Duncan Riley is on a roll. After a multitude of posts from around the Web this weekend once again debating whether comments away from the blog were a good thing, or if new Web services like Twitter and FriendFeed were useful or were instead creating too much noise, Duncan checked in from The Inquisitr and came to the conclusion I'd reached long ago but not said as eloquently: "It's All About the User".Duncan, as I have, argues also that those bloggers who embrace changes will leap ahead of the competition, by being more visible in more places, and finding engagement where it has ended up, rather than trying to force it back the way it was.
See Also:Blogging 1.0 centered around who could:
Coding Experiments: The Blogosphere’s Changing Opinions on FriendFeed
Hutch Carpenter: The Noise About FriendFeed Noise
ReadWriteWeb: Don't Be So Naive: Friendfeed Adds to the Noise
Scobleizer: Why Google News has no noise
Scobleizer: Why FriendFeed won’t go mainstream (Part I)
Scobleizer: Why FriendFeed will go mainstream (Part II)
* Amass the most page views
* Display the most ads
* Get the most comments
* Attract the most RSS subscribers
But then came along some inconvenient wrinkles to the mix:
* Full RSS feeds took page views away from the blog
* Readers installed ad filters, and didn't click
* Comments started to live elsewhere
* Every blogger in an industry covered the exact same stories
This change has caused serious strain for those living in Blogging 1.0, as they've seen their page views fluctuate, and as comments moved to third party sites, be they RSS readers, social networks, Twitter, FriendFeed and others. You can spot those living in Blogging 1.0 as they're the ones railing about keeping all their comments on their blog, and they're the ones saying that FriendFeed or Twitter have absolutely no value, and complaining about the noise.
Some bloggers, like Robert Scoble, have successfully made the transition to Blogging 2.0. Robert has embraced the new noise of Twitter and FriendFeed, and worries less about where the conversation is taking place, but more about whether it's taking place at all. I've similarly engaged the new places to hold conversations, including Shyftr and a new host of social media sites, like Assetbar, SocialMedian, BlogRize and Yokway.
Since adopting FriendFeed and Twitter, both sites have enabled the conversation to be in new places, and each site refers more activity to my blog. Others, including Charlie Anzman and Hutch Carpenter, have publicly said FriendFeed ranks among their top referrals. And now, Duncan Riley can be counted firmly in that camp. He writes:
"I’ve come to the conclusion that what is happening in blogging 2.0 is something that I can’t stop nor change, so it is something I’m going to fully embrace, for all the inherent risk part of me is telling me it represents. I accept that others will rally against this: it’s human nature to do so, but no amount of protest will change the evolving reality of blogging 2.0. My advice to others: embrace it, or miss out."
My position, repeated a number of times here, and elsewhere, including today's Elite Tech News podcast, is that the world of blogging has changed. Those bloggers who accept the changes will have a natural advantage over those who do not. The additional time it takes to engage on FriendFeed, Twitter and other social media sites will absolutely pay off in the end, even if it's hard to understand for those who've always accepted things for what they are.