOCs?  Would blogging still be high on their curriculum?

I think many people including once upon bloggers, educators, HE or life-long learners are morphing into various social media and networks, with micro-blogs and artifacts shared using various tools, rather than the reflective blogs.

So, would that draw the near end of the life cycle of Blogging?

What do you think would be the future of blogging?

Photo credit: Google