Is The Writing On The Walls For Blogs?

When I was in Tokyo last week, Peter Rojas who must be the grandfather of blogging joked, “Thank God I’m not in the editorial business any more.” He was reacting to my need to check in on my RSS to see what the latest stories taking place on the web were for consideration for PSFK publication. Peter used to sweat the need to be up to date as quickly as I do today but after founding two of the largest blogs ever (Gizmodo then Engadget) he moved on to a social platform called gdgt where the readers do the writing.

Having spoken to Peter and other innovators in the online publishing scene, I’m beginning to see a move that threatens to challenge blogging, much of what we consider online publishing and even kill PSFK.

The stage where we was the democratization of publishing that blogging platforms fueled a few years ago seems to have been only a prelude to a longer story about the move from curated content by the few to tailored content by the many. In the last few years we have seen a tremendous power move from traditional publications to blogs and now we will see the move roll further into socially powered publishing.

When I spoke to Dennis Crowley of foursquare the other day about his mobile application that partly acts like a city guide, he told me that he wanted the users, not the fourquare team, to create advice about venues like restaurants or bars and share that info dynamically when a friend was close by to that location. He has no intention of creating all the editorial content about the cities fourquare can be found in himself because it’s just not what users want.

It all seems so obvious but as a publisher of a ‘blog’ I tend to ignore the writing on the wall. For so long we’ve been trying to be the rapid, trusted alternative to several traditional titles – and for a while that’s what the audience wanted but they’ve learned to do much of the gathering and republishing of content themselves in their own social streams and update their Facebook walls. The world has moved on, blogging doesn’t seem to have done so.

PSFK started as a bunch of people sharing links in an online environment with few other alternatives. Since that time Facebook and Twitter and other services have made it easier to share links and for others to judge those links so that others can get to what is considered important news quicker. News is now tailored by the crowd not curated by an expert or other individual.

Some blogs are exploring moves to more social content. On a simple level, there is the integration of social network profiles. Sites like Ypulse use Facebook plugins so that readers can cross-post their comments on the youth marketing site and on their Facebook profile page. On a more progressive level, the huge blog Gawker recently allowed a level of reader self-publishing. A tip-sharing box now gives commenters the ability to post directly to the site using a hashtag-based system. Using hash-tags like #stalker or #tips, readers can add their own stories to the site (although they won’t often make the front page) – can generate their own.

While many traditional publishers seem to be spending time replicating their publications online and catching up to the speed of blogging, I don’t think that’s what people want anymore. Readers don’t want curated content by the few. It’s often slower, less relevant and harder to access than tailored content by the many.

So, I’m left wondering how this will impact PSFK? It will probably return PSFK to its roots and become a “collaborative” site again where the reader/writer/editor definition is blurred. Maybe readers will write alongside regular PSFK contributors and the crowd will select which articles are worth highlighting and sharing. But there may be more – so I ask you guys to leave comments to suggest how PSFK will evolve in the future. Any suggestions?