03 Mar 10 Blogging and Social Media

The doomsayers are flat out wrong!

Social Media has become such a huge phenomenon, and many proclaimed that the rise of social media will kill blogging the way television killed the radio, or the Internet killed magazine, the newspaper, and what not. But, this time the doomsayers were flat out wrong.

Blogging did not go away, and social media didn’t become the blog-killer. It didn’t, and both co-existed amiably. What doomsayers forgot to realize that blog has a different purpose than social media. If I could draw a leaf from our life to understand what these people were saying then I will say if blogging is like the magazine you read then social media is akin to meeting you have with your friends, or may be a conference you attend.

How can a conference or friends’ gathering replace the need of magazines?

It cannot. Both are different. Rather the readership of magazine will increase because of word of mouth phenomena cutting loose during social gathering. And that is what has happened to blogging. Now more and more people are blogging on variety of different topics.

Social media has fueled the growth of blogging. Now more and more people are using their blogs to express themselves. Social media along with its status messages has brought writer out of every person. Earlier you couldn’t imaging people saying things that you see them writing on their Facebook walls.

Social media may be huge in its own right, but when it comes to blogging, even a force like Facebook is subservient to blogging.  Facebook is used by the bloggers to promote them, and it doesn’t work in the opposite direction. Facebook, twitter, MySpace, and the rest have turned into mere tool for bloggers to promote themselves.

What do you think about this? Has social media become the force or will become the force that will take the place of blogging? Use the comment box below and write in.

Tags: bloggers, blogs, Doomsayers, Express, Facebook, Magazines, Myspace, People, Phenomena, Phenomenon, Radio, Readership, Saying Things, Social Media, Status Messages, Television, Variety, Word Of Mouth