Teach42

Like many other bloggers that I consider to be colleagues, my blogging has tapered off quite a bit over the years, and while some of the fault lies in myself, I put most of the blame squarely on Twitter. Why take half an hour to write several paragraphs, hyperlink it up and find an appropriate image, when I can just spout off 140 characters and move on? It just makes sense, right? That’s why I’m rather looking forward to Flutter’s official launch.

I jest, but it does bring out an obvious reason why blogging is becoming less and less of a ‘hot topic’ and Twitter keeps getting the buzz. It’s quick, it’s easy, it’s accessible, and most of all it doesn’t require a significant commitment. While it’s very arguable whether that’s a good thing or not, it’s a reality.

It used to be the standard, just an assumption that everybody would have a blog. Join a PLN, create a blog, set up your aggregator, be a part of the club. But now…. Well, I’m spending less and less time even using my aggregator. If it’s important enough to read, more than likely someone will tweet about it. And if they don’t… well, there’s a lot of good things to read that I miss. I can live with that. The library is full of them.

So the question then becomes, with dozens of microblog options out there (and even nanoblogs!), would you recommend a newbie start a blog? If somebody who is just getting started with community building and personal learning networks wanted an avenue to share, would you even suggest that they start a blog or set up an aggregator? Or do you shuffle them straight to Twitter/Plurk and roll from there? Or a different option altogether?

And don’t worry, I’m not missing the irony of posting this on a blog. I’ll be tweeting it out as well!

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