New York Times Says Blogging is Dying. Oh, OK.

So, the New York Times put out a story saying blogging is waning because the youth of America is turning to Facebook and Twitter.

The idea of blogs going the way of the dinosaurs is just as ridiculous as the newspapers starting to make a profit again off print. Sorry, couldn’t resist ; ) In another textbook example of why newspaper companies are losing money, among others,  is because there’s too many times they report on subjects they know nothing about.

If people at the New York Times were really as smart as people think they are, the story should have been titled “Email Wanes as the Young Drift to Facebook.” First of all, Facebook dwarfs Twitter in traffic. Twitter shouldn’t even be part of the discussion next to Facebook. Facebook has close to 150 million users who use the site at least once a month in the US. Twitter has close to 16 million.

The 2nd main part the NY Times is missing is that the youth are using Facebook over email. Not blogging. Teenagers and college age people are not using email as much to communicate because they are on Facebook way more. Not true for people over age 30, but for the under 30’s, yes. The Under 30’s were never using blogs to communicate.  Blogs are for people who want content. Knowledge. Facebook and Twitter can give you a headline or a link but that’s about it. It’s not that complicated to understand.

Facebook and Twitter are used for communication. People go to Facebook to see how their friends are doing. But if they want information on how to do something like get on the 1st page of Google, you’re not going to be able to articulate it in 240-140 characters.