In a recent post I introduced the new blogs we have recently developed for Base Backpackers and the Calypso and NJoy hostels in Cairns.  I was just in Cairns this last week and I introduced Brad and Brett to Twitter and Friend Feed - they didn’t get it!  All this got me thinking, is the fact that these businesses are finally picking up on the blog mean that the cutting edge marketability of these mediums is all over; that quite simply they are too late.  Has blogging become so mainstream that it is now passe?

Blogs have been the darling of the Web 2.0 era; companies and individuals have expounded their thoughts and relationships around discussions have been formed. Many refer to the blog phenomenon as the democratisation of the Internet; in which everyone can be a publisher. This blog alone has over 1,000 subscribers and many more daily visitors. Blogs also provide unbeatable food for search engine - their continual fresh content and interlinking nature of the blogosphere rocketing well populated blogs up search engine results pages. In one year alone this blog has achieved a Page Rank of 6 with no Search Engine Optimistation or marketing effort on our part at all. So what is the problem?

Information overload! I tried to introduce Google Reader to the Backpacking Queensland Committee as a way of being able to consume more information faster. But do we really want more information? More stuff to read? Blogs such as this actually entail quite a commitment from our readers to take the time and energy to read the posts, and with so much information people are simply not reading the Internet like they use to. Instead they skim read, scanning the text and moving on. For a blogger, maintaining readers and growing new ones becomes increasingly hard in a sea of noise.

Step up to the plate life streaming. Life streaming is potentially the new blog - the darling of social media (see my post earlier regarding the new buzz term “social media”. Life streaming entails a chronologically-ordered collection of information from many sites. A lifestream will often include collections of shorter random thoughts (or micro blogs), photos, videos, cut and paste from emails, links, and generally anything worth (or even not worth) sharing. Lifestreams are inherently simple - they are short and sweet - yet they can provide as much information as the personal blog does. A quick text to the site, a video or photo, or a shared link.

The most well-known life streaming site is the social aggregation service Friend Feed. Enter your details for any number of 43 services from your blog, your RSS feed reader, You Tube, Flickr and Twitter and Friend Feed collects and aggregates your data. Link and follow friends and create groups around your lifestream. The similarities to a blog are obvious, yet much more fluid and dynamic, comments are relabelled discussions, profiles are pulled from a variety of other social media (Facebook or Bebo for example) and instead of a blog post there is a “stream” of thoughts. More importantly however the friends and followers of the lifestream are highlighted by their participation as opposed to their thoughts and opinions.

In the recent, say 24 months, the blog has been the primary online way to communicate with your friends, customers and potential customers. Regular posts of thoughts, news and opinion; commenting and trackbacks; and recognition of one another through “blogrolls” have created niche communities on the web around specific topics. But with information overload and time sensitivities new faster social media services are providing a faster more efficient way to continually communicate with each other. Think of them as real-time live blogging!

Micro-blogging sites such as Twitter allow the publisher to record and share every quick thought or link while quickly seeing those you follow too. It is easy to join the global conversation or create your own conversational community among friends. What’s more, your thoughts are restricted to 160 characters - a far swathe of information you are bombarded with on blogs such as this. One of the important points about sites such as Twitter is that it is the add on services that make these sites so user friendly and popular - I can text, email, instant message, setup an automates stream from iTunes, RSS feed and ping my Twitter account endlessly keeping those that are interested permanently informed.

On the social aggregating sites such as Friend Feed conversations very quickly spring up as ever item that is streamed can be commented on, leading to faster, deeper, almost offline conversations about everything. The result is much more participation on the web - in fact, more so than the blog where apart from the more techy, most remained happy to stand on the sides, reading and consuming without participating. Life streaming is encouraging more participation on the social web than ever before.

So is it the death of blogging? Probably not immediately - lifestreams seem to be encompassing those more interested in socialising that actively generating opinion and conversation - but therein may lie the secret; if you are in an industry such as hostelling that promotes socialisation, meeting people, sharing experiences and word of mouth perhaps you are too late in setting up a blog; lifestreams are the new blogs!

Tags: Social Media, Web 2.0

This entry was posted on Saturday, August 9th, 2008 at 6:06 pm and is filed under Opinion. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.