Adapt or Die

I remember the first time I started blogging. It was spring of 2003 and I started xangaing as a way to communicate feelings which I felt I could not explicitly say out loud. It was a way for me to sort things out, analyze the reasons why, and just plain state what was on my mind. I was such a religious blogger, creating an entry each day (sometimes twice or more a day!) and reading and commenting on other people’s xanga. It was exciting to have such access to people’s thoughts and to also reciprocate my own. Back then, I saw blogging primarily as a online personal diary. And although this new type of communication was exciting to me, I was one of those people that thought blogging was just one dimensional in purpose, fun for now, but eventually its popularity was going to die out. I didn’t see the potential in the content a blog holds. But as I’ve learned, new media/ technology/tools (basically, new anything) displaces older/current media/technology/etc. The “newest” thing doesn’t just die for no reason. It is replaced – if not entirely, but for the most part. So even if I had felt that blogging was a passing phase, I should have acknowledged that there would always be an online application like that present. But the blog is still around today, stronger than ever. It wasn’t replaced, it evolved. It took on newer creative purposes.

Nowadays, blogs have taken on multi-dimesional purposes. People still have online journals, but the topics which they cover are now more diverse, their purpose much more niche. They are more than just personal online journals, they are a way to market, publicize, inform, and brand. It’s mind boggling to think that a seemingly little online tool like a blog is now changing the way businesses do business. And it’s not just the big guys that are benefiting from the blog’s evolvement. Because of the options you now have when setting up your blog, instead of being just a “blog” (write, read, comment) it now can be a fully functioning “website” (domain name forwarding and hosting, ads, tip jars, etc.). Tom mentioned that Blogger has become the “poor man’s website” and the way I see it, it’s actually the “smart (wo)man’s website” in terms of price and up-time reliability when creating a simple website where you don’t have to be an expert designer or developer. Like Cory mentioned, if your hosting a website yourself, and all of a sudden you receive an unexpected huge wave of readers, if your site goes down, your screwed. But if it’s hosted/maintained/supported by a bigger provider, the outcome will most likely be different and more favorable. The way the blog has evolved allows it to stay relevant to the online community. In my opinion, it’s also given everyday users a way to create mainstream websites which primarily in the past you had to hire website producers for.

And the Recap: Blogs adapted to the changing dynamics of the web. They embody the spirit of technology: adapt or die. Pretty cut throat, but oh so true.