A little over five years ago, sites like Typepad, Blogger and WordPress dazzled by empowering anyone to instantaneously share his or her thoughts with the world; My how times change. Today, however, in a world where thousands of status updates and tweets whiz by our screens every hour, blogging arguably feels slow.
So is blogging dead? It depends on who you ask. After all, TMZ and Mashable are blogs and they’re doing quite well. However, it’s definitely time for a closer examination of the blog – where it sits today and where it’s going.
Over on Mashable we are exploring this further by setting up a mind map that can be edited by anyone who signs up for MindMeister. Please edit it! Tell us what are we missing here. How can we paint a more comprehensive view of where blogging is going? Help us shape the right picture and we’ll report back on what we learned. It's also embedded above.
For personal use, my vote is for lifestreaming, esp. given the developments in mobile phones. It's only going to get easier to create high quality content on the fly, and post it to whatever online account you wish. Personally, I don't have time to maintain a blog with in-depth, lengthy posts - so lifestreaming is a good fit.
For business use, my vote is with the strategy that makes the most sense. For some companies/blogs, a social community makes perfect sense. For others, existing only on social media platforms might be an OK solution. Depends what the goals are.