Content consumption moves away from the original point of publication.
Many people rely on aggregators and filters to leisure in the information streams.
As up and coming as blogging was "back then", Twitter and others are now.
Ruud Hein asks: are you there? If not, does anyone care?
Ive always read a lot of news [by the way, do you notice how we start stories, posts and articles with I these days and remember how that annoyed the hell out of our teachers back then?]
When I was 16 or so, the thing to read if you were sort of socio-aware, "smarter than thou art"-style, was De Volkskrant and De Waarheid. And, not or. That would be slacking. You cant slack socio-awareness.
I read the newspaper front to back, and Im not talking about moving through the house with it either, you know.
It was utterly in and I was totally hooked up, clued in and every day brought the same project: read the thing front to back.
By the time Real Life began I had other things to do than be an utter and complete news geek. I became somewhat of an incomplete geek, so to say; I would (oh please forgive me!) skim the newspaper [gasping sounds, utter shock] Yup And well, you know how it goes; it was downhill from there. Smoking, alcohol No hang on " thats another story.
No, this one ends with me catching the news here and there. Not having CNN 24 on switched on on a separate monitor. Not even specifically tuning into the news anymore.
Most things sort of happen somewhere and then they sort of bubble up into my face. Or not.
It simply doesnt matter that much anymore in the same way seeing video from an event on the other side of the world isnt something that glues me to the screen the same way it did when I was 7 and someone flew the freaking tape in so I could see it on the news " 3 days later. Right?
And its of course the personal version of the story youve been hearing about from your bubble-up news filter, that traditional reporting is either changing or dying, but the reason I tell it here is because the same thing is happening to your blog.
I dont read your blog front to back anymore. I dont monitor your blog 24/7 anymore. The news used to be on your blog or at the very least your news used to be there.
Now its not. Not for me.
I subscribe to less blogs, unsubscribe from more but feel more informed than ever.
Thats because what some call Tweeple, twibe or whatever, and what I like to refer to as the people I know online " we talk. And I get a much better feel of what counts or matters or is happening than from your blog.
I noticed it the other day when I hit Mark Read while my eye fell on my Twitter client de jour where Lisa Barone said she just unsubscribed from yet another blog:
Now in the famous words of relations gone bad everywhere; it's not you, it's me. But if you want to make sure it is you, you better listen up, I think.
The decline No, let's give that the capitalization it needs; The Decline has started. The Move has begun. And The Move is away from your site and onto other attention streams (that's what we cool kids call them; attention streams).
Let me try to put that another way that sounds less "ah, yeah, but that's all geeky you and you " you're really weird, Ruud".
If the New York Times -- the grand ol' lady, yes? -- with its army of brilliant, prize winning writers can barely make it, how the hell do you think you are going to keep people's attention?
Dedicated single source reading is out. There's just too much of you out there.
The RSS reader seemed to solve that; think of it as Aggregator 0.1 Alpha. Then sites doing the aggregating and filtering seemed to be it; Mashable, Lifehacker, TechCrunch. That was Aggregator 1.0 " as static and dumb as Web 1.0
But now it's Joe Cocker, freaking twist- shocking his body and scream-singing "aaaaah I get by with a little help from my friends": it's Aggregator 2.0 where we filter and we participate.
And you know what I noticed the other day?
You're not there. And I don't miss you.
When are you going to come out and play?
Images repurposed from It's the participation economy, stupid! It is -- and I paying attention is the best investment you can make