Blogging is alive and well and living in Paris....

Hugh MacLeod notes that Blogging is not dead, contrary to the rumours......

If you have something to say, then a blog offers a cheap, easy global medium in which to express yourself. This is as true now as it was three years ago, regardless of what the groovy cats in Silicon Valley may be up to.

Whether you have the time and the talent for it, "i.e. the skill and the will", is another matter altogether. Also, whether other people will want to read it, is something one has little control over. But in both cases, the same is true for all other media.

Hugh's key thesis is that Blogging is still Good For You...you create and control a brand yourself, a niche brand - or as Hugh puts it:

I prefer my brand to be a "global microbrand". It's easy and it's flexible. It's not tied down to one geographical locale, which I've always found to be financially unreliable. So business is a bit slow around here in England. No matter. I'll head over to Redmond, Washington, and do a gig for Microsoft if I have to. New York? Sure. Houston? If they pay me enough.

Exactly.....we are a UK based blog and yet we have readers across the world, I've have had great conversations and met fascinating people I otherwise would never have. So amen to Hugh:

I guess my point is, if you're one of these people considering giving up on blogging in exchange for paying more attention to Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and MySpace, bear in mind you are giving up on something rather unique and wonderful. But I would say that.

I find that there is far more creativity involved in writing a blog post, far more stimulation in the cut and thrust of a discussion on an issue, than what you get on a SocNet. I've tried Twitter it but I just don't like getting the microdetails of others' lives, or reading in a web based clunky format. Just send me an email....

However, what it did do was make me think about "centoblog" posts - pots that are not mini essays, but have more beef than a Twitter "microblog" wittering.

Posts like this one - see an interesting thought, capture it, add a bit of value, see if you can turn a nice phrase somewhere. Sketching, not painting - Twitter is just doodling

What also interests me re Blogging are the reports that there are more French bloggeurs in Europe than even the UK.

I have this vision of all Les Bloggeurs hunched over their absinthe and daffodils in the Latin Quarter

In London of course its Latte and ABC white wine.................