Remember when blogging started? Not the actual date so much as the feelings reading a typical blog invoked. Blogging 1.0 was all about the personal made public. It was a way to share what you were doing or thinking before Twitter and Facebook… before sharing that information was accepted or expected. Suddenly, you understood you weren’t the only one to know the heartbreak of psoriasis. Yours wasn’t the only dysfunctional family. Someone else loved the same quirky movies. The world became a lot smaller.
Fast forward a few years. You couldn’t eat at a restaurant without overhearing someone at the next table talking about something she’d read on a blog. The personal had become perfunctory. As with all media the focus narrowed and topics moved from general to specific. Audiences grew large enough to attract advertising attention, and some bloggers, like Heather B. Armstrong of Dooce.com, found they could make a living through their writing.
If Mormon mommies like Heather could do it, then businesses could do it too. Welcome to Blogging 2.0: the corporatization and monetization of blogging. Even though late to the game, the business world refused to let miscreants and navel-gazers outblog them without a fight. Technet.com lists 240 official Microsoft Team Blogs. In 2005, a PR manager at IBM reported there were 2800 internal weblogs! That may not be a surprising amount when compared to the total number of IBM employees, but it makes one wonder what is so compelling about a free publishing medium that is alternately vilified and revered.
Today, blogging balances on a finely honed edge of technology that divides it from its comparatively younger sibling, social media. But the lines between the two media are blurring. That brings us to Blogging 3.0: Rise of the Tweets.
Instantly gratifying, easily tagged and searchable, social media (sometimes known as “micro-blogs”) like Twitter and Facebook have impacted traditional blogging. For some this means a decrease in the frequency of their blogging. Others use the new media to promote their lengthier and more in-depth blog posts. And the recent phenomenon of paid celebrity tweets deserves its own article.
The pace of technology and its innovative uses in blogs is dizzying. If you’re a true meta junkie or trying to monetize your blog, consider Technorati’s State of the Blogosphere required reading. The annual study collects data across the blogging spectrum and forecasts future trends. Last year’s survey affirms that Blogging 3.0 encompasses rather than supersedes Blogging 1.0. A majority of those surveyed blogged for fun and were not paid for their efforts. In fact, 51% said “they blog to express their personal musings”. Kristin’s blog, The opinions of the lonely housewife, is a perfect example. It’s also the site that got me thinking about the past, the future, and prompted me to write this post.
Like well used treasures found at a yard sale, Kristin’s site lays the joys and challenges of being a stay at home wife and mom out for our perusal. Her writing is honest, brave, unpretentious, and decidedly personal. Without entry dates one could easily mistake her work for a blog abandoned 10 years ago. And timelessness is never a bad quality in writing. It may even transcend the zeitgeist of Blogging 3.0.