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Do You Think That Blogging is Dying? Posted: 24 Oct 2008 03:00 AM CDT Blogging has been pretty mainstream for over five years now, but ever since Technorati released their recent State of the Blogosphere address, there has been a strong buzz around the blogosphere and the impending death of blogging.   This is primarily because of figures showing that about 200 million blogs have been created, but only 7.4 million have published a post in the past 4 months.   As this site loosely focuses on blogging, I wanted to share my thoughts and hear what some of your opinions are. In my personal opinion, I don’t think that blogging is dying at all.  My belief is that to many people start a blog for the wrong reasons, or misunderstand the work and commitment associated with blogging.   I would say there are currently two primary reasons why most people start blogging: Get Rich Quick - I’m not sure why this idea is out there, but there are a ton of people that believe that blogging will make your rich quick.   There are of course a number of people that have made a lot of money blogging, but most people who starting blogging now will need time to develop their blogging skills and develop readership before there are any monetary possibilities. Personal Blog - This is closer in line with the original intention of blogging.   People launch a personal blog where they can talk about whatever they want.   Here are family pictures, these are my political opinions, and my favorite sports team won last night!   These types of blogs don’t have any focus that would appeal to a large group of people, so they lack readership, which in turn discourages the blogger from putting time into their hobby. I also think the emergence of microblogging has had a strong influence on people leaving their blogs dormant.   Things like tumblelogs, Twitter and Facebook status updates have become very popular, negating what blogging offered to some people.   It’s much quicker and serves the same purpose for them. What is the Future of Blogging? This is always tough to gauge, so you kind of need to look at trends. More User Interaction - The appeal of blogging has always been the interaction that is possible with the author and other readers, making the site a conversation station.   As bloggers continue to narrow their focus on smaller niches, the interaction seems to get better.  If you look at what WordPress is doing with their acquisitions, you can see how user interaction (improved comments, polls, BBPress, etc.) seems to be their focus for the future of their platform. Rise in Video Blogging - What this method lacks with SEO (search engines can’t index what is said in a video), it makes up for in personalization.   Video posts can be created very quickly with mini-rants and I think readers enjoy video blog posts because they can actually see the author and hear the emotion in their voices.  These types of sites can develop a strong following very quickly and don’t rely much on search engines to bring them traffic.    Video blogging can also be integrated into a standard blog, giving people the best of both worlds. I also believe we will continue to see fewer blogs in the traditional sense, meaning a standard website where the homepage displays a loop of the most recent posts.  More than likely some sort of hybrid will emerge over the next couple years, which is a cross between a Content Management System (CMS) and a blog. What do you think?  What is the future of blogging? --- Related Articles at WordPress Hacks: Free Glossy Blogging Icons Does WordPress Need Trackbacks Any More? The Evolution of WordPress Must-Have Plugins For A Professional WordPress Blog WordPress is More Than Just Blogging Software You are reading Do You Think That Blogging is Dying? © 2008 | WordPress Hacks | WordPress eBook | Premium WordPress Themes. Enjoy writing about WordPress? Get your blog more exposure by joining the WordPress Hacks writing team!

WordPress 2.6.3 Released! Posted: 24 Oct 2008 02:18 AM CDT Despite the upcoming release of WordPress 2.7 (hopefully next month), the WordPress team still takes their commitment to keeping the WordPress 2.6 branch safe.   Today they released WordPress 2.6.3.  In this update, a vulnerability is fixed in the Snoopy library, which is used for the dashboard feeds. According to the WordPress team, this is a minor vulnerability and the only change in this update, so in order to upgrade all you need to do is upgrade the following two files: wp-includes/class-snoopy.php wp-includes/version.php You can also doing a normal upgrade to 2.3 as well. --- Related Articles at WordPress Hacks: How To: Changing Colors in WordPress 2.5 Upcoming WordPress Milestones Premium WordPress Themes: Flash News and the Gazette Edition Premium WordPress Theme: Revolution City Now Available Premium Theme: PolaroidPress You are reading WordPress 2.6.3 Released! © 2008 | WordPress Hacks | WordPress eBook | Premium WordPress Themes. Enjoy writing about WordPress? Get your blog more exposure by joining the WordPress Hacks writing team!

WordPress Ranked 33rd in the World Posted: 23 Oct 2008 07:48 PM CDT Congrats are in order for Automattic and the WordPress.com team!  According to a recent report by Comscore, it looks like WordPress.com was ranked as the 33rd best web property on the internet for the month of September, with 23,125,000 total visits. It will be interesting to see if WordPress.com continues to rise up this list over the coming months. --- Related Articles at WordPress Hacks: WP Themes Gallery Lists Top 40 WordPress Blogs WordPress Theme Galleries Automattic Secures Another Round of Financing Free WordPress Theme: iPoker Hack WordPress Rebrands as WPHacks.com! You are reading WordPress Ranked 33rd in the World © 2008 | WordPress Hacks | WordPress eBook | Premium WordPress Themes. Enjoy writing about WordPress? Get your blog more exposure by joining the WordPress Hacks writing team!

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