03/01/08

Blogging, the wonder child of the Web 2.0 juggernaut, seems to be changing. And the biggest reason for that, as I see it, is the new kid on the block: microblogging. And by that I’m mainly talking about that quick-post, sound-bite, here’s-what-I’m-thinking-or-doing-right-now phenomenon called Twitter.  (There are others of this ilk, too, like Jaiku and Pownce, but Twitter seems to have sucked most of the oxygen away from them since it launched only a year ago.) I blogged about the momentum of Twitter recently on my other blog, here. Then I also did this post about a new site with a lot of buzz that drafts off of Twitter’s popularity to a large extent, called Friendfeed.

The best blog post I’ve read on Twitter is this one from Jeff Jarvis at BuzzMachine. Read the comments, too—the impact of microblogging on PR is something you may be surprised to learn.  And I just caught an interesting post on how a blogger, having only discovered FriendFeed, is now longing to understand how it can help him manage his time—specifically, his blog. (That’s because the fuel of blogs is time. Like oil, there’s a finite amount of it.  Ever think about that?) Here’s his post: Wish I could run my blog with FriendFeed.

So, just what is microblogging doing to blogging? That’s what I’m wondering. What do you think?  Are bloggers now moving away from doing longer posts— where thinking, writing, maybe some research is actually a requirement—as opposed to just blurting something out?  I mean, how much time can a blogger spend, even if he/she tries, in planning a measly 140-character “Tweet,” as Twitter posts are so playfully called. (Yes, “Tweet” is already to “microblog post” what Levi’s is to jeans, Kleenex is to tissues, and Xerox is to copies.) I hardly know a blogger who isn’t Twittering like a maniac these days.

But stop Twittering for a while and think about it: How much time does it take away from one’s regular blogging? And now you have to add reading FriendFeed to that list as well—plus, let’s not forget about commenting on items you read on FriendFeed.  I mean, there’s only so much time in the day, isn’t there?  This 24-hour thing is a zero-sum game, no?

I was struck by reading online that one of my web friends, Jeremiah Owyang (easily one of the most prolific bloggers and Twitterer’s out there), apparently stays up half the night doing his thing. People still need to sleep, don’t they?  How much more RedBull or Jolt can we consume, and how many more “blogging tools” can we stand?

I got it—somebody needs to invent a way to have our dreams automatically posted to a blog.  Then we got all 24 hours covered!  Talk about “open” web communications.  We could call it DreamBlog....or how about Drog?

Or not.