Blogging is back? ORLY

by Robert Scoble on June 30, 2009

Heh, Tom Foremski reads too much into traffic numbers, he notes that my blog’s traffic is down by half recently. Well, duh! If you don’t blog people don’t read.

But my numbers are way up elsewhere.

Who cares where the audience is? I don’t. Now thanks to working on my FriendFeed aggregator you’ll see my words whether I write them on Wordpress, on Tumblr, on Posterous, on Facebook, on Twitter, on Flickr, on Upcoming.org, on Building43, on YouTube, or a number of other places.

I noticed that traffic on blogs was flat. Techmeme’s traffic hasn’t gone up very quickly. FriendFeed, Twitter, and Facebook have. Here’s a chart comparing Techmeme to FriendFeed.com to Scobleizer.com.

So, I went where the traffic is. By the way, most of the people reading my blog this week came from Twitter or FriendFeed.

So is blogging back? Yes, as a way to feed FriendFeed, Twitter, and Facebook.

Is it a hub anymore? No. My blog used to be the center of where you’d find everything I was thinking and doing. That hub has now moved for me to FriendFeed and for most other people to Twitter or Facebook.

By the way, my experiment of trying to stay off Twitter and FriendFeed this week is going fairly well, I’ve only slipped a few times. But there are some things that need longer than 140 characters and there are lots of things that are lame to do on a blog, like saying I’ve gone surfing.

Dave Winer, though, added that he predicted a return to blogging as people discover that it’s nicer to finish a thought that requires more than 140 characters. That I agree with.

By the way, today FriendFeed got nice new Themes. I like the new Helvetica one.

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  • Long ago (circa 2005-2006) a link from Scobleizer.com or Techcrunch would send thousands of people to my site. I was linked to by both sites in the last month and barely saw a blip - although many came under "direct" and Google which could have been your RSS feed.

    Nowadays, though, a link from twitter.com/mashable or twitter.com/garyvee can send thousands of readers. That's part of the reason why I moved from a blogging platform that can syndicate out and also bring back comments in from these same networks. So I agree, gravity has shifted. (leaving this on Frienfeed too under your post)
  • In July of 2008 I saw the same thing. I said the importance of blog linking was declining.

    http://louisgray.com/live/2008/07/importance-of...

    It is still important to be engaged with the community, but it just doesn't drive traffic. I used to think maybe it was because I had gotten more visible (like those who read Robert probably know who I am already), but it is true across the board. My top traffic sources are Google, followed by Friendfeed and Twitter.
  • Yes where is the "FriendFeed this comment"
  • If you are using Disqus you get FriendFeed comments automatically.
  • When your hot, your hot.

    Does anyone pay attention to how much the twitter nuts actually read?

    In other words, not all clicks are created equal and I believe you will find when they find your blog while searching for it, they actually read the content.
  • Great point Bob. I do believe the depth of immersion within a pages content is more limited in scope when folks find it by serendipitous discovery. But on the flip side, you're getting exposed to a much wider audience (if you're relatively new to blogging like myself).

    It helps to find that slice of folks that really love to tune into your message. I don't mind 80%+ that bounce. I'm really grateful that 15-20% had a wonderful read and experience.
  • Blogging never went away, you just went off the reservation. Your blog should be
    thehub of all activities as it's the only space you completely control.
    Friendfeed may go away but your blog is forever.
  • Another issue is the Google juice...as Tom Foremski's post says
    "Also, Google doesn’t pay as much attention to Twitter and Friendfeed as it does to online sites. If you don’t exist on Google, you just don’t exist. It’s not surprising that Mr Scoble made this surprising u-turn."

    Well we know this is not true, take a look at how long Google takes to index a Friendfeed or a twitter post.
    Right now Google: "Blogging is back? ORLY" I see twitter.com as the first result and Friendfeed will follow shortly. FYI: I don't even see scobleizer.com in the results yet. LOL
  • In the space of three paragraphs you go from "Who cares where the audience is? I don’t." to "So, I went where the traffic is."

    Am I wrong to read this as at least a bit of a mixed message?

