The Flow
If you've been blogging for a few years you've probably noticed that where your traffic comes from is changing.
When I started in 2004, most of my traffic (once I actually had any) came from two places, Google and other bloggers. Though I still see traffic from those sources, more and more it's coming from Twitter, Facebook and an assortment of other social networks. In fact, some days that's where the majority comes from.
Not only that, but the conversation that used to take place almost solely on blogs via the comment thread has morphed over into divergent number of social media sites, namely Twitter.
Stowe Boyd has a brief essay on the topic in his post, Beyond Blogs: The Conversation Has Moved Into the Flow.
"Basically, conversation is moving from a very static and slow form of conversation -- the comments thread on blog posts -- to a more dynamic and fast form of conversation: into the flow in Twitter, Friendfeed, and others," says Stowe.
The problem with that is it's harder to contain the conversation, especially when you may not be a part of it or even aware it's taking place. (Good reason to use Trackur and include your Twitter @username.)
Stowe says he thinks the genie can't be put back in the bottle. Scoble echoes that sentiment by saying, "The era when bloggers could control where the discussion of their stuff took place is totally over."
Since my blogs over the years have never garnered a great number of comments for any one post anyway, it's not that big a deal to me. I'll follow the conversation as best I can wherever it happens to take place.
How about you? How does the fact that your blog may not be the locus of conversation that it once was affect you?
Paul,
I understand how it was easier with communication (blog posts/comments/track backs/etc) being contained - I find it interesting how much it spreads out, through Twitter, Aggregators, Feeds, etc.
If you think about it - wasn't the goal to get people involved, get them talking? If that means giving up control and maybe only being a small part of it - so be it.
What better way than to open up....?
Just my two cents.
Sabine
Posted by: Sabine Pyrchalla | April 13, 2008 at 09:47 PM