Do social networking sites mean decline in blogs?

Tong Hung, a physician and editor of the Blog Herald, picks up on an interesting discussion taking place on the blogosphere, that being whether social network sites will mean a decline in blogs.

His take? Not a chance. “In fact, its a time of great opportunity. And if you’re willing to create something worthwhile by putting the time and energy into it, then blogging, like any other endeavor in life, will repay you back in spades.”

And as to how social networking sites, though worthwhile, come up short of blogs:

….[S]ub-mediums like social networks and continuous partial attention services such as Twitter or Pownce will never supplant blogging. Oh, they might offer blogging-like abilities, and you might even be able to post *to* your blog *from* these services. But the former case is really a closed garden phenomenon no matter how large it gets, and more to the point, isn’t a publishing platform that you can personally and pragmatically have unvarnished control over.

And the latter is really about fomenting and distributing very terse thoughts, observations, experiences of the moment. I mean, how much can you meaningfully say in 140 characters? Things like Twitter are simply not about creating and developing well thought out opinions, nor publishing them in any meaningful way.

I couldn’t agree more with Tony. Especially when it comes to the legal profession. Now, more than ever, mainstream media and others doing research on a niche topic are turning to blogs published by those with domain expertise. I’ve been interviewed 4 times in the last weeek by national and regional legal publications. The traffic coming to my blog by folks doing reseach on marketing through blogs and related topics continue to increase. LexBlog’s law firm clients tell us of similar experiences.

Social networks such as FaceBook allow one to network with people you know and meet, but they do not allow you to create an ongoing body of work. An ongoing body of work that enhances your reputation as a reliable and trusted authority, that’s used for research on the niche subject, and that allows your target audience to evaluate your philosophy, skill, passion, and experience.

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