    For my money I'd like to see you extend your experimental return to blogging to a month, rather than just a week, Robert. I don't think a week will really do this experiment justice.
  • I meant that I am not religious about where I conversate with people and that I will got to where they are.
  • I now recall I first read you on FriendFeed, and it is FriendFeed that drives me to your content.

    So I get the point you are trying to make.

    The way you think and write, it seems that FriendFeed is a better medium for you, as opposed to blogging all your thoughts, ideas, and pointers.

    I think that hulk image of you really helps on FriendFeed.

    Meanwhile, you have that little puny image in Disqus.

    On further thought and review, I now believe your original point(s) are well taken.

    I am a bit slow on the uptake, how did you turn your image into the Hulk Scoble (plus, I'm old in Internet years)?

    Ok, I gotta get over to FriendFeed.
    '
    Everyone have a good day.
  • You went surfing? Sweet! I just ate a mango...
  • I used to read your blog posts regularly, but I just don't have the time to play around with Twitter and FriendFeed all day. To me there everything is just too cluttered and way too much bullshit.

    I love simple things and a blog is a fairly simple thing that already makes sense to hundreds of million people. Also I love the way how a blog is not realtime but totally asynchronous and I can read it whenever I have time.

    So if you wanna reach Mainstreet and not Geekstreet than my advise is to restart blogging.

    Alex
  • Don
    Whatever, you lost me a while ago because none of those mediums result in well thought out posts ... twitter is mindless ... and friendfeed is snippets. I guess the question isn't did your numbers grow, but did you lose possible volume ...?
  • Fair enough. I might have lose something, but that's the tradeoff that I was willing to make. Now I have a strong blog and a strong FriendFeed and a strong Twitter and a decent Facebook presence (I have more followers on FriendFeed and Facebook than TechCrunch do, for instance). So did I lose volume? We need a few more years to judge that, me thinks.
  • I've been having success (as a small time blogger) mixing my media/content. I compose a few posts a week (4-7) and generally bs and chat with folks in twitter and friendfeed while I'm scanning for interesting info.

    Blogs are great for putting together local thought gravity wells that are uninteruppted. Comments then fly in and a very friendfeed like conversation forms below a post. I'd prefer conversations be both under the post, and within social media. That's the glory of the friendfeed iframes, I can have my cake and eat it too (thanks Paul Buchheit and crew).
  • I agree with Dave Winer that to have an opinion you need more than 140 characters. Micromedia and lifestreaming won't replace blogging instead they compliment and assist to distribute the content to our followers
  • I agree with you and Dave Winner. As I was commenting on your post yesterday, we need thought through blog content that gives clarity. We've got tons of content, and even more thanks to micromedia. To really add value, we need well written posts that call people to action.

    If we didn't have this - what would we tweet about? ;-)
  • Three Card Monte
    Ever notice that when ever scobleizer.com traffic falls, Robert claims the audience has moved elsewhere.

    It is always to some other service (Blip.tv, Twitter, FriendFeed) on which he, his employer, or audience can not confirm such a claim.
  • My employer doesn't care about traffic. That might be one clue why it no longer matters that my traffic be where I can measure it.

    There are more important things to measure, by the way. Engagement. Twitter, for instance, shows that via @ replies and retweets and other mentions. FriendFeed shows that by number of comments per item and number of likes per item. Facebook is the same.

    But Blip.tv shows traffic and there are ways to measure traffic on Twitter, too. Everyone using a URL shortener knows how many clickthroughs they have, for instance (if they care).

    Finally, here the audience might have just been bots. On FriendFeed, Twitter, and Facebook you can see that I have about 150,000 followers. All of whom you can click on and see who they are and what level of engagement they have with me. You have FAR MORE INFORMATION about my audience on those services than you have on my blog (well, except the last few weeks I've added a Google Friend Connect widget so you can start to see the same thing on my blog).
  • CC
    "Who cares where the audience is? I don't..."

    You should, fragmentation is a killer, as any Business School case-study, from the past century could tell you. Your old Channel 9, in fact, consolidated 8 and 10 into 9, making it actually stronger and better, imho.
  • I agree with you.
  • onsalecc
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