The slow decline

I read another apology on a blog today. It came from Howard Weaver, author of Etaoin Shrdlu. Weaver writes to his readers that he has become disconnected from his blog since he ceased to be a full-time journalist. He's out of the loop and feels like he doesn't have quite as much to say these days.

What Web writing energy that remains feeds into Twitter, where Weaver maintains an active presence. The short updates suit him, he says. "Twitter seems to fit both my mood and my schedule better than longer blog posts most days."

This isn't the first apology post I've read in the past few months. Heck, I've even written a few of them myself. This post crawls onscreen every time a blogger feels like he's shirking his blogospherical duties.

I've seen statistics from a few sources now, both credible sources and sarcastic ones, that say most blogs on the Web have gone un-updated for the past few months. Hundreds of thousands of blogs are sitting out there, forgotten or abandoned, burning holes in server hard drives. Their owners have moved on, either to a life without blogging or to the next hip thing (read, "Twitter").

Blogging is in decline, yes. The spread of the "I'm-sorry-for-not-posting-as-much-as-I-used-to-but-I've-been-on-Twitter-a-lot-lately" post proves that. But is this sort of post evidence of blogging's imminent death?

For years, people have claimed that blogging is dead, same as with rock n' roll. The first attempt on blogging's life came via the social networks like MySpace and Facebook. Other attempts came from Tumblr and similar short-form blogging services, but perhaps the most damaging attack so far has come from Twitter, lounging just behind yonder grassy knoll.

Certainly, blogging is hurt. Many of the bloggers who have abandoned their blogs in favor of Twitter will not come back. A few who do come back to blogging will come back to find that Twitter has dissolved their attention spans and made them incapable of writing anything more than 140 characters long. A good number will transition back into blogging regularly, and I hope they find readers with enough remaining attention span to sit through their posts.

The fact is, blogging has become a vital part of the mediascape, right up there with newspapers, magazines and talk radio. It's too useful a communication tool to vanish entirely. We may not always call it "blogging," but some form of periodical online publishing of multiple-paragraph writing will always be there.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I've got to go ignore this blog for a while.

Related posts:

1. Myriad issues
2. Blogs and Web logs
3. Slow weekend
4. Blogging is dead; long live blogging
5. BBC editor notes importance of blogging and community