This isn’t a huge surprise, because the next big thing is always an evolution of the last. And stepping back from the simple headline, there will always be blogs – after all we still have theatre and radio even though film, TV and portable MP3 players are more modern – but look around at the innovation in the connected web and the blog is becoming the foundation that is assumed, and all the cool toys are going on top of that format and adding in a lot more value.
Squint hard enough at sites like Facebook, and you can see a lot of sequential, dated entries from people, with comments from others. But there connections between people are highlighted, plus there is a huge vein of multimedia available along with a development platform. Twitter? Nothing more than a blog with only 140 characters per post. Strictly speaking.
And the rise of the smartphone is a contributing factor. When the default method of going online and interacting was a desk-bound computer with a huge screen and full keyboard, then people were happy to work on long form pieces, discussions about life, the latest political scandal, what’s happening with a football team.
Blogging station, by C4Chaos (Flickr)
Now that the low cost connected smartphone is a reality, the action has moved to the smaller screen. It’s not as easy to write 2,000 word posts… and why should you when it’s far easier to distill it into a status update, or just add your thoughts to an ongoing conversation thread?
Want to do a bit more? Record your thoughts with Audioboo and upload your own voice… Share something of interest? Switch on Qik or Ustream and let your friends see what you’re seeing. Snap a picture and upload that, no need to explain everything around, it’s allegedly more powerful than a thousand words.
We can all agree that the smartphone has made it easy to share what’s happening to you, but it also makes it much faster to share. Just a few button presses for media, some insanely fast typing or T9 usage to write it up, and you move on.
Blogs will always be there, in the same way that you still have huge in-depth news articles (FX: looks at Rafe!) next to fast moving bite sized news updates, you still have epic three hour long movies alongside the best of YouTube, but the sense of blogs being on top is no longer there.
It’s all about immediacy, speed, and ubiquity. And only one device can keep up with speed of your life. Your smartphone.
The original article is at /Message.
-- Ewan Spence