Now that Facebook is the new gorilla on the block, the inevitable backlash is ramping up. I first saw it on Copyblogger. The question asked by the post is: where are you going to put your content, on your property (where you have complete control over your brand) or someone else’s (whose main interest is making money off of your marketing data)?

This is an interesting question, but a bigger issue comes to mind. Are social networking sites a substitute for real creativity, or a bona fide means of expression?

If everyone has one good story in them, tools like Facebook and Twitter let that story come out — even if you don’t happen to be a writer. They let you publish your life to interested readers, if you care to do so. Of course it’s not a substitute for face-to-face interaction, any more than all your regular blog readers and commenters are. I don’t pretend that all the old college and high school friends I found on Facebook are really a part of my life — but I get to follow their adventures and find out things I never knew. For example, Lynn is a really good writer.

Blogging is so 2005, right? It’s all about the social networks now. The blogfading has begun, and according to this post (via AntSaint), that’s a good thing. No one wants 5 articles about my kids’ eating habits cluttering up an RSS feed that they subscribed to because they found one interesting post about startup culture.

What no one seems to have picked up on is that Twitter, Facebook and the rest are great at separating the noise from the content.

I’ve posted before about the unique writing challenge Twitter offers. You can use it that way, or you can just blast your life to the ether. Or you can do both. Whoever wants to read will read. If it’s too much noise, then they can just follow your blog for the deep stuff.

Facebook is the gossip magazine. Twitter is TV. Blogging is books and magazines. I don’t see anything wrong with that.

Unless, of course, you spend so much time poking your friends that you don’t get around to writing that blog post. Guilty.

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