Let me start with a rhetorical question: Is blogging past its prime?

I get asked this question a lot since I have been doing it for, what now, 5+ years. So I have to go back and often conduct the 15-point check-up much like the way my car dealership does when I take the old (5-year old vehicle) in for service.

I thought about this again when reading Steve Rubel’s interview, as he was asked by Tech Crunch why he’s stopped blogging and begun ‘lifestreaming.’

Steve, as always makes a great point about where content, and content creators are headed. To him blogging has got long in the tooth, and fallen out of grace now that Twitter and Facebook have become more interesting ways to communicate.

So back to my question, is blogging past its prime, and should someone who has never done it even consider it now. I have two ways to look at this:

1. Telling stories. No matter what format you use, telling your story, has never gone out of style. Think about what some consider one of the most passe formats today, the printed newsletter. I see it doing very well in places as different as Trader Joe’s, churches, and the offices of financial advisers. They sure look long in the tooth to me, especially if I am not the target reader. But they do have plenty of cool content.

2. Providing context. Blogs have an uncanny way of connecting the dots, and putting things in context. Faced with the breathless pace of tweets that appear and vanish (unless you’re monitoring your Tweetdeck or Twitterrific all the time), a blog post is always there, and gives you an opportunity to frames things better, and analyze it from multiple perspectives. The best part, it lets others add their insight as well.

I’ve heard many say that Facebook is becoming the defacto hub of all other social media properties and actions. Hard to contest with that.

But…

Facebook only lets you do so  much when it comes to writing good content. But blog posts can be used to connect the dots, and build on a body of work that is easy to find, link to, and create conversations around.

If you want to see what some other have said on this topic, here are two excellent posts:

• Matthew DePietro – Is blogging passe?

• Brian Clark – Blogging is dead (again)