The “is blogging dead” meme (although no one has the chutzpah to call it what it is) rears its interesting head today over at the FastForward Blog — and much like other memes about blogging (there is / is not an A-list, your blog really is / is not a blog if you have / do not have comments, its impossible to start a blog these days, etcetera etcetera), will likely never go away, and pops up from time to time on the meme-radar.

Granted, I have not been blogging as long as some graybeards, so the earliest recollection I can recall was when Technorati revealed some data on blogging which suggested that it had plateaued off.  It was last year, as I recall.  Lots of handwringing around that time.  Twitter existed.  Facebook existed.

I think my position then is the same as it is now.  For those who like / love / accept blogging, the diversification of online voice is an inevitable non-threatening event.  There were a LOT of blogs pre-Twitter (and even pre-Facebook) that were false starts and abortive events in the making.  There were many people calling themselves “bloggers” who were not really — in the sense that they tried it, then gave it up.  Wasn’t really their cup of tea.

And I think that is, as they say, totally “ok”.

The explosion of the ways people can share their opinion, voice, and mind capital is a very good thing.  It allows folks to find a niche for the way they want to express themselves.  And that’s totally fine, because folks who find Twitter is more their bag shouldn’t be blogging anyway.

Of course you can do both.  Its no more mutually exclusive than peanut butter and jam (which is to say that it can be quite complementary) — but I was referring to people who really find their voice on microblogging services to the exclusion of blogging.

Bloggers, or those who formerly blog, leaving for other new media forms of expression … well, it shrinks the pond for whoever’s left.  That usually means, I find, concentrating talent.  Which, as I believe, is a very good thing.

Blogging lends itself to a longer form of expression.  Something that can be rambling, but something that has the potential for distilled and substantive thought.  Without transmogrifying into a “this is why blogging is great post”, it also offers people to really own their ideas, and express it in a way that is available to everyone.  Not merely yoru Twitter group.  Or your “friends” (wherever they may be, in whatever social network they might be).  And for the Google-conscious of you, it certainly means that the public at large will better be able to find *your* opinion more easily as well — Twitter, Friendfeed, and all of their ilk are poorly indexed.

There is some further handwringing over how blogs have not innovated, or renovated, or something to that effect, which, I think is on the hogwash-y side of things.  Blogs have their place in the new media ecosystem, and it is one that is maturing, as we see blogs take their place — and the bloggers who own them — as part of the mainstream media.  Smaller bloggers may not consider entities like the “HuffingtonPost” or the “Daily Kos” “blogs” anymore by their sheer size alone.

But to separate them based on their size would be a ludicrous butchering of what a definition means, as whatever a ‘blog’ is should encompass all forms of that Thing in spite of its size.

The fracturing of online conversations was inevitable.  It will continue to happen ad infinitum, with the happy tension of aggregators trying to rein in all conversations at the same time.  Blogs have their place in all of that.  It was at there at the beginning and it will be there at the end.  

And that is totally ok.