A week ago today I published a post asking ‘has Blogging has lost its relational focus?‘
It was a post that generated some great conversation in comments and one that sparked other bloggers to pick up on the thread and write about it on their own blogs. Today I thought I’d point out some of the conversations that are going on around this topic in the hope that it’ll extend an important topic:
- Richard MacManus wrote a good post titled Mixed Messages in the Blogging Landscape which picks up the topic and looks also at social media and how it could be impacting pro blogging.
- Shel Israel asks if Social Media is becoming a Vast Wasteland? and looks at some of the arguments for and against whether it is.
- Duncan Riley writes about the Changing Blogosphere and Blogging 2.0 and has some interesting things to say about a shift in blogging that’s been going on and encourages bloggers to embrace them.
- Mark ‘Rizzn’ writes about being on the edge of a Eureka moment and in a longish article shares some interesting ideas including that blogging is in need of an upgrade – he points to video as a way forward.
I’m sure there are others – if you’ve written on the topic of late feel free to share your links in comments below.
PS: I should reemphasize that in my original article I didn’t conclude that blogging had lost its relational focus. I did muse about whether it was harder to find and suggest that it is more evident in some niches than others – but by no means have I given up hope in the medium of blogging or its social media.
In fact, for me, it’s so social that at times this little introvert can barely cope!
The reason for my post was simply to remind bloggers of our social/relational roots.
One of the stimuli for the post was recently witnessing a couple of new bloggers go about attempting to build up blogs in ways that I could describe as anti-social. They came to me for advice after months of blogging in a very insular way, not linking out and not wanting to interact with other bloggers in their niche – in fact they viewed other bloggers in their niche suspiciously and purely as competitors.
My counsel to them was to consider that while other blogs might be competitors in one sense – that there was amazing opportunities in interacting and working together.
As I look at my own experience of blogging and that of bloggers that have been far more successful than me I see that often it’s those that are most social and willing to interact with other bloggers that rise the highest. I don’t see this changing even if the technology behind what we do does.
