I was having a chat with Shorty today about blogging and our career as bloggers after we read an article in the Star Rage about it last week. Pick it up if you have the time, great article! It talked a bit about NuffnangX too. Anyway what started off as a little chat eventually went into a full-length discussion until Shorty said “You know what… maybe you should blog about this”. And so I’ve decided to.
As a disclaimer though. For many of you who don’t know, I’m one of the Co-Founders of Nuffnang which is the Largest Blog Ad Network in Asia with over 1 million bloggers. Nuffnang and its group of companies (Netccentric) was started 5 years ago and is still a growing company with 160 employees throughout the region today. The Netccentric group’s revenue comes from various sources on the internet including blogs.
How has Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram and more social media innovations changed blogs?
1) Less people blog.
This is true especially in countries like Malaysia when 2007, almost 50% of all our friends had blogs. That’s no longer the case. Why? Because in the past, blogs gave us an avenue to express ourselves in both long and short form. It could be a long post about how you feel after a breakup with a boyfriend or even short blurbs about how your boss is an asshole. Today Twitter and Facebook provide that avenue for these short blurbs. So the crowd that used it for these short blurbs have taken it to these platforms. On the other hand, long form blogs still continue to be used for long entries.
2) Blogging has become very competitive
Think about it. In 2007 we had Facebook (though it wasn’t big in Asia yet), Twitter (didn’t really take off till 2009), Friendster and blogs. Look at what we have today in the social media space. We have Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Path, Pinterest, Foursquare, Wechat, Line, Flickr and yes blogs (WordPress, Tumblr, Blogger and the rest).
The problem though is that we internet users only have 24 hours a day to spend. We have to spend a good amount of that time eating, crapping, sleeping and getting some exercise. So the rest of what we have left is much less than 24 hours. On the other hand, there are so many social media options competing for our attention. So much that people are saying now that they spend so much time on Instagram they cut back on their Twitter usage.
3) Twitter, Facebook and other social media platforms help drive traffic
Before if you were a good blogger, it was really hard to get famous unless you had someone like Kennysia link you once. Today I’ve seen blogs that grew on their own faster than I’ve ever seen before. Why? Because every time they blog they post it on Twitter or Facebook so first degree friends click on it and check it out. When a really good blog entry is written, people have more means than ever to share and viralize it so blogs grow a following even faster.
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So what is the macro effect of the three things above?
1) There is a high demand from brands/advertisers for bloggers with good traffic but limited supply.
Which explains why over the years, the cost of a sponsored post on a top blog has gone up. The good thing for clients is that the size of these top bloggers have also gone up significantly.
2) Bloggers today make the more money or have more opportunities than they ever did.
In terms of the avenue to push your traffic or the interest from brands is concerned. There has never been a better time to be a blogger
3) People who used to read say 20 blogs a day now are forced to be selective and read 10.
What happens is consolidation just like how all the many social networks in the past consolidated and we realized we just needed Facebook. So what does it mean for blogs?
– Bloggers are forced to produce much better content to keep users engaged. So the bloggers that you read today tend to have much better quality content.
– It gets a lot harder to be a top blogger.
4) The top bloggers get more traffic than they ever have before.
When Kennysia used to be an active blogger, in his peak he would easily pull an average of 15,000 visits a day. The top blogger in Nuffnang Malaysia today however pulls ten times that figure. Similarly to get into the Nuffnang Top 100 today you need 10 times more traffic than you needed 5 years ago. It’s because of the average growth of traffic each blog has today that Nuffnang’s network keeps growing year on year. Which is why we constantly find ourselves having to add new servers. (If Kennysia still blogged actively today I would imagine his traffic to be far more than the 15,000 visits a day that he used to get).
The nett effect of this is that we might just go the way of the US when it comes to blogs. Where blogs don’t just remain as personal mouthpieces, they become opinion leaders in different industries. Like Techcrunch or Gizmodo for tech or other blogs in fashion, travel or others.
What are the challenges for bloggers then?
From our Nuffnang network stats what we found was that of the people who read blogs, only 1% of them do so from a mobile phone (compared with 50% for Facebook and Twitter). With people spending less time on their computers and more on the mobile phone, the growth of bloggers influence slows. That’s why we came up with NuffnangX to try to solve this problem. I believe that in future, whether it’s NuffnangX or some other app, an app will have to come along that will make it easier for people to read blogs on their mobile phones.
We invested in NuffnangX because we believe in blogs and its influence. Sure less people blog now than before just like less people Tweet now because of Instagram but look at the power blogs wield today. Techcrunch is the most powerful news site in the Venture Capital and Angel community in Silicon Valley. Who would’ve seen it coming that a blog would wield so much power?
A parting thought:
When Shorty and I got married in July 2012, we were constantly tweeting about the event and uploading pictures on Instagram and Facebook. Still after the entire wedding, we had many people tweeting/messaging us to ask when we would blog about it. And that’s when it hit me… as much as I love Twitter, Instagram, Facebook and all… (and even though one of our companies ChurpChurp makes money from these platforms) nothing tells a story better than a good blog entry with pictures and words. That’s why today… even with the best TVs, iPads and all… books still remain a very important part of our lives. The only thing that will change is the way it’s consumed.
Timothy Tiah – Co-Founder of Colony, Kuala Lumpur Co-Working Space