Blogging is dead…long live blogging!

It’s been twenty-two days since Easter, and that means my internet fast has been over for approximately that length of time.  Since, I have returned to updating my status and posting inane comments on people’s Facebook pages, drooling over books at Amazon, and skimming titles of articles in Google Reader.

As I write this, I’m pretty sure blogging is dead.  That is, most people whose blogs I enjoyed reading are now using Facebook to fill the void left by their dead blogs.  It’s faster and more immediately gratifying.  Instead of coming up with 300 words of insightful banter only your insider buddies will find amusing, you can get by with 30 or 40.  And voila!  Instant gratification!  No one checked your blog using her iPhone or offered comments via text message.  Blogs just can’t compete with that kind of progress.  Blogs are as dead as hamsterdance.

No, perhaps they are not dead, but they are increasingly professionalized.  There are a lot of great blogs out there and I read more now than I did three years ago.  But the sources of blogs are changing.  I look at the list of blogs I’m following using Google Reader and nearly all of them are media outlets (Arts and Letters Daily, Christianity Today, Out of Ur, First Things, xkcd, GTD Times) or noteworthy figures (Ed Stetzer, Todd Hunter, Gary Rohrmayer, Scot McKnight).  All of the people I just listed are published authors as well.

So where does that leave blogging?  I am neither a media outlet nor a noteworthy figure, except perhaps in the mind of my daughters.  And that clock is ticking…  Blogging fills a place for me in providing an outlet for my thoughts, something I enjoy immensely and need from a clarity and craft standpoint.  I’ll probably keep doing it, even if the prospect of anyone actually reading these posts is minimal.  Long live blogging!