Sunday, February 17, 2013

What next?

In the last Dirt Rag magazine, Rich Dillen has told me (and thousands of other dirt rag mag readers) what I have suspected for a while:

"The cycling Web log is a dying form of expressing oneself and sharing stories in a manner that attracts sponsors. Facebook and Twitter have all but squashed the medium nearly out of existence. If you haven't already obtained a healthy legion of devoted readers, it's likely that your hard work and creativity will be wasted on your close friends and family.

OK, I don't think I work on this blog too hard or in a creative way. But the fact is that I missed the train - I did not start a blog in 2005. Another fact is that as a regular person, with a day job and little time for adventures, my posts are more or less just diary entries, and who'd be interested in that? For my family who all live in Czech Republic, this should be written in Czech, not English.



So what's the alternative? Forget twitter, can't think of a more stupid idea, texting is bad enough. Facebook is where everybody is, right? My wife has an account, but Marketa and social media is like fire and ice. One of her Facebook contacts, Stepan Lata got it right: THIS TIMELINE SHIT SUCKS! Browsing other people's pages, I see what this medium seems to be good for: "We like absolutely have to get together for a dinner date..." If somebody "likes" a picture I post, so what? Why is one click better that sending me a message, email or call me and chat?

Perhaps I will take the leap into the future (somebody younger please tell me if Facebook is a dying form of social media, what's hot these days?) and move my brief updates about bike rides, occasional races, runs and hikes to an FB page. It's kinda scary. Others have done the homework, I should read it.

Source: http://www.bydatabedriven.com/social-media-flow-chart-blog-vs-facebook-vs-twitter/

1 comment:

  1. Eh, I don't know. I have all three types of accounts and use them all frequently. Blogs, Facebook and Twitter all serve rather different functions in my opinion. (Except for Twitter, which, you're right, is completely useless.) I think what social media served to do was phase out some of the more inane and boring blogs. Overall, blog quality seems higher on average than it was in 2005. And Facebook is so limiting with content that's designed to expire in a matter of minutes. I don't really understand why anyone would choose to use Facebook as a medium to document life.

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