In the most recent episode of The New Mediology (listen online or in iTunes), Nathan and I discussed the recent debate in social media circles that blogging is dead and that lifestreaming is the new thing to do. What prompted much of this debate was that at the end of June, one of the blogging world's top bloggers decided to abandon his blog in order to begin lifestreaming. The blogger, Steve Rubel, announced on his blog in a final post that he was leaving blogging to lifestream because "blogging feels old."
I've been reading Steve for several years now and have generally thought he was pretty well on track with things in social media, but I think he made a mistake this time. The mistake I believe he made is that he gave up ground as an influential voice in the world of social media in order to do something that does not continue to validate the voice he'd worked hard to develop.
With blogging, you have the chance to build a tribe by telling people what you think. If anyone is interested, they'll keep coming back to know more about what you think. With lifestreaming you don't tell people what you think. You're really just showing them the things you're thinking about. That's very different. Thought leaders offer perspective by telling you what they think. Everyone else just tells you the things that are on their mind, catch their eye, or just seem interesting. I believe Steve Rubel gave up a great seat at the thought leader table to go sit with everyone else.
If you're trying to establish a credible, authoritative voice on any topic, blogging is perhaps one of the best opportunities ever available to you to do so. You can do lifestreaming secondarily, but don't walk away from a chance to become a leader by telling people what you think.
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Unrelated Request: We need a new theme for the beginning and end of The New Mediology podcast. If you want to suggest a new show theme song at a site like Podsafe music, you own the rights for a song, or want to write an original song for the show, please let us know. We really, need a new one!