Regular, micro & now ‘slow blogging’

First there was fast food, then slow food. Now, instead of mere blogging, there’s slow blogging, the New York Times reports – more reflective blogging. Clearly, blogging is a maturing medium. It’s diversifying. “Some slow bloggers like to push the envelope of their readers’ attention,” not unlike just about all bloggers, who start out with enthusiastic high-frequency posting that they later find hard to sustain. What’s even harder to sustain when the frequency goes down is “stickiness” – when posts aren’t daily, readers get out of the habit of checking in. Which may be one explanation for the popularity of the Huffington Post: “With about 50 new posts a day,” it’s more like a daily newspaper – high frequency and a little something for everyone. Besides the maturing of the technology itself, another factor is tech segmentation. There are new technologies for “fast blogging” or “micro blogging,” e.g. Twitter, in which you can link to longer posts in a blog, but you’re under no obligation to say much. And Twitter has secondary technologies such as Twitter news feeds that automatically announce to your Twitter followers when you’ve posted. This layer is like a blend of blogging and instant messaging. I know, I know. You might be asking, “Where does it stop?” Maybe nowhere. ;-) BTW, there’s fresh thinking too, now, on a similar movement: fast (global) retail to slow (more local) retail. [See also “30 Days to Being a Better Blogger.”]