As I listlessly click the “next blog” button on my blogger dashboard, I encounter blog upon dull blog that hasn’t been updated since 2011 or late 2009. I wonder why blogs have been on the decline for years—no one I know actively follows bloggers and religiously reads their posts every week. As a website manager myself, I am interested in the number of people who actually keep up with blogs anymore (I am always looking for more views). According to Learner Weblog, “Fifty percent of the 2010 Inc. 500 had a corporate blog, up from 45% in 2009 and 39% in 2008. In this new 2011 study, the use of blogging dropped to 37%.” Although my website is personal/informational (not for a business), I am sure personal blogs are plummeting as well. Here are three reasons why I theorize blogs are on the decline.
First, social media (i.e. Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Tumblr) has supplanted the “coolness” of blogs. How is it that people on Twitter get 100 followers a day, but I only manage to scrape 50 views? The reason is that the new social media outlets are easy and uncomplicated to use---one just has to press “retweet,” and 100 people instantly know he/she is online and chic. Instagram has appealed to the visual learner in all of us—the filters make us prettier than we really are, black-and-white settings make pictures “old fashioned” and “hipster,” and Facebook…..do people still use that? Maybe this post should be more about the slow death of Facebook rather than that of blogging…..One trend I have noticed is that more businesses and companies use Wordpress instead of Blogger. Is Wordpress perceived as more professional while Blogger is viewed as a platform for crazy hermit activists and stay at home moms? However, businesses are also abandoning Wordpress, or at least using it less frequently because it is much easier to maintain a conventional social media account such as Twitter. As I was reading Wordslikesilver blog, the author commented, “A lot of blogs have been fading away. A few of my blogging friends have stopped entirely, others restraining themselves only to Twitter.” It is a shame that people, especially lazy teenagers, are abandoning blogs just because they actually have to spend time reading some else’s writing. The issue of declining blogs lends itself to another societal problem: the youngest generation is only concerned with tweeting, being involved in the “here and now,” and performing easy, mindless tasks that have some social goal in the end.
Next, I believe personal websites are on the decline because people are simply too lazy to read and write posts. Most of the posts I read when I click on random blogs are short, pithy, and poorly written. I am craving for an interesting writer who has a personal, witty writing style and understandable grammar. Even when someone’s last post was in 2011, the writing was still poor and unenthusiastic-- Was I just reading the “wrong” blog or has the love of writing completely faded away from the modern, fast-paced, and text-lingo world? Although I too let escape an internal moan when I see a long-winded post with no pictures, minuscule font, and dry content, I make an effort to at least learn something. When a post looks particularly juicy (i.e. with pictures and videos), I am more than willing to read it through and click on the external links. My opinion on blogging is obviously biased because (1) I love writing and thoroughly enjoy voicing my thoughts through the written word, (2) I want views so more people can read my stories, and (3) I am a product of the modern, technology oriented generation that focuses on the individual. However, reading some of the prose/essays written by my classmates, I have witnessed first hand that not many enjoy writing or reading; indeed, many have not even tapped into the power associated with expressing thoughts through typing away at your keyboard.
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