The Next Web

What’s the future of live blogging?

By Paul Vereijken
January 8, 2009
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Live bloggers at Le Web 08

About a year ago live blogging service CoveritLive launched. If live blogs weren’t popular before late 2007 they sure are now. There always have been live blogs of course – blogs covering Apple Keynotes for example. But thanks to its easy setup and user interface CoveritLive gave live blogging a bang.

At almost every tech, media or web conference in the world a blogger is live blogging. CoverItLive even connects old and new media, Ernst – Jan wrote last summer. And during the terrorist attack in Mumbai two Dutch journalism students used CoveritLive to collect all the news about the bombings. Live blogging is getting serious and therefore it’s time to look at the future.

New tool, old trick

Apart that live blogging is of course live it isn’t anything different from usual blog postings. The bloggers posts text and adds links, photos and videos and the readers can comment.

Still I wonder how the future of live blogging looks like. Some of my thoughts:

  • Will news corporations like the BBC or big newspapers like The New York Times use it to cover breaking news like a terrorist attack?
  • Or is it already outdated and is live video streaming the future?Why would I want to read a live blog when I can see what is happening because somebody is streaming from a phone or camera?
  • And isn’t it just much more comfortable to read a blog posts after the speaker finished his presentation?

It’s in the mix

Don’t get me wrong: I’m not saying live blogs aren’t of any value. They sure are! I followed lots of Steve Jobs’ Keynotes thanks to live blogs. Live coverage is great when you don’t want to miss a thing.

But they aren’t very usefull when you want to check what happened a day after the conference or when you want to re-read about the Mumbai bombings. For analysis, summaries of a presentation, reports with lots of links and extra information I want just plain and normal postings. And when it gets so interesting that I can’t keep my eyes away from the screen only a live video stream can satisfy me.

Personally I like the mix of blogging, live blogging and video streams. Blog posts to sum up what’s happened and give extra information or analyse the breaking news, a live blog that drops some lines every five minute and a video stream for the ones glued to the screen. That is the future of live blogging for me.

[poll id="21"]

[Photo by Adam Tinworth]

Paul Vereijken Next Web Journalism & Media editor
Paul Vereijken is a Dutch freelance journalist with loads of enthusiasm and creativity, who focuses on how the next web is changing his profession.

  • @jaapstronks Zie ook deze post van mij op The Next Web: http://tinyurl.com/7gzcqy
  • Paul, EJ,

    With berlinblase.de, we've covered a few events, mostly through ScribbleLive (who've always been very responsive to our questions). While I've mostly done the minute-by-minute thing and we got great feedback for it, I tend to agree to what you guys are saying: Getting the wrap-ups, the analysis and the context is usually more valuable, and it certainly provides value over a longer period of time.

    Is video the future of live coverage? Video is great, but until video search gets a lot better on average it won't replace text. The second problem with video is that you can't really skim it. It's time-intense, both to produce and to consume.

    So as you put it, it's in the mix ;)
  • Thanks for your feedback Peter.

    I never used ScribbleLive by the way. Did you try out CoverItLive?
  • Hey Paul,

    Yeah, I tried both ScibbleLive and CoverItLive, at least to some degree. Both are great, although they have a different focus. CoverItLove seems to be smoother in embedding rich media, but it seems like you can't "always allow" comments - I remember having a _really busy liveblog and all I did was allowing comments manually (which wasn't too smooth). ScribbleLive is really lightweight, which I love, too...

    Your preferences?
  • @paulvereijken: Paul - excellent piece on the future of live blogging. http://tinyurl.com/7gzcqy
  • What do you think about the future of live blogging? http://tinyurl.com/7gzcqy
  • I think liveblogging is a great way for people to be able fo follow a presentation or lecture, whenever they're not able to see a livestream but want to stay up to date. If they're after reflections and indepht reporting afterwards it's the blogs they can check out.

    It's also a nice way to get a grasp of what the presentation is like for the audience.
  • Boris and I always cover conferences with lengthy articles, since they remain valuable. Yet we can't capture every detail in those stories - as we have to choose a story line for our article. Thus if someone would accompany us and use CoveritLive to liveblog, there would be a perfect combination
  • Finding a third conference blogger shouldn't be a problem for you guys...
  • And indeed, a combination of (live)blogging & video is unbeatable! ;)
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