Oh the Interwebs! Adapt or Go Extinct

That’s excerpted from a comment left on our last post about conversation being essential, but listening being optional (tongue-in-cheek title). It was left by Lisa Kribs, Editor over at Fuel Your Branding, but it was essentially the summary of what everyone else was saying… Engadget has disabled comments, oh well, what’s next?

I still very strongly believe that comments and conversation are absolutely best practices for blogging (with good moderation), but it does raise an interesting point about blogging / writing / marketing on the internet… everything is always changing.

A few years ago, Spencer Johnson wrote a great little book simply entitled Who Moved My Cheese?. An excerpt of the description summarizes the story well…

Who Moved My Cheese? is a parable that takes place in a maze. Four beings live in that maze: Sniff and Scurry are mice–nonanalytical and nonjudgmental, they just want cheese and are willing to do whatever it takes to get it. Hem and Haw are “littlepeople,” mouse-size humans who have an entirely different relationship with cheese. It’s not just sustenance to them; it’s their self-image. Their lives and belief systems are built around the cheese they’ve found. Most of us reading the story will see the cheese as something related to our livelihoods–our jobs, our career paths, the industries we work in–although it can stand for anything, from health to relationships. The point of the story is that we have to be alert to changes in the cheese, and be prepared to go running off in search of new sources of cheese when the cheese we have runs out.

It’s a wonderful illustration of all of life, but I think it applies to the world of the internet and blogging. Our industry changes with the wind. New software platforms rise and fall. Blogging services come and go. The rules of search engine optimization are always in flux. And the web culture is an ocean with unpredictable currents beneath the surface, always ready to move us in some new direction.

Here’s the question… are you adaptable? Can your blog handle the future?

Google gets it, like it or not. They may make a mistake someday, but to this point, they’ve had enough of a handle on the web to see that people want to compute in a cloud, so with email, apps, collaboration, calendars and everything in between, they’re fulfilling those demands. Yahoo doesn’t get it, in my estimation. They’re still hoping someone will turn down a dead end street to arrive at Yahoo and stay there.

You’ve heard of “survival of the fittest.” It applies online too and your blog can become a momento rather quickly if you aren’t on guard and aware. This raises some important challenges for how we blog down the road:

• Be aware of web culture – become a student of the direction things are going.
• Decide if you’re going to go with the flow of technology or hold on to yesterday’s techniques in your cold dead hands. It was nice knowing you.
• Critique everything about your blog at all times: the design, the structure and layout, the conversational systems, the community management, and the voice of your writing.
• Adapt. Or go extinct.

The rate of change in our industry is accelerating and we’re either going to keep pace or perish. How do you see things shaping up? What are the trends we need to be aware of for this year and the next? Who are the people, companies, or apps to watch? And how do you adjust on the fly without losing your soul?

Brandon has been doing web and logo design and this blogging thing for about six years. He’s also a Pastor. He lives in Arkansas with his wife and daughter and they’re expecting their second child. You can catch him on Twitter or Facebook.