Blogging in 2020 or vlogging?

Blogging has been around since 1994 and although web sites have updated from the 20th century, the core elements of a blog remain the same "a web site which someone writes about personal opinions, activities and experiences" (Merriam Webster). People would solve problems by reading other people's blogs, but in an age where we want information fast, is vlogging taking over?

A vlog, short for a video blog in its simplest form produces videos about a specific topic. In 2010 vlogging became popular as vloggers would make short informative content summarised in 3 minutes, the process of making a video then allowed for the media to have a face and the audience to develop a connection to the vlogger. 

So what can vlogging do that blogging can’t? A vlogger tells and shows the story, so you have to be able to keep an audience engaged with what you're saying and how you're saying it, whether your content it niche or not you're the face of you're own channel, and if you can’t captivate your audience with your personality then you’ll bomb. Blogging, on the other hand, is not as simple as some would think, think about the first few pages of a book or badly written email, once you start spotting the mistakes you lose faith and trust in what a person might be ‘saying’ because of bad grammar. 

With YouTube being the second most popular website in terms of traffic, it holds over 60 billion hours worth of video viewed per month and according to Cisco the networking giant "Video content is going to take over the internet by 2021, almost 60% traffic will be driven by video content". Now reading this you might think I'm pro vlogging and probably from Generation-Z, I’m not, but there's something familiar in vlogging for people starting off their video journey and that starts with social media. 

Social media platforms popularise vlogging elements such as stories and videos allowing everyday people to take a ticket into the vlogging world. You start your Instagram account around a niche topic i.e. traveling, post pictures from your travels, what you've done what you've seen, etc through verification of your profile and the followers you then build to firmly set yourself up to start a vlog. With over 3.8 billion people using social media, it's easy to see Cisco’s prediction become a reality.