The Future of Blogging... Maybe

What do the Obama election, the terrorist crisis in Mumbai and US Airways Flight 1549flock of geese all have in common? They all proclaimed their popularity by the use of micro-blogging. While the most popular use of micro-blogging is still within the topic of “technology,” professional communicators are quickly realizing how their use of this new media is changing within the hierarchy of news reporting credibility. Marketers used to tell consumers what is popular and reporters used to determine what is newsworthy. The new communications model comes directly from the consumers. This means that micro-blogs and their followers have already begun to resemble the blogosphere and is no longer used simply for “status” reporting. In his article, “When Micro-blogging Grows Up,” Ben Lorica says, “more people are using Twitter instead of blogs, following links from trusted sources essentially using Twitter as a highly filtered blog reader.” According to the new communications model, the “trusted sources” that Ben discusses are not companies or so called professionals. Trusted sources today are everyday people, they are working class individuals that are able to report openly and honestly about their findings.

The reason why technology is still the most popular micro-blogging topic, is the same reason why technology started out as the most popular blogging topic. The people that are interested in technology, are the same people that create the technology for any new media item. So, they are the first to know about it and experiment with it. One way to measure the popularity of social media items and topics is by looking at the “Technorati's authority.” An interesting fact to technology, communications and politics bloggers and readers is that, “Obama dominated, accounting for 80% of subscribers in the politics category and over 70% of the Twitterholic 100 are based in the U.S. Blogs.”



Despite the growing popularity of micro-blogs, it is important to note that they are not blogs. Micro-blogs are only used for snippets of concise information while blogs are like live-journals that give more information and detailed opinions.