I was reading an ESPN article this afternoon about former OSU running back Maurice Clarett. Some of you may remember what a great talent he was, but got on the wrong side of the law (several times) and is now serving a 3 year sentence in prison. He’s currently blogging from his jail cell (don’t get me started on prisoners having access to computers and the internet).

Anyway, so in the reader comments for the article someone made a smartass remark:

“Call me when he starts twittering. Blogging is so MySpace.”

It’s pretty funny when you first read it, but after thinking about it you realize how true this comment really is. Myspace burst on the scene a few years back and everyone was talking about it. I never had a Myspace account, but a lot of my friends did. Now Myspace is lame. It’s like an old mall that used to be the place to shop in the 90s, but now you wouldn’t be caught dead at. Will blogging suffer the same fate?

I don’t think blogs will ever go away, but their popularity will slowly dwindle like the newspapers have over the last decade. How many people under 21 subscribe to a newspaper? I don’t know a single one. Hell, the only people I know who subscribe to a newspaper are my parents and grandmother. Maybe in a year we’ll be saying “How many people under 21 blog?”

Will Twitter be the “new thing”. I just read Twitter has 6 million users. Pretty small piece of the social pie, but in 1 year they’ve gone from #22 to #3 (just behind Myspace and Facebook) in monthly visits. Internet marketers won’t leave blogging for Twitter because it can’t be monetized as well, your tweets don’t show up in search engines, and there is a 140 character limit. But they will use it as a compliment to blogging.

Where Twitter will strive is for people who don’t care about blogging, don’t have time to blog, or don’t care about making money online. Twitter is like a form of instant messaging. It’s great for a quick thought or picture. No work or planning goes into it. Tweeting is all on the fly and cane be done from your cell phone in seconds. Blogging can’t.

I have a Twitter account, but rarely use it. I may make one tweet a day. The reason I’m not active is because none of my friends have accounts. I don’t care about reading what someone in Canada is doing. I want to see what my friends are up to and what people in my city are doing. That’s what Twitter needs to accomplish to become great. It took awhile for everyone to get on Facebook, but it’s happened.

So do you see Blogging going the way of Myspace in the next few years?