Blogs Are Dead, So We’re Having Another Party
January 18th, 2010
The Irish Blog Awards season has come around once again. The awards ceremony/piss-up that celebrates a communication medium that is dead. Or so we’ve been told, most notably in a post on Twenty Major’s blog by Una Mullally, ex-blogger and Sunday Tribune columnist, stating that some of the few blogs that she used to read are no longer active, and so the whole of the “Irish blogosphere” is collapsing around us – or rather, collapsed.
There is a small amount of irony in the fact that this article, written on a blog, lead to over 200 comments, mostly berating the writer’s points – some I agree with, some don’t. However by saying, “I have to admit, I read very few Irish blogs, even when I was blogging”, she isn’t really doing herself any favours.
Blogging was never designed to be centred around the ‘clique’ of a certain few, and I feel it’s wrong to state that this truly exists – to any that do, the barrier of entry is very low. The occasional back-slapping does not a blogosphere make.
Blogs are still growing with less interested in being part of a clique, but rather finding good content in its various forms and spreading it, whether that’s through writing, photography or the occasional Tumblr page – which is just ‘Retweet’ for the visually hungry and creatively impotent. Irishblogs.ie aggregates around 4,000 blogs – Roger Galligan estimates there are 30% more active.
They come and go, that’s the way it works – I’ve seen many bloggers give up, but seen far more start, continue and enjoy it. In the last year – even in the last month. Even after using Twitter first. The uptake of Twitter has changed things, however I firmly believe that the two platforms work together to deliver a message. Ireland is 17th in world rankings of Twitter users, and has 1,213,660 Facebook users. As the number of platforms increases, the ‘bloggers’ are enjoying the use of many – not just the lowly blog.
There are many points that have been touched upon through comments and posts on this topic including the reasons why blogs are started, and in turn, why they come to an end – were they started for the right reasons in the first place? I won’t debate them all – suffice to say that with more than one medium for the message, blogging may have slowed down, but it isn’t dead; my subscriber numbers continue to increase.
I realise that I am in Northern Ireland – technically the UK, though Facebook does not provide stats for different regions of the UK, and therefore it is difficult to tell how many users are here, however there are 71,880 users within 50miles of Belfast.
On a lighter note, nominations for the IBA10 have begun (hop over here) and are being held on 27th March in Galway. Nominations close on Feb 5th at 3pm
