Over the last four or five months, I’ve written half a dozen new articles for this blog that haven’t made it through to being published. I don’t know why I’m now dithering so much, but as its now been two months since I last published anything new, I just wanted to say that I’m still here and won’t be giving up any time soon. Just to emphasise that fact, in December I renewed this website’s address for another two years, so you’ll be stuck with us until late 2015, at the very least!
When I started anime blogging in 2006 (ignoring some obscure attempts in 2005) it was such a new and shiny mode of communication and felt like being on the crest of a wave of something special. And it was, just look at Anime News Network today in comparison to 2005. Blogging has completely changed the world of publishing, for better and for worse, but if 2006 was the Spring of anime blogging, what we’re in now is the Autumn.
Or rather, it’s the Autumn of WordPress. Most every years-old anime blog (including this one) uses WordPress to publish its content, but compared to newer platforms like Tumblr, WordPress is now too clunky and isolated. If I had to advise someone looking to start an anime blog, starting on Tumblr would be my recommendation. It has a massive, inbuilt audience, is filled with enthusiasts for whatever niche subject you could possibly imagine and is easy to use. None of these things are true for WordPress. It’s getting old, basically.
With WordPress in decline then, so too will the definition of the ‘classic’ anime blog begin to fade. Would a truly interconnected blogosphere still feel the need to regurgitate the same old episodic posts again and again? When every anime blog is no longer an island unto itself, that repetition we see in anime blogging should disappear as well, and thus the dialogue between fans may become that much more interesting, too?
That, then, is my idea of what the future of anime blogging may hold. I give us two years until the apocalypse, but in the mean time, there’s not only a new Mushishi series on the way, but a Masaaki Yuasa adaptation of Taiyou Matsumoto‘s amazing Ping Pong manga too (and if you really want to be cool and ahead of the curve, watch the excellent live action film!)
Anime blogging 2015
7 responses to “Anime blogging 2015”
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(Argh, in some cruel twist of fate, WordPress decided to switch off the comments on this post and silly me didn’t look again until this morning. If you wanted to comment, you can do so now!)
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Does Tumblr allow comments now? If not, I don’t think it’s going to replace the blog. Maybe another kind of community-forming platform might do so, that is, if it’s longer than 140 characters …
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Tumblr is built around “Likes” and “Reblogs” (but you can also add a plugin like Disqus if you really wanted to add a commenting system.)
I don’t see much use in hanging onto that old way of doing things though, and that includes WordPress’s commenting system. For example, any given post on WordPress is already isolated to just that blog and, at best, Google’s search engine. Now, imagine a really useful comment is added to that post. What happens to it? Very few people are going to read it. It’s just a sub-note on an already obscure page.
At least with a social network like Tumblr, everyone is empowered. A comment can get just as much, if not more, attention, than the original post, and within such an interconnected system, we’re also adding some value to a greater discourse.
I use Tumblr a lot these days for my “anime networking”. I used to read anime blogs for that, but for me, it’s just a lot more interesting to see people talking to each other, rather than talking over one another.
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Tumblr is sort of doing things in a totally different way.
Kind of like forums.
“Isolated” blogging will never go away, at least, it will have little to do with yet another popular blogging site. -
I agree with omo.
Additionally, I believe the potential of an interconnected blogosphere will forever remain in the presence of traditional blogging. The protocols exist, but this world, for now, is one of personal preference. -
Yeah, I don’t think isolated blogging will ever go away either, but I also think that 1) Anime blogging is fundamentally driven by WordPress, which, in my opinion, is on its way out, which leads us to the question, what will anime blogging look like without WordPress? 2) Younger generations of internet users are brought up with social networks and I don’t think its a natural choice for them to go with an isolated, aging system like WordPress. They are much more likely to use websites like Tumblr.
I’m not saying Tumblr is a perfect solution (as @FoxyLadyAyame pointed out on Twitter, it’s better for image blogging right now) but it’s good enough to give me pause for thought. It’s my most used website for anime-related things now, and there’s reasons for that.
I suppose I’m wondering why anime blogging doesn’t feel as exciting as to used to, too. I realise that’s a personal interpretation, I just wonder if it hasn’t lost ‘something’ over the years and where that something’s gone, because it’s feeling like we’ve hit a dead end.-
To your last point:
We get old. Bloggers you knew over the years go away for one reason or another. And as you mentioned, with Tumblr now here, some people (at least from what I see) use that, and the rise of any new blogs on WordPress or Blogger decreases.
Well, there’s probably more reasons why anime blogging might not feel that exciting, and you might have your own reasons why that’s the case so don’t let me put words into your mouth! But I do agree to an extent that, maybe compared to when I starting blogging in 2011 for me, it seems less exciting nowadays, and I wonder if it’s because some people I follow are gone.
(Side note: Yeah, WP is getting pretty useless, but I think it’ll still be widely used for anime blogging. Probably)
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