Lileks made the following observation this morning:

Was amused to read that Kids Today have stopped blogging, more or less; they’ve moved the blurtage over to Facebook, which makes much more sense. The web is the Great Heaving Sea; Facebook is an auditorium. Tumblr is a flea-market. Blogs will either be for writers, or communities gathered around a particular ideology or subject, or ace aggregators who can spit out 30 unique links a day.

I’m not sure what he was reading, and I must admit I’m not very aware of what’s hip and happening these days, so I’m wondering… is this true? Has blogging been revealed as just another fad that’s nearly run its course? I have noticed that many of the personal blogs I visit seem to be petering out, and I’m painfully aware that my own output has fallen in recent years. Also (and this is possibly unrelated), I’ve noticed I don’t get near as many comments as I used to. But I’ve attributed that to people’s circumstances, i.e., I assumed everyone was busy, not that they’re losing interest in blogs. Certainly my interest isn’t waning. This silly little virtual kingdom seems to fill a genuine psychological need for me, and I get pretty cranky when I can’t find enough time in my day to keep up with it to my satisfaction.

I have become pretty active over on Facebook, but that’s hardly an adequate substitute, at least for me. Facebook is like sending a postcard to let someone know your latest port-of-call on that big road trip; it’s a form of contact, maybe it’s even a little revelatory, but it’s hardly a conversation.

I don’t know what Tumblr is.

And despite the best efforts of my friend Gillilan, I simply have no interest in Twitter. The 140-character limit strikes me as arbitrary and too constraining, and I don’t see how it could allow anything but the most superficial of observations. (Hmm, there I go talking like one of those mythical “writers” again.) I hate the text message-style abbreviations that seem obligatory in that medium (again, it’s the 140-character limit). Hell, I don’t even like the terminology associated with Twitter. The name itself, and the verb “tweeting” are so cutesy-poo, and I hate cutesy-poo. If anything, Twitter is what strikes me as faddish, not blogging. But then, the arbiters of cool never seem to consult with me on these things, and I know I’m almost always the last one clinging to things that everyone else has long since abandoned.

So tell me, Loyal Readers, is blogging on the way out, aside from a handful of specialized sites and a few long-winded die-hards like myself?