"The long tail of blogging is dying" according to The Guardian: http://bit.ly/NuYon.Yesterday I joined the Pulmonary Roundtable group on Facebook http://bit.ly/B7c0I - a continuation of Pulmonary Roundtable blog http://bit.ly/Bxtya. The original site stopped publishing in 2008 and was added to the list of "dead blogs" by GruntDoc.
I see people starting to use Facebook as a substitute platform for a blog or a personal page (AAAAI, KevinMD's fan pages) and I am not sure this is the best approach. On the very basic level, you are working for somebody else (bringing page views and AdSense dollars) on a closed platform with very limited features.
Blogging is hard, requires more involvement than micro-blogging on Twitter. Image source: Xkcd.com, Creative Commons license.
Twitter is easier than blogs. Image source: WeBlogCartoons, Creative Commons license.
In happier news, the Medlibs Round blog carnival is alive and well with its latest edition: PubMed and Discoveries http://bit.ly/tMWy9. This edition is hosted by a med librarian at the National Network of Libraries of Medicine (NN/LM) who writes in her blog bio: "I am not an acronym, I am a free woman" http://bit.ly/tMWy9
Related:
How to deal with the information overload from blogs, RSS and Twitter?
Some thoughts on medical blogging vs. Twitter
Is Blogging Dead or Dying? Will Twitter Replace Blogs?
Why Do I Blog?
Why Physician Blogs Close Down?
Another blogger quits due to "blog fatigue"
Using a Blog to Build an Educational Portfolio
I think you made a huge point here: someone who generates content in facebook, works for facebook! The same goes with twitter, I believe these tools are great for sharing new sources of information and useful links, but not to write original and quality content.
ReplyDeleteI encourage all physicians and healthcare professionals to start blogging, your hard work belongs to you, it's an effort that eventually will pay off. This blog is a living example of it, just as MedLibLog and Science Roll.