Kottke and the Death of the Blog

Category: Internet

Published: 12/20/2013 12:54 a.m.

Jason Kottke is calling the end of the "blog", and as he is one of the most prolific bloggers around, it's hard to ignore. First, media was shared through central channels like the newspaper and TV. Them, web publishing and blogs gave more people a voice, both as writers and their many commenters. Media (and news) became distributed and disbursed. Niche sites popped up to talk the smallest details of the deepest subjects.

Now, we are back to convergence. The platforms of Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram, and others old and new are the most connected way to be a writer or a commenter. These are the target traffic sources for many media sites that seek clicks.

I still believe owning and controlling your own content is important, but I might be overrating how important that is, or how important controlling all of it is. Will I (or anyone) ever go back to gain any value from my 3,000 oldest tweets? Likely not, except for a small handful that have some sentimental value.

I'm not sure where my content falls on the spectrum of passing thought to valuable for my lifetime. While I'm sure it's scattered, I could probably lose much of it and not event notice.