Has blogging had its day?

Four years ago, blogging seemed fresh and exciting. It gave voice to anyone who could get online, and a potential audience that stretched around the globe. But how long will it last?

To tweet or not to tweet?

The irony is not lost on me. In fact it's the deep irony of blogging about the death of blogging that proved irresistible. In keeping with this new media conundrum, the the imminent death of the blog is raised in an online story over at Wired.

And good points it raises too. I read only a handful of blogs regularly, mostly those with a scientific leaning such as Cosmic Variance, but if I look for more general-interest blogs I feel swamped by the sheer number. It feels as though I would have to spend an unhealthy amount of time online just finding out which blog writers I enjoy. And although life is not as short as it used to be, it's still too short.

What I like about the Wired piece is its suggestion that things can change quickly enough to get around these problems. You can be sure that when a problem does arise (in the case of blogs, the time and effort to construct flowing prose – no fear of that here), people will develop new software and change how things are done. Just like that.

I'd be interested in hearing if many of you use Twitter. We used the Twitter service from Nasa's Mars Phoenix probe a while back, and it was pretty informative. There's even a haiku-esque skill that seems to develop among Twitter writers because of the strict word limit each message can carry. Change, eh? You've got to love it.