Blogging is dead, move to twitter because Wired said so

I have just read an article over at Wired Magazine that blogging is oh so 2004 and we all need to jump ship if we aren't part of a professional blogging network that dominates Google search results.What Wired says in the article is that bloggers are being taken out of the equation by professionals who blog and put out 30 or so posts a day. They are being taken out of the equation by online magazines that were once, maybe, blogs and are now business ventures. Bloggers are being taken out of the Google rankings by professional media organisations such as NYT, Time, LA Times and others with similar stature. Bloggers are becoming invisible according to Wired Magazine.Wired goes on to explain that bloggers of the personal, one man band nature, are becoming tired of comment trolls, masses of spam, irrelevant audiences and other frustrations. The solution? Move to Twitter, Facebook, Youtube and similar services. I wonder if these services paid Wired Magazine to write this article. Basically I should stop being a self-publisher and move completely to a service that someone else will make money off of? I don't agree at all. I think a merger, hybrid or cross pollination is in order. Not abandoning of the ship at all.I quickly used twitter to feel out some opinions on the topic. (I completely recognise that I am invariably endorsing wired magazine's opinion by using Twitter to get my information for this blog post!)My tweat:nicharry is blogging dead? Is twitter taking over? Should we all jump ship?!?!Some of the responses:markmedia @nicharry no yes nowoganmay @nicharry If everyone jumps ship, who will we be leaving to captain that ship?obox @nicharry I don't think so. There is still space for both, with lifestreams entering the world you can have all the cakes on one page.fromtheold @nicharry Blogging will last long after twitter :)Jonin60seconds @nicharry Slow down there profit of doom!RichMulholland @nicharry No we should simply re-prioritize our weighting on both.It's incredible actually, how many people felt they could respond to something I had said so quickly and easily. This definitely beats responses on blogs hands down.I firmly agree with RichMulholland's comments that we should not be throwing in the towel for either service. We should simply re-evaluate our goals and re-prioritize our focus on the services that are available to us.Blogging isn't dead, blogging is just becoming a force that we need to seriously consider as a profession. Just as reporting back in the day was done by a random one or two people within a town or village and is now down by conglomerates. Things change, let's change with them not fight against the change.I did enjoy the closing line of the Wired article though: "@WiredReader: Kill yr blog. 2004 over. Google won't find you. Too much cruft from HuffPo, NYT. Commenters are tards. C u on Facebook?"

Who's who in the racial online zoo?

I am a disappointed in some "online professionals". The reason I am using the term with my tongue poking and prodding at my cheek is because I believe there is a fair amount of professionalism being thrown down the toilet. Mandy de Waal wrote an article for ITWeb titled "Who's who in the Web 2.0 Zoo?".Some people seemingly took great offence that there where no people of colour in the article. Rafiq was invited to participate, he declined. The angle of the article was simply an interview and answer process. Certain people who are major players in the online market were asked to name three people who they would want to work with in the online arena. These people did so. Not based on racial innuendos as justifications. These were simply the people who each interviewee wished to work with on a professional level.Unfortunately someone needed to respond, someone always need to respond, and needed to emphatically make a racial statement. This is extremely sad. Ramon Thomas took up the cause and titled his article "Who’s who in the non-white Web 2.0 South African Zoo". The title alone immediately marginalises his audience and those involved in his article. He immediately boxes those in his article and ostracizes those who read it.The immediate feeling that I get is that this is like affirmative action in sports teams - the Springboks to be precise. The situation that rugby players of colour have faced in the past is a lose-lose, if they are chosen they question the reasons for their selection. If they are not chosen then they wonder if it was due to their race. Lose. Lose.If I was on Ramon's list I'd be pretty upset. The candidates on this list are no longer the best in their profession but only the best in their racial class. Mandy's article might have lacked some depth but she did not force the answers out of the participants, they chose out of their own free will. She also did not classify her article as black or white inspite of the black text and white background colour. Now there are more web professionals who have been dragged in to this to make a statement. They have become pawns in the game of race.Mandy made an error in undermining hew own article when she used a pull quote that included the words "White boys club". If this was the angle of the story then I think that this would have been an integral part of an article that would be able to ask some very important questions about the racial state of the online industry. The pull quote was irrelevant in the context of her story and in my opinion undermined the people who took part in the article.There is an important question to be asked: where are the black professionals in the online industry?Darren Ravens asks the question more appropriately. But I think that Darren Gorton got it right.Personally I would like to be considered a media professional for the work that I do, not for the work that I do as a white(ish), Greek (almost), South African male.