So Steve Rubel has dumped blogging for lifestreaming. Charles Arthur at The Guardian also notes that participation on Twitter and Facebook is replacing blogging.
Whilst I’ve noticed some of my favourite bloggers aren’t posting as frequently as usual, my own take on this is simple: don’t abandon your blog – just yet.
The primary reasons are because blogs rank much higher in search engines than do social networking sites. Plus, you have way more control over a blog and they make a good home base.
My question: Why is it seen as innovative when influential bloggers move to lifestreams as exclusive means of communication? What makes it different then previous methods of short form? Or is the difference non-existent?
Well, those influential bloggers aren’t moving exclusively to lifestreams. Scoble uses his blog for think pieces and longer posts, and Friendfeed for everything else. Steve Rubel now has Posterous as his lifestream, using it to repost content from there to elsewhere, with posts being any length.
So, long blog-style posts aren’t going away. But having just one site is. Being able to mash up your sites, creating a lifestream in the process, while posting varying content to them is a growing trend. Right now, it’s mainly just techies doing it. In a year or so it will be mainstream.
Why? Because Facebook is a place, Twitter is a firehose, blogs are for longer posts, and Friendfeed is, among other things, where you can send all that content to be in a lifesteam. They all serve different purposes.
How does all this work? With Posterous, you tell it where all your sites are. Then you email new content to special email addresses at Posterous and it posts the content on Posterous as part of your lifstream then reposts it wherever you specify. This can be Twitter, a blog, Youtube, Flickr, or elsewhere.
I’m using Friendfeed as my lifestream. All my content ends up there. Among its important features, Friendfeed allows long posts, you can upload pictures, it has robust commenting, groups, and more. As with Posterous, you tell it where your sites are. It then reads them on regular intervals looking for new content to post on Friendfeed. How you do all this does take some thought, though.
Currently, I use Twitterfeed to autopost from Polizeros to Twitter. Friendfeed reads from here, Facebook, Flickr, YouTube, and other of my sites as well, putting them on Friendfeed and reposting them onto Twitter. Thus, if I post a status message on Facebook, it will automatically appear on Friendfeed and Twitter as well. This is just one example of what you can do.
A noticeable recent trend I’m seeing is that content reposted to Facebook or Friendfeed from blogs now often gets more comments on those sites than on the blog itself. This is just one example of the increasing power of social networking and lifestreaming.
You can find all my sites listed on my Google Profile or the sidebar here.
What are you doing with social networking sites and lifestreams?
I think your point about more comments ending up on Facebook or FF than the original blog post is a good one. I’ve noticed this myself and one thing I see is that people who wouldn’t ever comment on a blog post are doing so on Facebook. It seems to have something to do with the culture of commenting that Facebook creates.
The problem with this is that useful discussion isn’t centred on or around your blog.
Thanks for the info, Bob. I shared with the Green Party of California Media Committee I’m on. The GPCA website is stuck in the 90s and even with the challenge of all volunteer labor ( as you well know) it doesn’t seem like it should be too hard to automate to spread our press releases to social networking sites more easily. GPCA is on Facebook and Flickr and Twitter but they are being maintained separately and separate from the IT folks who update the GPCA webpage.
Lisa
“GPCA is on Facebook and Flickr and Twitter but they are being maintained separately and separate from the IT folks who update the GPCA webpage.”
Why am I not surprised?
Such an approach certainly does not seem to lend itself to a focused PR strategy.