That's not to say all blogs are doing well. When examining the spectrum of blogs out there, personal blogs appear to be hurting. Many of the as listed on Technorati are owned by media companies, including the number one . As an individual person, rising above the noise to make your voice heard has become almost impossible. Yet there are still instances where breaking news is heard from a lesser known blog.

Blogs are also impersonal. The content appears the same for every reader. There is no way to reach out to your specifically to your friends.

New tools have arisen to counter these issues. Services such as , , , or seemingly offer the same power of self-expression as blogging does. And they make it easier. Creating a blog post that includes video can be bothersome, with attendant file upload and bandwidth issues. By comparison, getting your video on YouTube is a much simpler process; it takes care of those details for you.

They provide a social aspect -- you can discriminate between friends and the general public. You can tweet for public consumption, or directly to your friends. You can limit who sees your photos on Flickr, or you can tag your friends' photos. You can control who is allowed to interact with you on Facebook.

These services are also fast. At StartupCamp a couple of weeks ago I found blogging far too slow to capture ideas -- microblogging with Twitter was the obvious choice in that case. And posting pictures is definitely faster with Flickr. And all the cool kids are using Twitter, clearly the defining tool for our short-attention-span world.