I got a Blackberry.

If you have one too, you’re probably sniggering or nodding your head in understanding. I mean, I’ve turned into an unblinking, zombie-like, crazy person who behaves like her entire life is in her handheld, attached to the end of her arm. I’m awed and wonderstruck by what this little device can do and the kind of apps that are available to make your digital experience more ….errr….enriching (ok…fun!)

Suddenly, my social life has turned on its head! I’m simultaneously online on the Blackberry messenger (oh you magical little software….I’m going to write a poem on you sometime soon), Yahoo, MSN, Gmail and another miracle of mankind – Whatsapp! And of course, any important email is delivered to me on my shiny new BB in a snap. I wonder how I ever functioned without this little gadget.

On the downside, my personal life has taken a beating. I’ve found myself spending way too much time checking my friends’ mostly useless status updates on Facebook, some partly read books are lying in a dustpile somewhere, and my daughter (all of 14 months!) has started shaking her head in disgust the moment I pick up the phone and start playing with it.

I had been hanging in this state of indecision about whether all of this is good or bad for a long time but I got the answer this morning when I asked my husband.

“You know what they say about life – that it’s not just black or white and that it’s all the shades in between.  I realised its true even for digital technology when I started getting interested in quantum computing. You ask anyone about the digital age and they will tell you it’s all about 1s and 0s. If you’ve heard anything about Quantum Computing you will know that even electronic life is no longer about 1s and 0s. It’s going to be about everything in between.”

Frankly, I haven’t really understood what quantum computers are and why they are going to change our lives (I read somewhere that even a grain of sand can potentially be a quantum computer) but I think I still found my answer somewhere in what my husband said.

Life is not about 1s and 0s only. It’s about everything in between.

(Sent on my BlackBerry® from Vodafone)

Here is an excerpt from the study…

Few of the activities covered in this report have decreased in popularity for any age group, with the notable exception of blogging. Only half as many online teens work on their own blog as did in 2006, and Millennial generation adults ages 18-33 have also seen a modest decline—a development that may be related to the quickly-growing popularity of social network sites. At the same time, however, blogging’s popularity increased among most older generations, and as a result the rate of blogging for all online adults rose slightly overall from 11% in late 2008 to 14% in 2010. Yet while the act formally known as blogging seems to have peaked, internet users are doing blog-like things in other online spaces as they post updates about their lives, musings about the world, jokes, and links on social networking sites and micro-blogging sites such as Twitter.

So does that mean the end of blogging as we know it? Far from it I think. And here’s why I think so.

Blogs were anyway never a good tool for the younger generation. Young people like to have fun, not write with discipline everyday.

Although a lot of young people took to blogging when it first became cool, the blog by its very nature would never have been a sticky tool for the younger generation. Writing blogs can be fun but the discipline to write a blog can also sometimes be a drag. And the attention span of young people today would never remain on one item. As soon as a more fun alternative to Blogs came along they jumped on it. Facebook may be the flavour of the year right now but this too shall pass.

The Blogosphere has matured. Serious content and serious money are being put into blogs to provide serious value. Too much seriousness?

Like any other industry the blogosphere has matured with serious companies treating it as serious business and blogs have become a valuable tool for the businesses and professionals. But all this seriousness has killed the appeal for the young ones. But they have also created a huge ecosystem of content which is giving even traditional news media a run for their money.

Blogs allow for authority content. Facebook posts are more of hit and run.

Facebook which is much more interactive then a blog encourages the trivial and fun posts, what I call hit and run posts. Consider this extract from the Pew Survey – ‘internet users are doing blog-like things in other online spaces as they post updates about their lives.’

Although many try to promote it as such, Facebook cannot be taken as a serious medium of knowledge dissemination or authority information (i could be wrong though).

The social component is fun it does not excatly give weight to the information posted on it. Most users would take anyinformation posted on Facebook with a pinch of salt. Established blogs on the other hand are another story.

Facebook Owns Facebook. Blogs can be self owned.

Facebook is not public property. Its a business owned by a set of investors, which makes content posted on it legally theirs to do what they want with it within reason. Which means they can censor content, views and users under external or internal pressure. Privacy issues and hacking are also increasingly making Facebook less reliable as a means of disseminating information.

Where do you go for expert opinions Blogs or Facebook? Thats the question.

The answer to this question will decide who comes out on top, facebook or business blogs. Maybe its like comparing apples and oranges. But for me the answer would be – definitely a blog.

My Conclusions – Overall blogs are here to stay

• Blogs are here to stay but they will no longer remain in the ‘casual use’ category. The blogosphere will only tolerate good content blogs.
• As todays younger generation matures, get jobs, open businesses, they will increasingly turn to professional blogs for advice, information and also as a tool for sales and marketing.
• Leaders in all fields will continue to rely on blogs to spread their views and messages. They will also use social media but mainly rely on their blogs to provide authority information.
• The future of blogs depends a lot on the evolution of social media sites. Will Facebook strengthen the blog like features of Facebook or go the other way towards more informal communication.

The future will decide on the fate of blogs but I am cautiously optimistic.

For another point of view do read ‘Is Blogging Dead?’ by John Dvorak.

Cheers,
Ron

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We all must be having our personal account on Facebook where we update our status, share information, videos, links, and pictures with friends but when it comes to promote a product or service on Facebook, how are you going to do that????

That’s where Facebook has given us a facility where we can create an identity for our brand on Facebook and promote it on Facebook through ads, word of mouth and the good part is that we can add as many fans on Facebook page as we want whereas in personal account we cannot add more than 5000 friends apart from it, Facebook pages are search engine friendly if the page becomes popular then it can be seen on search engine results as well.

After creating the page for your brand you can link it to your blog by taking the following steps –

Go to your Facebook fan page, click on edit button below your profile picture.

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Go to Notes – click on edit, there you will get an option Subscribe to these Notes, put your blog address or RSS and your done. Now whenever you post something on your blog it will get updated on your Facebook fan page and can reach to your millions of fans.

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