The personal website is dead. For many people like me the initial idea of posting personal mantras and other self-aggrandizing content online
so that it could be reviewed by anyone anywhere was once irresistible.
In fact doing so was completely consistent with the vision for the web
initially pioneered, for example, by web founder Tim Berners Lee (see link to his book too).
But somewhere along the line people by and large got real. All that early
enthusiasm seems to have given way to caution as people gradually
realize just how risky it can be to volunteer so much information on
themselves or their opinions, particularly in a world of increasingly sophisticated
search engines. All the easy access to one's most inner thoughts or
all the mundane activities as one can possibly self-report, can grind up against an individual's life politics, financial security, and
in some cases, even personal safety. What's more, as the tools of
online publishing, particularly blogging applications, have made
self-revelation easier for the less technical masses, the online
"noise" now is such that it is harder for a would-be spectacle to stand out or to maintain a sense of
purpose in the publishing process. If you can't be original, what's the point?
For these reasons of a few, personal websites or blogs that strictly
extolled the personality and the cause of a webmaster have thinned.
The
passing is not in vain however. Blogs, personal home pages,
online web cams, and so forth, were in fact the first grasp of the true
power of the web to disseminate unique perspectives. Each approach
demonstrated the reach and, at least, functional viability of doing
so. If the number of personal blogs has declined, blogging as a useful
format itself has survived. For blogging, there are stories,
situations, and presentations that will continue to benefit the
publisher and the audience as a choice platform.
In fact, now would be a good time to point out that search interest in
blogs, which to mainstream perspective is personal web publishing, remains at its highest levels, as demonstrated by
this Google Trends graph:
Interest in blogs in general remains strong as graph shows.
Personally I don't weep for those who actually enjoyed the self-engaged
masses. Online self-engagement for those who remain interested in
participating in that has not truly dried up so much as it has migrated
to online applications and social networking sites that more precisely
focus, bind, and authenticate. The noise is still there if you want it
- it's all just horizontally produced now.
Note that in writing the above I am a bit late to the funeral. Below
are 2 supporting stories that have been on this trend for well over a
year. Both focus on blogging and are worthy in that they remind that blogging has not died
as a useful format.
The piece by the Economist is a bit capricious
initially (personal scale blogging is not dying because it encouraged
legions of "haters hating"
any more than conservative ideology was flawed because Bush was a "real
meanie"), but remains dead on otherwise. The comments in each are good
too as they seem written by passionate bloggers who will likely be
around (like Dave the Web Guy), forever.
The Long Tail of Blogging is Dying
Oh, Grow Up
I want to be careful in presenting this piece to avoid suggesting that the reasons for personal web publishing's decline are absolute. There are others which owe more to the complexity of and attention demanded by the craft whether it happens to be online or not. In future DWG entries I will present what I believe are central among these as well as present strategies for coping, if you are of the same mindset as I that the web will always be one of your favorite platforms of self expression.
