Arthur picks up on a trend made apparent by anecdotal evidence and research, and Technorati data on the Guardian’s own blogs, that the long tail of blogging is dying as bloggers turn to different, easier platforms.
So are blogs being replaced – and by what?
“Facebook’s success is built on the ease of doing everything in one place. (Search tools can’t index it to see who’s talking about what, which may be a benefit or a failing.) Twitter offers instant content and reaction. Writing a blog post is a lot harder than posting a status update, putting a funny link on someone’s wall, or tweeting. People are still reading blogs, and other content. But for the creation of amateur content, their heyday for the wider population has, I think, already passed. The short head of blogging thrives. Its long tail, though, has lapsed into desuetude,” writes Arthur.