Posted: February 17th, 2010 | Author: Jon Lund
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With the advent of Facebook and social networking focus has been removed from genuine blogging, which only a few years ago was the epitome of Internet development. Although social networking has captured huge shares of the time spend online, blogging is in no way dead, however. I know because I’ve digged the number in my latest report “Blogging in the face of social media. The maturing of a media group”. Find reference below.
The findings have led me to revise my previous analysis. Actually I thought blogging was about to fade away. Not so. The number of active Danish blogs keeps growing and reached some 70,000 by the end of 2009 according to overskrift.dk (blogpost in Danish here). Also the number of Danes actually reading blogs grew. Today one out of four Danes online – around 1 million – reads blogs on a regular basis, according to gemiusAudience.
My figures are all on hosted blogs. I found wordpress.com and – especially – blogspot.com to have taken over from local Danish blog-services, accounting for far the largest number of monthly blog-posts, and having more than doubled their combined audience since January 2008, from 472,000 monthly readers to nearly 900,000 in December 2009. The blogging services of established Danish media however has not been able to keep up the pace.
Contrary to the findings of Pew Internet, blogging in Denmark is – increasingly – powered by young adults, who are especially attracted to the format, with affinity indexes of the 15-19 years old Danes of up to 243 for one of the leading blog-services, decreasing below 100 for the 50-59 years olds. And, as the figure shows, affinity of the 15-19 years old has increased significantly over the past two years.
What seems to be at stake here is nothing less than the results of the social media revolution. From being a hyped, avantgarde thing, blogging has now got a hold of a much wider segments of the Danish population, who blogs – and reads blogs – as a natural part of their self-expression and seeking of information. Blogging is not so much a question of cathing 15 minutes of fame, but a means to create yourself through stating your own views, experiences and beliefs.
Paradoxically Facebook might have helped giving birth to this new state of media-understanding and -usage. On the one hand the status-updates universe of Facebook has caused an extremely wide audience to be acquainted with publicly sharing personal details – while on the other hand the limits of status-updates has become evermore clear, leading those with more to say to create their own blogs. That’s at least my (new) hypothesis.
Send, download and print. Price: 345 ddk/€45,50 (ex. VAT)
“Blogging in the face of social media. The maturing of a media group”. 16 pages, 5 illustrations.
To order the report, send an email to jon@jon-lund.com including your contact information with subject: “Buy Jon Lunds Blogging”, and you’ll receive both the report as pdf-file and an invoice.
Posted: September 5th, 2009 | Author: Jon Lund
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After having left the FDIM (IAB Denmark) in order to set up my own consultancy I also left the newmediatrends.fdim.dk-blog. Instead I’ve opened up www.jon-lund.com – and this is where I’m continuing my blogging activities (I started out a few weeks ago).
www.jon-lund.com is not only my blog – it’s the website of my company. Instead of being an alternative communications channel of an industry body, the blog is now the main channel of a knowledge-based consultancy. Instead of being the blog of the general manager of a democratically governed organisation governed by a board and a general assembly, it’s now the blog of the founder and principle of a private enterprise.
As a reader don’t expect dramatic differences between my previous blogging and the blogging I’ll adopt from now on. Primarily because I have always been blogging with my heart. This I’ll continue to do.
But you will find differnces. You’ll find I’ll be dealing with new media trends in a wider perspective than hitherto. The online advertising industry is no longer my core focus – but one of many focusses in an exceedingly rich and transparent new media and new technological world. You’ll probably also find a more critic angle on the subjects I’m dealing with (the limitation I put on my self as blogging head of FDIM was: don’t do the negative stories. Do observations on all the great stuff going on. It’s basicly a bad idea criticising the members who pay your salary). And you’ll find I’m using this blog as the main media channel for the research and analysis I’ll be conducting: that is – more facts and more new trends in the blog!
A few month ago I did a post on how Facebook killed the blog. My main point was that all the energy that carried blogging to the forefront of new media development has faded out and has instead been focused to new areas of the socially networked world. Adopting blogging as the driving force of a corporate website (which is precisely what I’m annoucing I’m doing in this post) is perfectly alligned with this position: the blog has been tamed and assimilated into the normal company website. The blog serves as a storage space, a library of all the stuff I’m doing and as the main entrance to an open enterprise. But even though comments here at the blog are exremely welcome it’ll only be able to live and breathe if I get it to work with the main social vehicles of todays facebooks and twitters and tomorrows waves and what are you going to have.
Before finishing off this post, I’ll have to give a few technical remarks: The old RSS-feed of newmediatrends.fdim.dk will be working for most subscribers, since the adress of the feed is unchanged: http://feeds.feedburner.com/newmediatrends. So no need to do much to keep on receiving my feed.
Also, I’ve promised Technorati to put in a code in this post that will enable them to keep track of whats going on: Here it is, Technorati: zr7fxyepwc
Welcome to the new blog!
Posted: May 4th, 2009 | Author: Jon Lund
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Tonight my worst suspicions were confirmed: Facebook really killed the blog. Look for yourself what Google has to say on the subject when asking politely (top 5 search results):
“all my friends that used to blog no longer are. They’re all posting one line statements of what they’re doing on FB. So, there you have it. Video killed the radio star, and Facebook killed the blog. RIP.”
Jonathan Hays, 14. april 2009 at his blog http://offlineinaustin.blogspot.com/2009/04/facebook-has-killed-blog.html
“I entirely blame facebook for my lack of blogging. I used to have random thoughts that would quickly evolve into short narratives, and since the advent of the facebook status update approximately 90% of these thoughts have manifested as 160-character updates instead of a full-blown story. I am going to try to do a better job of letting these ideas mature into well-thought-out blogs instead of little blurbs for my facebook friends.”
Sara B, Portland , Tuesday, January 27, 2009 at http://www.saraknowsbest.com/2009/01/facebook-killed-blog-star.html
“I don’t see Facebook replacing blogs. The purpose for each is disparate. What I do see though is my blog readership dropping.”
Anonymous blogger, 21. januar 2009 at http://blog.jamesfries.com/archive/2009/01/21/3727.aspx
“I’m sure you’re aware of the new kid on the block – Facebook. Oh sure, its newer and its somewhat more interactive, and all my friends are there… it’s all true. I’ve been having a great ol’ time… But make no mistake, You – my blog – are my first love.”
Kerry, Tuesday, May 22, 2007 at http://whatshappenindaddyo.blogspot.com/2007/05/facebook-killed-blog-star.html
“Facebook Killed the Blog … but I’m sure I’m not the first one to say it. Obviously, I haven’t blogged in awhile. A while. Quite a while…”
Lacey Crawford, 8. februar 2009 at http://www.laceycrawford.com/log.html
Also:
Technorati seems to have stopped producing graphs on the growth of the blogosphere, which they so proudly presented in 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006 and up until 2007. No mention of “growth” in their 2008 report. No figures. No graphs.
And:
Is it, as Jason Calacanis said when he officially retired from blogging almost a year ago: ”I love blogs and always will. However, I’ve done my part and I’m looking to strip it down. I’m looking for something more acoustic, something more authentic and something more private. Blogging is simply too big, too impersonal, and lacks the intimacy that drew me to it”
Or is it, that blogging is a far more lonely experience than the one offered by the social networks. That the social element of blogs (the blog-roll and the ability to post comments) is simply over-matched by Facebooks friends-list.
Or is it, that blogging is to fragmented, you have to sign up to a thousand different rss-feeds to be kept up to date with your networks activities, whereas Facebook offers you one-stop-updating?
