The Week that Blogging Died?

It’s somewhat laughable, but the Chicago Tribune, parroting some stats from a December 2005 Gallup poll, suggeted this week that blogs are dying. Practically everyone in the blog world has already weighed in on the matter, but I’ll give it a shot just the same.

According to the Tribune article titled Blogging Bloggy, we hardly knew ye:

You’re forgiven if you cling to the conventional wisdom that blogging, like half-pipe snowboarding, enjoys an unrelievedly rich future. Forgiven, but maybe behind the curve. A new report from Gallup pollsters, ‘Blog Readership Bogged Down,’ cautions that ‘the growth in the number of U.S. blog readers was somewhere between nil and negative in the past year.’”

First of all, when has anyone in the mainstream media establishment ever equated “conventional wisdom” with “an unrelievedly rich future” for blogging? That statement practically contradicts the entire premise of the article. Conventional wisdom, if I’m not mistaken, still holds that blogging is merely a fad; a fad - like bell-bottom jeans, furbees and chia-pets - that soon will be relegated to a mere footnote in the Silicon Valley history books. Just as soon as the blog bubble inevitably bursts (please excuse the mixed metaphor), that is.

The second bone that needs picking is the poll itself. Here’s the crux of it from the Gallup site (registration required):

“Gallup’s annual Lifestyle survey, conducted Dec. 5-8, 2005, finds only 9% of Internet users saying they frequently read blogs, another 11% read them occasionally, 13% say they rarely read them, while 66% never read them.

“These findings conform almost perfectly with a special Gallup study of blog use conducted in February 2005. At that time, 9% of Web users said they read blogs daily or a few times a week (”frequently”), 10% read them a few times a month (”occasionally”), 13% read them less often than monthly (”rarely”), and 63% never read them.”

The poll neglects to mention, however, there are more “Internet users” today than there were a year ago (according to a Pew Reseach survey). So it’s a tad misleading to say blog readership “was somewhere between nil to negative.” Actually, it’s up. But you don’t need any fancy surveys to tell you that. Just look at some of the more popular and well-managed blogs out there. Here are some of my faves with last year’s traffic stats vs this year:

• Lifehacker: 400,000 visitors in Feb 2005 vs nearly 2 million visitors Feb 2006.
• Gizmodo: 4.5 million visitors Feb 2005 vs nearly 8 million Feb 2006.
• Problogger: 10k visitors Feb 2005 vs 110k visits Jan 2006.

And not only that. Why do you suppose mainstream media companies, at least the smart ones, are moving more of their stuff online? Because blogs, and the blogging/online media establishment is kicking their asses, and stealing their readers. That’s why.

“IN YET ANOTHER CLEAR EXAMPLE of the inroads online publishing is making against its traditional print counterpart, Dow Jones announced a reorganization that includes a combined print and online Wall Street Journal news operation.

“Dow Jones also signaled its belief in the power of online communications by naming the executive who had been in charge of the company’s electronic publishing operation to head the largest and most influential unit of the newly restructured company.” (Media Daily News. Emphasis theirs.)

But that’s all just my logic. Some of my other favorite bloggers took a slightly different approach in response to the Tribune’s ridiculous quip. Scott Karp, for example, writes:

“Here’s what’s wrong with all the discussion about the future of blogging as a business — blogging is not a business! …

“So what is a blog? It’s a content management and publishing platform. All online publishers use a content management and publishing platform. The difference with blogging software is that it doesn’t come with the huge price tag.

“Bloggers are publishers, like all other online publishers — and all publishers are struggling to figure out how to make money off of their content.

“So don’t meditate on the future of the blogging business. Meditate on the future of the publishing business — and the future of the entire media business.”

I find it hard to agree completely with Scott’s “blogging isn’t a business.” A blog, by itself, certainly isn’t a business. But blogging, well, it’s hard to make it that black and white. Just ask Darren Rowse or Jason Calacanis whether his business is blogging or publishing, and you may have a hard time getting an either/or response. I suspect it’s a bit like a Mac user who wouldn’t think of calling herself merely a “computer user.”

On the surface, it may look like mere semantics, but it’s not. There’s a very real and distinct culture involved with blogging; a culture with its own worldview, its own values, its own way of doing business and its own ways of communicating and connecting with the world. It’s Humanity 2.0. Actually, it’s more like Humanity 6.0, but that’s another article. The point is that unless the course of human evolution stops or reverses, the blogging culture will continue to get larger. In theory, at least.

In any event, when I meditate on the future of the publishing business, as Scott suggested, it appears the publishing business is trying to catch up with the blogging business/culture. And that, I guess, is what Scott means by Publishing 2.0, the title of his blog.

Scott’s not the only one hammering the Tribune, however. Rex Hammock had some very wise commentary as well.

“It is always difficult for me to follow the dot-connecting that must take place to compare the dotcom bust (a collapse of a financial market) with a Gallup poll showing what percentage of Internet users know they’re reading weblogs.

Unfortunately, like Scott, Rex very quickly took a sharp left turn and began pumping the “blogging isn’t a business” bubble (there’s that word again).

“Also, as I see having a weblog more akin to having a telephone or email than to launching a major media property, I think it’s a mistake when anyone attempts to place mass-media business metrics to defining success or failure of a weblog.”

I don’t know. Maybe it’s because Rex is a magazine publisher who, like many magazine publishers, is in denial about blogging’s threat to his business model. Or maybe his subscriber base isn’t part of the early adopter/tech savvy crowd, and hence, may never read a blog or any online media (although I did notice that at least one of his publications has a pretty extensive online archive). Whatever the reason, I just don’t grok the either/or thinking underlying the “blogging as a business” debate. Isn’t it clear that blogging can be a business; a business with it’s own business model(s) and its own niche(s) of customers? Yet, it can also be merely a medium of communcation.

In either case, there are about a billion Internet users out there today. One can logically assume, barring some global catastrophe, that number will continue to grow as access becomes available to more people. Further, one can also logically assume some of those new Internet users will find a blog or two they enjoy reading, whether they know it’s a blog or not. Still, others will launch blogs and/or blogging-based businesses. So, really, how could blogs possibly be dying?