Blogging is Dead, According to Wired.com

Anatomy of a severely flawed piece of advice

Well folks, it looks like this will be my last blog post ever. Apparently blogging is passe and I didn’t know it. I know this will come as a shock to the thousands of bloggers who read this and many other blogs, but it looks like we’ve come to the end of the road with blogging.

Paul Boutin, WIRED contributor, wrote “Thinking about launching your own blog? Here’s some friendly advice: Don’t. And if you’ve already got one, pull the plug.“  -”Twitter, Flickr, Facebook Make Blogs Look So 2004”

He goes on to say something like it’s impossible for home-grown blogs to get noticed among all the big money blogs supported heavily by advertsers and scores of posts per day.

I’m sorry, but does this mean that blogs like Dooce.com, TheBlemish.com and thousands of other home-grown, single writer blogs making great money are no longer viable?

I think Heather Armstrong would have something to say to the contrary.  Surely her rabid followers who can post thousands of comments on any given blog post might disagree.  (Looks like she spent days crafting this post.)

The Friday Traffic Report is run by one person and most of the content is written by me.  It is responsible for an insane income per month.  According to Boutin, I should just give it up because Facebook, Twitter, and others make it so easy to share pictures and ideas?

I am 90% sure that since Boutin’s article is in the entertainment section of WIRED, and he is mainly talking about people who simply “play” on the web, that it is geared toward that demographic.

I say 90% because he doesn’t indicate who he is talking to or about in the article.

Should You Throw In The Towel?

Giving up on blogging, the best and easiest way to publish information online and get noticed, simply because there’s a lot of crap and competition out there, is like giving up on email because of spam.

Using solely free services to establish your presence online is foolish on many levels if you are, in fact, interested in running a business online.  Blogging is a business for many people.  Not a hobby and not something that can be replaced by Facebook and other social media sites where you give up the rights to any content you put on them the moment you publish it.

So while I am almost sure Boutin is talking to people who aren’t interested in professional blogging, the article makes a huge gaffe in leaving that qualifying information out.

People will read his article and think they can “make it” on the web without a blog.  That’s just impossible to support given that blogs now get more traffic than Facebook or Myspace.*

Jason Calacanis Gave Up Blogging, So There!

In his Jason Calacanis example, the author shows he doesn’t know the whole story of why Calacanis was able to quit blogging in favor of a private mailing list.

“Pour your heart out in a post, and some anonymous troll named r0rschach or foohack is sure to scribble beneath it, “Lame. Why don’t you just suck McCain’s ass.” That’s why Calacanis has retreated to a private mailing list. He can talk to his fans directly, without having to suffer idiotic retorts from anonymous Jason-haters.” -Boutin

Wouldn’t we all like to be so popular and rich that we could just go back to email newsletter publishing and have an immediate following?  That’s exactly why Jason got out of blogging.  He didn’t have to blog anymore.  He was already famous.  He’s already rich.

The rest of us who aren’t on the stage making money for simply being Calacanis have to provide our own stage.  That, above any other means of publishing and getting attention, is best achieved through running a blog.

Since I am biased on the subject, just use our friends Google and Technorati to prove the point.

And if you are a discouraged blogger who wants to make money from a blog where you present your witty, insightful, and relevant content, don’t shake a stick at the successful blogs and play the victim of venture capital-backed power blogs in your niche.

Complaining that you cannot compete and throwing in the towel hurts no one but you.  For every uber blog making millions per month in advertising and product sales, I can easily point out other bloggers in those niches making very decent income from being just somewhat popular.

Social Media Has A Place

We use social media to build followings and attract people to our blogs.  Not to give away our content rights and have no real assets of our own at the end of the day upon which to build.

And hey, if you don’t like to write, I have good news.  There are other forms of media to put on your blog!

If you have great passion for producing your content and sharing it with the world, but you don’t know how to market your site to get traffic and attention, then do something about that.

But don’t give me the “there’s no way I can compete with massive, well-funded blogs in my niche” sob story.  People are proving that you can compete with the big boys if you want to.  But more importantly, regular mom and pop operations are proving that you don’t have to compete with the biggest bloggers on the web to make a great living.

Boutin, Himself, Proves The Point

“Take a clue from Robert Scoble, who made his name as Microsoft’s “technical evangelist” blogger from 2003 to 2006. Today, he focuses on posting videos and Twitter updates. “I keep my blog mostly for long-form writing,” he says.” -Boutin

But the point is, Scoble keeps his blog.  He has (as his home base and true asset) his blog site.  The rest is for getting out and playing with new friends (and driving them back to the blog where the important stuff is).

If anything, this last point works against the whole argument that blogging is over.  Scoble would never give up blogging after everything it has done and continues to do for him.

Nor will I give up blogging to jump into a sea of A.D.D. on social sites where, if you want to talk about getting lost in the noise, my video about something great links to….nothing at all.

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*comScore Media Metrix found that blogs had 77 million unique visitors in the US in August 2008, compared with 75.1 million unique visitors to MySpace and 41 million to Facebook. -eMarketer

Tagged as: blogging is dead, end of blogging, paul boutin, really bad advice, WIRED