blogging isn't dead, it's just a subset of something much larger and more import …

Great post, Hugh. I consider myself a hybrid – am I covered in butter and grass while I paint? – and by that, I avail of the tools that help me reach the humans, wherever they may be. So, I’ll continue to blog, for love of the medium, but if you’re unlucky enough to follow me on Twitter, you know I’m a storm over there as well.
Praise the Basquiats *and* the string sprinklers!

You nailed it again.

So many people schooled in traditional media are quick to dismiss blogs and Facebook.
I suspect a lot of it is because they are scared, and the reason for that is that they can’t be bothered to look at the positives and the ways they can use for positives to their advantage.
I use blogs, Facebook and Twitter alongside my day job as a Web Producer, and they’ve all provided value for me. I wouldn’t have known about this post without Twitter for example…

Thanks for the follow up, Hugh. As a relatively new blogger the last post was rather depressing. But I think I came to the conclusion that even in the Web 2.0 era, an entire medium can’t begun and end in less than a decade. I think there’s still lots of unknown territory to be charted out in the world of blogging. In fact, I think it might benefit greatly from losing it’s technological “novelty” aspect and becoming just another means of expression akin to what happend to film in the early days. In other words I don’t think Ulysses has been blogged yet(Gee, I hope that sounds as profound as I wanted it to)!

…”the only people left painting were those, as Hughes put it, “who still actually wanted to paint”.”
Absolutely right. But there are still lots of people painting stuff I wouldn’t let within 100 yards of my sitting room wall – they might be passionate about it, but they’re just not very good. I think it’s the same with blogging.
Oh, and the other thing that’s the same is that (to your point no.4 in the previous post) there’ll always be some idiot who looks at a Hockney and says, “That’s crap. My three year old could do better…”

Oh yes, well put if only a part of the larger picture. 😉 Sorry, couldn’t resist.
But yeah, more seriously, it’s all just different forms of self-expression and ways to expose those expressions to like-minded people.
It’s all getting easier and easier to do, and the pent-up demand for it from the times of the read-only web is starting to dissipate.
This must be the first time in modern history when serious media innovations *didn’t* originate with the porn industry but real people. Consumers, as they say. 😉

It really *is* a matter of what we want to use, when we want to use it, as much as whom we may want to reach. Even two years ago, what we used was pretty limited….
That’s why when some serious people have said “social media’s dead!” (something of an extrapolation of the “blogging’s dead” thing) I had to laugh–it’s really only beginning.
Although all the social networking might put some of us way over the edge 😉

I thought this would be another boring “blog about blogging” post when I saw it on TechMeme.
They also thought painting would die when photography came around. Great analogy. Painting will never die! I teach oil painting classes and love passing the torch. I think one thing you missed, blogging is about independence.
Where a string-dangler may depend more on the bureaucracy of the museum/gallery/academic, the painter can roll up a dozen creations under one arm and sail to Tahiti. Maybe not the best analogy, but the advantage the professional blogger has: domain “ownership” with total control of content, advertising, and even the ability to switch hosts, preserving inbound links, Google juice, etc.

For me, the growth of the different services allows me to split my content a bit. ‘real blog posts’ go on my real blog – snippets of information/links/pictures go on my tumblog, pure bookmarks into my del.icio.us, and very little thoughts (along with what I’m doing, thinking, eating, drinking) go onto Jaiku.
This means that when (well, if) you go to my weblog, you get the content that’s had real thought put into it – no link posts, no cute pictures, no random thoughts about breakfast.
My blog is benefiting from this, I think 🙂

wise and sage thoughts as usual – it is the drive to communicate at the core – use whatever tools ya got anyway you want to – be it indie blogger or big corporation – otherwise, we all should just go back to “monkey speak”

Maybe true at the individual level. Not true in business.

“Blogging isn’t dead. Far from it. It’s just a subset of something much larger and more important.”
Heheh! Right. That’s almost word-for-word the same mantra we chanted about the Source’s POST boards (’84), Delphi’s SIGs (’88), GEnie’s Roundtables (’92), CompuServe’s Forums (’99), AOL’s Communities (’02), etc.
Keep repeating it, Hugh. Ah, yes, that’s right. You’re feeling very, very relaxed. Your eyelids want to close. You’re getting sleepy, droopy, drowsy. As I count backwards from ten to one….

Gabriel, you “disappointed” comment proves my point… that we’re already taking the concept of “Cheap & Easy Global Media” for granted. 20 years ago this would have been unheard of.