Friday, February 19, 2010

Soooo 2006

Just when I was feeling guilty about not blogging for a week or two, along comes a study by the Pew Research Center saying blogging is for old folks anyhow.
Instead of being cutting edge, it seems bashing out a blog is something you do in between bouts of mindless dribbling onto your Zimmer frame.
Of course I have no idea what the Pew Research Center is. I assume it has nothing to do with those hard benches people sit on in church, although it's been so long since I last went into the House of God, that they probably sit on bean bags now.
Back to that study. The D.C. nonprofit think tank was designed to gauge the online habits of America's "millennial generation," a demographic group that is considered a bellwether of the nation's future technology trends.
And as someone who works in a media industry that is changing by the day, I coudn't possibly admit to not being someone who is sliding up and down on the cutting edge of technology. I'd never admit to anyone that I really don't know the difference between an ipod and an iphone, although I know a bit about the I Ching.
The results of the study indicate blogging has become so 2006, when 28 percent of the two groups studied, teens 12 to 17 and young adults 18 to 29, actively blogged.
By the fall of 2009, that percentage dropped off to only 14 percent of teens and 15 percent of young adults as blogging "lost its luster for many young users," said Amanda Lenhart, one of the report's authors.
Lenhart said one reason for the shift might have come from the rapid ascent of Facebook over MySpace to the top of the social media charts in the past year.
The MySpace format encourages members to blog, while Facebook instead features short status updates, she said.
So next time a colleague starts banging on about having to write their blog, just turn around, fix them with a withering eye and say: "Dude - that's soooo 2006."

On Blog PTSD

Now then. What the heck. It seems I had forgotten about my blog completely rather than just neglecting it this time. To return after so long...