Twitter, FriendFeed, Facebook status updates, and other micro-blogging services are extremely popular right now. Many people use them to post short bits of information that might once have gone into a blog, including me. Because these micro-blogging services are so popular, some people question whether blogs are doomed to go the way of the dinosaur. I strongly disagree, and I think there are others out there who feel the same way. In fact, there is some evidence that blogging is making a comeback.
There’s no doubt that I post things more frequently on Twitter than on this blog. My blogging efforts have lagged quite a bit over the past year. In spite of this, I think something like Twitter is fundamentally different, and complementary, to traditional blogging. If you take a look at my Twitter stream and then compare that to what I tend to blog about, you’ll see that the topics rarely overlap. Yes, I use Twitter Tools to ensure that my blog posts are reflected in my Twitter stream as well as to include my Twitter stream in the sidebar of my blog. But I use each tool in fundamentally different ways. I tend to write a blog post only when I feel strongly about something, or have a particular interest I want to express. I use Twitter for quick throwaway comments or to share a quick link here and there that I find interesting or want to comment on.
One other point is that in spite of the exponential growth in other online tools such as Facebook, my personal blog has not diminished in importance to me. The opposite is true: Family Man Librarian has become the one place where I freely express myself online; the place and the content are completely under my control. That is very important to me. The desire to have more control over my online identity is a key factor in my decision to delete my Facebook account, as well as to rely more on hosting my own photos here instead of directing everyone to a photo sharing sight like Flickr.