The end of blogging? Thinking about our online mental graffiti space…

Here are three things that come to mind about why blogging is important and why blogging won’t disappear any time soon.

  1. Blogging is a reflection of the mental chatter that exists in our brain. I have noticed that a number of education related blogs have an address that is often just the person’s username. I’m no different. The address of this blog is timscott674.wordpress.com. People are using their blog as a reflection of their thinking on a variety of different issues, to ensure the personal imprimatur, their username or nic is the basis of their address. They are establishing themselves as a brand.
  2. Blogging can affect the physical world. Its influence is not just in the virtual world. An example of this is Ian Schafer, the CEO of internet marketing firm Deep Focus. His image is shaped by actively updating his blog, his Twitter account and social media profiles. On a broader scale, politics and commerce have been affected by the blogosphere. An example of the political impact of blogging can be found in the Egyptian activist group founded by Ahmer Maher called the April 6 Youth Movement. Through the use of blogs, Twitter, Flickr and even Facebook, this movement (along with others) used cyberspace as a forum to fight corrupt and oppressive governments. In the commercial realm, United Airlines suffered a 75% drop in its share price after Bloomberg’s blog featured a 6 year old story relaying that United had filed for bankruptcy, and Apple experienced a similar bump when the CNN blog featured an unverified account of Steve Jobs’ ill-health.
  3. Blogging represents a Web 3.0 way of thinking. This is because blogging is a natural outworking of the interdependent, hyperlinked and integrated global brain that is the internet. Blogging on its own is a Web 2.0 activity. We use blogs as mental graffiti space much of the time. In the process the blogger brings his or her practical experiences and insights to the digital environment. It is a reflection of what one contemporary thinker has called fusing the analogue with the digital.

Anders Sorman-Nilsson described the situation in Thinque Funky  as: “Blogs are here to stay and they’re affecting our thinking”. I like this assessment. Their continued influence on our thinking means that for now blogging will continue to be an activity in which people will engage over and above the status updates of Facebook or the tweets of Twitter.