I’ve bitched about microblogging treading on my blogging toes before, so when I see trends like this occur, I can’t lie, it does make me smile.
Here’s a graph comparing the use of blogging platform, WordPress, against microblogging platform Twitter:
As you can see, WordPress is increasing again, whilst Twitter is stabilizing. Here are some interesting stats:
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Twitter, currently, has around 58.3 million unique visitors worldwide, which is down from 58.4 million in September 2009. WordPress gained 10 million unique visitors to end the month of October on 151.8 million.
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Blogger currently has 291.7 million visitors worldwide, which increased by 18.2 million users come the end of October.
The most interesting thing to notice is that Blogging never actually went away or died, it was just clouded by microblogging. I don’t think blogging will ever die and nor do I think microblogging will die, what I do feel is that microblogging will stabilize and might even sink a little, but of course there are so many variables to take into account, so don’t take my words for this – That said, strong increase, stabilize, minor decrease (althouth these things seldom decrease), increase again, that’s sort of how I see things going. As far as blogging goes, I do feel that microblogging will carry on treading on the toes of bloggers, however, I think microblogging fuels blogging in a powerful manner and as long as microblogging platforms get more popular, so, in turn, will blogs.
Long live blogs, you can’t express enough in 140 characters!
Stats via TechCrunch
Been blogging for about a year now, and still as keen on making a name for myself as when I started. And, to be honest, I haven’t got onto the Twitter train, in any way or form…
Hi @Gareth, nice of you to pop in.
I use various micro blogging platforms on top of all my blogging and I have to admit, you’ve got far more chance building a solid foundation using blogging rather than micro blogging. I find micro blogging is useful to shoot out a quick message or hook up with new people, but when it comes to ROI, blogging is far better, as I mentioned there’s only so much you can fit into 140 characters. There are a couple things that I find useful with Twitter, for example – It’s easy to follow competitors and see what they’re doing (you could use Google Alerts for this as well), and secondly, to acquire some extra traffic through retweets or various campaigns.
I still maintain that blogging is a far better move and micro blogging is just an extra service on top of blogging.
Blogging is still more personally satisfying than social media web sites. Especially when you own your own domain and you call all the shots.
Blogging on a third party platform is not as exciting, because it’s all laid on. Part of the fun is determining your own destiny of your own domain.
I prefer blogging. I don’t really like Twitter that much.
@Richard – You couldn’t have put it better!
Good to hear @John, I totally agree :)
@Chris – i agree that micro-blogging is a service to be added on top of blogging. i only started blogging this year march and always assumed twitter was a service add-on.
@Richard – i agree. i blogged for about three months on blogspot before i set up wordpress on my own domain and have not looked back
I’m glad to hear that others share my opinion :)
I haven’t blogged in a bit, but still get traffic, I haven’t tweeted as much recently and my followers seem to be ignoring me. My blog is more me. Although I am sort of stepping into traditional media as well.
I am thinking of combining all me sites into one rather than multiple sites and maybe it’s time to start monetising them too. I just don’t like ads on my sites, don’t know what to do about that.
Blogging is definitely more a holding and substantial medium – I will always favour blogging more and use micro-blogging to drive a little extra traffic now and then, as well as manage reputation :)
Combining them is a good idea, I built some tools which allow me to micro-blog from my Dashboard, quite useful.