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.
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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- Or is it already outdated and is live video streaming the future?Why would I want to read a live blog when I can see what is happening because somebody is streaming from a phone or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.
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[Photo by Adam Tinworth]
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