I just read a great article on the Evolution of Blogging by Om Malik. He says that blogging offers the substance and context that micromessaging (Twitter) can’t. However, blogs need to move beyond the info-sharing role to better handle the increased amount of lifestreaming that will continue as “more and more bandwidth is available both at home and on the go.”
Malik makes great points in this post which led to many interesting replies including this one by Cody Brown: “Making blogging more nimble as a platform is all well and good but I think the takeaway here is that blogging will continue to become less like a lecture hall and more like a cocktail party. The structure of the traditional blog post, including this one (Malik’s), isn’t designed to be free-flowing, it’s designed to worship the blogger. The responses are at the bottom, not the top and all of them can be ignored. Twitter is the opposite. This isn’t to say that one style is better than the other, both are important, but I think you can guess, when given a choice between a lecture and a cocktail party, where you will spend most of your time.”
As much as being worshipped would be nice, I also like the idea of Message Man being more of a conversation instead of a lecture. It’s a business lifestream filled with insights, links, photos and even videos on communications. It’s one of the places for me to discuss the best ways to engage, influence and activate people, both online and offline; and to participate in the evolution of communications.
Campbell Communications 
Interesting point which just made me realize that Google Wave (http://wave.google.com/) could be the perfect application for the “Cocktail Party” Blog. Check it out. I personally believe that the interactive discussion isn’t going to be segregated to different technology silos (Blogs, Tweets, RSS, whatever) it will be just that. A conversation that can be publicly or privately followed. Wave on!
Hey, thanks for the tip, Byron. It looks interesting.
It’s amazing how fast things move and evolve in digital communications.
Right now, my thinking on an individual’s “conversation universe” is crystallizing around the fact that the conversation happens where it needs to happen.
Having your blog, Facebook, Twitter, etc. all interconnected lets people respond to you where they are most comfortable or where it’s most convenient.
I don’t want to dictate where conversations should happen. I’ve seen people pimp their blog posts on Twitter and try to drive people to the blog to comment. That makes no sense to me…other than to worship the blogger.
Your blog will start conversations, but they won’t necessarily all be finished here.
Agree that conversations should happen wherever it’s best. I also think that if your blog post has relevant info for your community then you should share it on Twitter; this makes absolute sense to me. It’s about the sharing, not the comments.
Thanks for the comment, David.