Is the TEFL blogging boom over?
Seems so. There is still a trickle of new blogs every week (it used to be more like one every couple of months back in my day), but somehow the energy seems to have gone out of it, and with a few notable exceptions there is less mutual linking, commenting etc than there was nine months ago. I think it has a lot to do with Twitter, but as I don’t (though I have been known to growl, roar, hiss or even howl) I have no idea how. Anyone care to cheep in?
September 7th, 2010 at 12:28 pm
There is less blogging going on and less commenting.
Maybe there is just so much you can say before you begin to repeat yourself.
Maybe the thrill has gone for some.
But I can’t see how Twitter could have made that much difference. With the limitation on how much you can write, it’s inevitably relatively superficial compared with a blog.
September 7th, 2010 at 1:00 pm
I think you’re right about Twitter being one of the main reasons, Alex.
Twitter can take up a lot of your time, if you’re not careful, leaving little for commenting or even writing your own posts. Twitter is also a way of showing you like a blog post (by retweeting) instead of saying so on the blog itself.
When I started my blog I spent a lot of time reading other people’s blogs and following links to other blogs. I rarely do this now – mainly because of Google Reader. Most of the time I don’t even go to the blog’s URL to read the latest post because I can already read it on my IGoogle homepage. I have a list of maybe 20 blogs that I enjoy reading there and whenever one of them has a new posts it automatically come up. Some blogs (like yours) however, don’t show the entire post and in those cases I click on the link that takes me to the post.
Those are my reasons for not being as active recently as well as the summer holidays – which is one of the reasons why a lot of people, including myself, seem to have abandoned their blogs over the past two months!
September 7th, 2010 at 5:46 pm
I feel the same. It’s good though cause I was getting a bit tired of adding new blogs a lot.
The commenting has definitely gone down, but so have the controversial posts. Maybe we need someone to stir up the hornet’s nest again. You up for it? :)
September 7th, 2010 at 11:17 pm
It’s partly seasonal, but it’s also down to twitter and facebook… a lot of activity over there recently, which has really mashed up the personal and professional. Blogging… it’s so web 2.0, daaaaahling. Get with the times, Grandad!
But I’m back on the blogs again after a whole month without touching it, and plenty more to come. It’s still the best publishing platform, but the ways in which people access and respond to that content are diversifying beyond the comments box. A retweet, a ‘like’ or a ‘share’ are much better than a ‘nice post!’ comment, no?
September 8th, 2010 at 12:05 am
Interesting issue, Alex, and I’ve blogged about it a couple of times recently (including today, in response to this post!). I hope the boom isn’t over in a lot of ways, because of the quality and findability of blog posts over what happens on social media platforms – while acknowleding that the speed and simplicity of discussion in those applications has been quite good in terms of helping more people make the transition from being a lurker to a participant…
September 8th, 2010 at 12:42 am
You can also look at it the other way. The main reason for the blogging boom was Twitter- people discovered blogs, left comments, set up their own blogs to continue discussions, set up their own blogs to link to things they’d discovered etc. As people lost that Twitter/ blogging buzz and it just became one of the things you try to balance in your life, things simmered down somewhat
September 8th, 2010 at 12:45 am
Also, I’ve seen summer breaks turn into endless summers many times before, so I do wonder with this newer bunch…
September 8th, 2010 at 1:05 am
No one will outlast you, Alex!
September 8th, 2010 at 10:06 am
Well, I for one am back after summer break. But my shtick has always been more of a “crazed loner shouting about Mr. Show dialogue at the sea” bag than the “let’s have a meet-up over lattés and exchange perspectives on language technology” vibe I get from Twitter etc. Not that there’s anything wrong with the latter of course.
September 8th, 2010 at 12:06 pm
Darren- My greatest ever sporting achievement was coming in second in cross country at school, because everyone else just got bored and decided to walk it instead. Hoping I can do the same with TEFL blogging.
Nicky- Now I know what it was I didn’t like about Skype. It was the Lattes
September 8th, 2010 at 6:23 pm
;-)… nah…
September 8th, 2010 at 8:42 pm
I can’t keep up with all the blogs and tweets. Let alone Facebook which I rarely delve into.
Maybe I’m not typical here, but I do a variety of things to keep afloat financially, and spread my professional interests quite wide. I only read about five ELT blogs regularly – I simply don’t have the time for all the others.
For me. blogs are a better medium for commenting and learning than Twitter. I’d rather spend five minutes here, for example, than twenty minutes frantically scrolling through my twitter stream. Of course, this means I miss out on the epic fights and gossip fests, but then of course, I’m a serious teacher…
September 10th, 2010 at 2:47 pm
If any of you are looking for a challenge, head over to my place and try to complete the 1913 Cambridge proficiency exam.