Is TikTok the new blog now?
Long live LiveJournal!!
If you grew up as a teen in the 2010s, then you know that blogging was a huge thing for wannabe writers, culture, and pop culture altogether.
Sites like xoJane popped up, and Blogger reached its peak then as a go-to blogging site where you could open your own site and write about anything. Literally, anything you wanted. Pets, fashion, lifestyle, parenting- whatever you wanted to read, it was in a blog… somewhere.
Now, in 2023, are blogs still popular? This is something I think about from time to time.
I actually had a blog and owned my own domain on Blogger in 2015. That was almost 10 years ago. It was literally nothing but my extremely embarrassing diary entries complaining about skinny jeans that nobody can find because I took it off of the web. (The background was a Pepto-Bismol Pink mixed with neon blue banners, with my logo in permanent marker font. Yes, I know, I’m cringing too.)
Fast forward a couple of years later, Blogger announced that they were scaling back its features. Technically, it still exists, but the main site hasn’t been changed in years. And you can’t get super creative in your website design, unless you want to go back to 2008 again.
So are blogs actually dead?
The rise… and fall… and rise again of the blog
The answer: not really.
There are around 600 million blogs that exist, and people still read blogs today. Lifestyle, personal, and fashion blogs exist, and many influencers still use their blogs to make a living (with social media).
To give a brief history about blogging, the first ever blog was created by a student named Justin Hall in 1994 named Links.net, and was what you expected from a blog in 1994. Long text, hyperlinks, and personal paragraphs on whatever students did in 1994. (wheelies? Stealing candy from the grocery store? Who knows.)
Later LiveJournal was created, and other hosting platforms where people could write about their personal life were designed for this need to read about people’s very embarrassing but very interesting experiences. (Think MySpace, or WordPress, which is still used by many today.)
Blogs are still being used everywhere, even by media outlets. Huffington Post (now called HuffPost) used blogging as a way to gain credibility, and it worked. They still have a section where people can read personal essays. Medium and Substack are examples of how blogging isn’t dead. Writers create new posts all the time (like this one!!!). And people still read them.
It’s safe to say that there will always be a need for personal, engaging content people will relate to. Blogging has definitely transformed how people consume media, from personal tell-alls to blog posts that are structured newsier at the same time.
My opinion on why so many people are googling “why blogs are dying?” I think that the 2008 blog is dead. Now, you see embedded social media posts in a blog and the rise of video features, like TikTok, or apps like Vine, which exploded in popularity in 2018 with short videos users could upload to meme history.
Vlogging is here to stay
People have short attention spans nowadays. The average newsletter is filled with links, photos, and graphics designed to keep your attention. Even though we like to learn about our interests, we also hate being bored. (thanks social media!!)
Also, it’s not 2003 anymore, so video is accessible through laptops, smartphones, cheap video equipment, etc. Plus, video is more engaging and catches our attention faster than a block of text.
TikTok feels like a vlogging platform because, well, it is. For anyone who wants to watch a 30-sec video on their train ride or to kill some time, TikTok is convenient.
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Plus, if you think about, almost every user is submitting a vlog. Either about culture, mental health, work, technology, BIPOC issues, you name it, someone is talking about their personal experience about it.
We watch these videos because they’re interesting, but also because we feel seen. After so many employees got laid off by Google in January, where did they go to let off some steam? TikTok. And millions watched because we knew what it felt like to not be heard but to be seen by people who get us.
A (not-so-accurate) prediction of the future
So, what’s the future of blogging?
I honestly don’t know. If you asked anyone who uses the Internet, they probably don’t know either. That’s okay. Most of us didn’t even know ChatGPT was coming, so we’re going to see a lot of stuff we weren’t prepared for.
However, we’re always going to want to hear from people who are like us, who share our interests and goals. Either through posts on Medium or TikToks, we’ll always consume content. Some might not be so good, but others will make us feel more connected. And that why blogs were created in the first place?