The Evolution of Social Content: From Email to Blogs to Disqus / FriendFeed

Fred Wilson's last two blog posts are about the changing / evolving blog landscape: 1) the death of "long form blogging" (ironic) 2) the evolution of blog commenting and how comments are becoming as important as the posts

I found the first post particularly thought provoking:

I've posted every day for almost five years. Its a routine and a habit that's hard to break But today, I've got nothing to say that's blog worthy I've twittered six or seven times and posted three times on tumblr I think its time to acknowledge that long form blogging every day may be coming to an end

I certainly agree that blogs are changing and the distributed, social content landscape has made 'short form' discussion easier and more effective. That said, I think everything serves a different purpose: long form blogging is the table at which the conversations occur, introductions are made and meals are enjoyed. Fred might not have considered the above post "blog worthy" - but he still found value in posting it and 29 readers found it engaging enough to comment. Those comments were likely shared via Twitter, FriendFeed and email...

To me, the most important evolution of social content is that we are now empowered to produce and consume in a variety of formats and platforms... and I find that choice and distribution open me to new relationships and new content. Proof enough is that much of my richest dialog is still through email. Email continues to be a great source of recommended reading and intense discussion. If email is closed discussion, blogging is one-to-many discussion and services like Disqus, Twitter and FriendFeed are opening those discussions further.