Is all of this Tweeting, Blogging and "Lifestreaming" really necessary?

Technology Burps! Digital gremlins must be dancing with glee. Saturday morning I sent out a tweet that didn't post for two hours. Seven more tweets sent from my cell phone never appeared on twitter. Was it the cell carrier or twitter? Last night when I checked posterous, an article I posted with text and photo never made it onto there, except for the title, making me look stupid since posterous feeds into my LiveJournal blog and gods know where else!

Factor out the so-called A-List bloggers like Michelle Malkin, Xiaxue and TechCrunch: the average blog is read by less than 30 people a day! A lot of bloggers have gotten caught up in the frenzied debate over tweeting, friendfeeding and this "lifestreaming" concept...

From what I have observed so far, nothing kills an online presence (or a blogger's number of tabulated daily hits) faster than a switch to "Lifestreaming." While it may be the darling of the 3.0 crowd, the rest of the online world is still into blogging, and now tweeting and FaceBooking...

AUGUST 2008: Sarah Perez, in The Future of Blogging Revealed, seems to have everyone jumping on a bandwagon --- that's going nowhere fast --- she wrote about how and why blogging was dying and "Lifestreaming" was ready to take its place as "everyone's preferred method of communication." (*yawn*) That was almost a year ago, a century in "internet time," and while more people may be tinkering with "Lifestreaming" its more akin to "being a Civil War buff" versus "having a FaceBook (or MySpace) page" or tweeting.

Many say they are convinced Twitter is now a vital journalistic tool for both reporting events and breaking down barriers between legacy media and its audiences.

Although twitter certainly enjoyed a "rush" this year, and may who formerly called MySpace their HQ jumped to Facebook as they embraced twitter and friendfeed, "Lifestreaming" is still several steps down the ladder from blogging.

WHY ARE MYSPACE MEMBERS BRANCHING OUT? I hadn't been on my MySpace in awhile... I was shocked to find that "something" had happened to the neat, easy to load page that I had designed.

One of my dissatisfactions with MySpace had always been that some pages were way too "busy," took too much time to load, and overextended beyond page borders i.e. you had to scroll not only up and down but ACROSS to view the page, and it was impossible to view all at once or even print to fit a regular sheet of copy paper.

Now MY page is "overloading" beyond the bordering frames. WTF?!? Another thing I immediately noticed was that many of my "friends" have inserted their twitter URLS into their displayed names accompanying their pictures. They're in essence telling me "move along... my action is now on twitter."

Picking up material again from The Perez article: "Lifestreaming Is The Always On Blog...There was a time when casual, personal blogging was your way to communicate with your friends on the web. Via posts, commenting, and blogrolls, bloggers formed niche communities on the web to socialize with each other. Today, new tools provide that same level of socialization - perhaps even better than blogging ever could. Via micro-blogging sites like Twitter, every quick thought or link can be shared with your community of followers and you can see theirs, too. You can join and exit the never-ending conversation at your leisure. Plus, other social sites like FriendFeed provide today's new discussion boards where conversation occurs surrounding the items posted and shared, leading to even more of a community feel, and one that's drawing more users every day."

Well, yes, and NO... commenting and blogrolls are still in fashion, and there have been (and still are) blogs that really get the forum groove on within their "comments" sections. Think XiaXue, Michelle Malkin, Bobby Revell. Twitter and FriendFeed certainly HELP: I've added my recent 5 tweets to the top right hand sidebar in this humble weblog, and a few weeks ago, after twitter had that little meltdown, I joined FriendFeed (and I'm lovin' it)! Say, isn't blogging part of one's lifestream? Lifestreaming is defined as a sum (digest?) of your activities. Blogging is one of your activities.

By far, the most interesting part of the Perez article is the COMMENTS section! Just a few samples:

"I don't think life streaming will replace blogging. Twitter for example is interesting and almost addictive but it has no depth. For myself one of the great things with twitter is when people I am following point me in the direction of a great blog or post they have found."

"The quickest way for a blogger to loose it's dedicated readership is to move to life streaming. I dont give a shit if you just took a shit on a train, I read a blog because there is something of value there (like this post). 6.5 billion lifestreams is nothing more than than a river of mud."

"Many blogs have become pseudo magazine publishing sites (Engadget, Techcrunch) - the personal, communicative element has been totally eroded there. I think sites like LiveJournal are truer to the roots of blogging. ie blog = weblog = web log"

"I don't mind lifesteaming, but ultimately most of us aren't going to care about the day to day lives of people we don't know."

Should People Kill Their Blogs in Favor of Lifestreaming? The short answer is NOPE! As for the twitterer in you, you might want to follow Justin Korn's advice and get your services together all in a row...

Tags: Lifestream, web3.0