As, of course, with any broad declarative statement, “Is blogging dead?” is pretty easy to take issue with. No, of course not, in a lot of important ways.

But I’m more interested in your observation that Facebook has taken the place of a lot of liveblog-type online journals, and the quotation from Rough Type: “Today, what blogs have in common is mainly just the underlying technology – the “publishing platform” – and that makes it difficult to talk meaningfully about a “blogosphere.”

And from the Economist: “Gone, in other words, is any sense that blogging as a technology is revolutionary, subversive or otherwise exalted, and this upsets some of its pioneers. Confirmed, however, is the idea that blogging is useful and versatile.”

This, to me, seems more like it. Format can’t substitute for content forever. At this point, the technology is a means to different ends. It’s worth noting that the “blogosphere” the articles seem to be talking about – the Top 100, the big-media blogs – isn’t the “blogosphere” (God, what an ugly word) that I live in. I read blogs with readerships far in excess of even an extended network of friends & casual acquaintances that could never touch the readership of, oh I don’t know, Gawker – but that discourse is what I appreciate my slice of the 1.5 million remainder for.

I don’t know whether, in the end, blogs are just an unfiltered time suck – something to distract from more finished writing or more tangible miniature publications (blogs may be cheaper, easier, & more effective than a ‘zine, but isn’t there something nice about how handmade it is?) – but what I do think is that, as the articles say, it makes less and less sense to talk about what “blogs” are in any meaningful way. It’s like talking about what “filmstock” is, or talking about printed matter as though self-help guides, legal briefs, company mission statements, memoirs, reportage, novels & poetry were all the same medium because they happened to get printed up.

I have to hop the bus back to the capital, but I’m going to post some links to blogs that I like to keep up with in the comments. And I wish there was a better word than this anagram for “glob”.