Thursday, June 09, 2011

Am I a dinosaur?


You will find a few new links in my blogroll. The first new entries for some time. None of these are new blogs, just new to me. My feeling is there are very few new blogs on the block nowadays, and quite a few of my erstwhile favourites have drifted into neglect. To be fair I find I don’t visit them as much as I used to either. It is also noticeable that the hit stats of this blog are showing a slow but steady decline. (Two obvious reasons for this of course could be 1. my posting frequency has dropped off a bit recently and 2. I’m posting stuff nobody’s interested in!).

But it’s got me thinking lately - has the blogging golden age passed? Technology moves on apace, and fads come and go on the Internet as they do elsewhere. More so, even.

This blog was by no means a pioneer but it has been going for more than five years now. In terms of a presence on the web (at least inasmuch as an openly accessible url worldwide) that makes it older than Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Spotify.

- The first tweet was twittered on the 21st March 2006. That was longer ago than I thought but still makes Twitter 8 days younger than Feel It.  

- Although Facebook was launched on the US college circuit in 2004, it wasn’t opened to the public until September 2006.

- YouTube launched in beta in May 2005, but not officially until November 2006.

- Spotify had its beginnings in 2006, eventually being launched to the public in October 2008.  

I mention all these because they now consume a lot of peoples’ time when sat in front of their computer/laptop/netbook/iphone/android etc. Some of the time that probably used to be spent composing or reading blogs.

YouTube and Spotify in particular have made it easy to find and consume music on the Internet. I’m not a Spotify user but I certainly find I’m using YouTube more and more in my search for new (well, old mostly, in my case) music  (and audioblogs less). In fact it’s staggering how much obscure and old music you can find on YouTube nowadays; and a lot of the people posting their old record collections there might well have been running, and visiting, blogs if YouTube had not been available to them.

As for Facebook and Twitter (neither of which I have found the slightest inclination to use) I shudder to think of the amount of time spent on them updating statuses, friending, tweeting, looking at Izzy’s latest out of focus self picture taken at the pub up the road last night (which you saw being taken because you were there), blah, blah. To what end though I wonder? And by the way there is no time left after all that to actually read a blog (let alone a newspaper, or a magazine, or a book).                       

There you have it.

As I said all this has passed through my mind in the last few weeks.  Coincidentally, in the latest (July ’11) Word magazine there is an article that mulls over the same question of “where have all the bloggers gone?” and reaches some of same conclusions as me (although in a much more in depth and journalistically professional way, of course).    
 
So is the whole blogging malarkey now officially “old school”?

Am I a dinosaur?  

(The answer to the second question I know is yes, I keep playing 30+ year old music on vinyl for chrissakes!)

Sergio Mendes And The New Brasil ’77 – The Real Thing  1977


From this , a great little album I picked up this week for next to nothing. 

8 comments:

davyh said...

It's an interesting question. I'm not sure what the answer is, but I have to say I love Twitter: for me it complements blogging nicely - fills the gaps between posts when you want to say something but not write a whole letter, as it were, has helped me make new online friends, some of whom also have blogs I've discovered, or who've found mine, through it, gives me a laugh, intrigues me, gets news to me first. I'd love it if you gave it a go. Tweets from your car boots would make my Sundays.

Scott said...

I am a bit of a latecomer to your blog as I just discovered it the other day through Davy H's fine blog.Have only had a chance to read a few posts but will certainly be coming back for more. Great tracks from Mighty Diamonds and Barbara West.

Darcy said...

Tweets from my car boots.... now that's a thought. Of course I would have to do it live which means that I would have to have a suitable mobile device. In our household everyone except me has a Blackberry, I just have the boring old company Nokia. What's the chances of being able to borrow Mrs Darce's Blackberry then? Hmmm that would probably involve surgery!

Darcy said...

Ha! just as I was writing my comment so you were writing yours Scott. Welcome aboard, and your blog is new to me too. Will link it very soon.

Raggedy said...

Well, I'd rather be a dinosaur than not being at all. Everybody has their slow-go-time, and I am not into the Twitter thing at all. Neither am I a friend of blog walking and leaving my URL everywhere on the net. Que sera sera!
I have the funniest stats imaginable with extreme spikes as well as lows. That's life.
l love your blog.

ana-b said...

I'm with Raggedy, on all accounts.

May was not a great month stat-wise for my blog and June was well on it's way to becoming the single worst month this year....until something happened. I don't know what. I've seen a major spike over the past week.

If I'm lucky it'll last a few more days and help even out the rest of the month.

I might add that there has never been such an inconsequential, and thus utterly boring, medium as Twitter. Be proud that you're not involved. Play records instead.

davyh said...

Most of my favourite things are inconsequential.

Anonymous said...

a dinosaur maybe, but one with divine musical selection