Where Has All My Blogging Gone?
There’s been an interesting debate going on about the state of blogging lately. Jeremiah Owyang kicked off the most recent debate when he declared The Golden Age of Blogging Is Over in where he says that at least the tech blogosphere is maturing and changing as the result of a number of factors.
The funny thing about blogging is that it’s a new name for something I’ve been doing for 15 years or so: putting content on a website for other people to use and comment on. I am best known for a series of Frequently Asked Questions I wrote about the Check Point firewall products over a period of about 8 years. After that, I changed my focus to something more fitting to my nickname: telecoms, VoIP, mobile phones, gadgets, etc.
Blogging, both for myself and others, became a real serious business. That is the main point of Owyang’s piece, really. It was a business I thought I wanted to be in at one time, which is why I decided to join Creative Webblogging back in the day. I went through a period of time where I was blogging daily. Multiple times a day, in fact. I generated a lot of content. Both on my own site and for several of the blogs for Creative Weblogging.
During that time, I saw a lot of the same ideas over and over again, hashed and rehashed. Both in the products I was covering and the people talking about them. It’s not called an echo chamber for nothing and I simply got tired of contributing to it. The money I was making was not commensurate with the effort required to generate content. The payoff simply wasn’t there.
I also experienced a significant change to my personal situation in 2008 related to my job at Nokia. The end result is that I now work for Check Point Software, the company my personal brand has been most tied to over the years. This necessitated a change in focus for me–back to the very thing I was best known for, albeit with the backing and support of Check Point.
While I have a number of roles at Check Point, the most visible one is being an advocate for Check Point in the “social media” space. I created our Twitter, Facebook, and Google+ presence and actively participate there. I answer questions on two externally run forums about Check Point proudcts and services.
That isn’t to say I haven’t blogged about VoIP, telecom, mobile phones and the like. I occasionally blog about my employer as well. That said, I do not feel the need to say something on my blog every day. I am a lot more deliberate about what I decide to blog about and when. It has to be something unique or something I can provide a unique insight, perspective, and opinion on (to borrow a phrase from Andy Abramson).
I tend to express quick thoughts about a number of things on Twitter, Facebook, Google+, and others. Thoughts that, some time ago, I would have turned into a blog piece. Is that the right approach? I’m not sure.
The one thing I do miss from the earlier years was the sense of community we had. While we independently put our words out there for all to see, we did exchange and play off each other’s ideas. That was fun. There is some of that going on today on Twitter, etc., but it’s not the same.
Rest assured, I will continue to provide my unique insight, perspective, and opinion. I may not do it as often as I used to on as many things as I used to, but you can be assured when I do, I’ve got something worth reading about something worth knowing about.
