I read a post today by Andrew Serwer titled The end of blogging. While I agree with the premise that the manner in which we communicate is rapidly changing, I disagree that blogging is dead. I too use both Facebook and Twitter as a communication vehicle with family, friends, and those interested in my thoughts and writings. However, I see distinct usages and styles forming that differentiate the use of Twitter, Facebook, and blogs.
In my experience, Facebook is used as mostly social medium for personal messages. My friends are posting updates on everyday life. Facebook provides an easy tool for those who don’t want to write fully versed and thought-out blog entries. Instead they can type short simple status updates about themselves, their families, or their interests. It’s quick, easy, and doesn’t require alot of mental wrangling on a topic. For those that do keep blogs, they have to decide if they want to filter their Facebook status updates from having links to the blog or other promotion type messages. The risk is that too much self promotion or other content push outside of a personal status could alienate them from acceptable behavior (Facebook etiquette) and they could be dropped as a Facebook friend (gasp!).
I see Twitter being used more for business and information-push type of messaging. There are a large amount of personal status updates on Twitter, but short messaging has really taken with business to business (B2B) and business to consumer (B2C) updates. Just take a look at the number of businesses using Twitter for customer service relationship management or businesses using Twitter as a syndication vehicle to promote their content.
Twitter Business Examples:
While Twitter is changing communications to short messages, bloggers are using Twitter to publish intros to their content along with a shortened link. Bloggers and businesses see Twitter as a vehicle to establish relationships which then leads to links to other types of communications such as blogs, video, audio, etc.
So is this the end of blogging? In my view, no! These new communication devices simply provide another vehicle for bloggers to promote their content. Blogging gives people a forum for in-depth thought and focused discussion.