The shift

There’s a lot of talk now, about the (r)evolution in blogging: the shift in conversation, the ways we share and (re)distribute, how we find our content.

While I do think blogs will continue to be used for voicing opinions and getting that conversation started, I am convinced that blogging as we’ve known it is over. In my view, a new way of linking, sharing and discusssing has sprung up, following the rise of new social media, which I tentatively call social coverage: I’m not reading your blog, you’re not reading mine, but we’ll end up covering the topic at hand elsewhere nonetheless.

For me, it started with how I read feeds, and couldn’t keep up anymore. What I used to do was: click links, find blogs, subscribe to each one… and then get swamped and not read anything.

But, since a lot of the content from my 644 RSS subscriptions kept showing up on Twitter, Friendfeed or (more recently) Social Median, the question arose: why was I subscribed to them in the first place?

The switch

So, what I’ve done is: get rid of them all, start from scratch, but differently…

First, I consolidated my “social capital” (my Twitter contacts) and started from there. I’ve read other approaches to this over the past couple days, but here’s how I went about it.

1. Import my Twitter contacts into Friendfeed (read about that here).
2. Delete all my subs from Google (admittedly, I backed them up through Toluu, just in case).
3. Subscribe to my Friendfeed and Social Median feeds.
4. Add the new Feedly extension to Firefox and let it look for additional content from my social connections, Twitter and Friendfeed.
5. Sync feedly with Google Reader

And that’s it. In theory, I now get all the relevant news, shared items, tweets and comments that I need in one place. Also, I’ve made my Google Reader folders for the new Feedly feeds public (thus creating a new publicly available feed for them), and loaded these into the sidebar to the top right here.

The rub

Of course, there are a couple drawbacks.

First off, there is still somewhat of an echo: i.e. I’m seeing a number of doubles, since what Feedly also does is autosubscribe to what it calls people’s recommendations. These are, in fact, Google Reader shared items from my social connections above.

This way, when someone writes something on their blog, I may get to see that item in my Friendfeed feed, in my Social Median feed, and through the items of a third person who shared it in Google. I don’t think there’s a way around this yet, and to be honest, I haven’t played around trying to change this much.

One thing I do like, on Feedly not Google Reader, is the #today page. Whenever I do feel overwhelmed, I just call that up and look at what went on recently and click whatever I feel like following up. This may seem like a very filtered, ad hoc way of receiving information, but as Alexander van Elsas writes:

I see everything as a river of content. It passes by all day long, and whenever I feel like it I dive in. I’m not concerned what I miss when I get out again. The river doesn’t dry up, there is always something else to be found.

The leap

All this then, is what I’d like to call this the next move in blogging. You write and publish, I write and publish, but instead of rubbing each other’s backs commenting on our blogs, we meet halfway. And since your blog or mine doesn’t matter anymore, I no longer need to subscribe and nor do you. Exit blogs, I’d say, and enter social (or networked) coverage.

I’m not sure if this is the way to go or if there are other, better methods out there still. All I know was that I was sick of looking at Twhirl and refreshing my FF and SM pages all day, and that I was getting swamped with content I wasn’t processing anymore.

The buzz

Another drawback is that I’m missing out on content that isn’t voiced on these social sites. A number of the blogs I used to read were of a less techie nature, and those tend to get drowned out in the noise that is the social media buzz.

Obviously, being part of the early-adopter crowd means that the geek minority is overshadowing the silent majority. You should, I suppose, accept that not everyone shares this urge to be online, discussing the internet 24/7.

Or to quote old dog Scoble:

Most people just want to work their 9 to 5 jobs, go home, pop open a beer, sit on the couch, watch some movies, play with their kids, etc.

And that gets me to a final note of caution/critcism: there is an awful lot of meta-talk out there. Because, discussing Friendfeed on Friendfeed, Social Median on Social Median… sometimes you do have to wonder what it’s all about…

The End

But I’m sure this too will slow down after a while. Just like these days not every other tweet is about Twitter anymore, we’ll find ways of using these new media cleverly, and finding out what we want, how we want it.

It’s the way forward, honey.

So, to those who insist on staying on their blogging isles, not joining the conversation, but sitting around waiting for a comment to pop up, there’s this quote of rising star Louis Gray, to which I entirely subscribe:

Blogging 2.0 is about participating everywhere, and understanding that the comments can’t be controlled just on your blog. They’re moving to micro-communities where people are comfortable discussing your content with peers.

I’m not gonna sit around waiting for your comment to appear, but hope to see you halfway.