I can’t open my feed reader these days without at least one article proclaiming the long, slow death of blogging. Bloggers, we are told, are switching to other channels, notably the more conversational microblogging characterized by Twitter. Bloggers are getting burned out trying to keep up with regular posts, no less an authority than The New York Times tells us. Some point to the numbers: The adoption rate has been plateauing, statistical evidence that the end is near.

It’s time for a reality check.

New blogs continue to appear

A few posts ago, I referenced Geoffrey Moore’s technology adoption curve, which applies to blogs as much as anything else. When blogs first hit the scene—particularly the free, hosted ones, like Blogger.com and WordPress.com—the innovators couldn’t wait to get their hands one one…or more than one. I happily count myself in this group. Many of us didn’t know what we wanted to do with a blog. We just had to have one. We’d figure out the content bit later. In fact, my first blog died a quick and fairly painless death because I wasn’t quite sure what to do with it.

I was more comfortable as an early adopter. For years, I had been writing a monthly email newsletter. During the course of the month, I would write articles. At the end of the month, I would collect them, format them, and send them to my distribution list (entirely opt-in, of course). After noodling around with my first blog for a while, it struck me: I can publish my articles as soon as they’re done. “a shel of my former self” was born. I was part of the group of early adopters who simply figured out what to do with blogs early on.

Once the innovators and early adopters had started their blogs, the growth curve began to flatten. Today, people who start blogs, for the most part, aren’t doing so just to have one. They have something specific in mind for which a blog is an appropriate vehicle. These are the early majority, and their more practical approach to blogging is the reason the blogosphere doubles in size about once a year instead of every 55 days or so, as it did during the innovator/early adopter phase. That kind of growth will continue as the late adopters and maybe even some laggards start blogging.

Business is just catching on

We tend to talk a lot about businesses that have blogs, mostly because they are exceptions, not the rule. Those of us in the consulting world hear “my leadership is afraid of it” far more often than “my management can’t wait to start one.” But as companies learn that blogs are effective tools for engaging customers and other publics, and for addressing issues, they will continue to adopt them. Only 57 of the Fortune 500 have blogs today, according to the Fortune 500 Business Blogging Wiki, but I have no doubt that number will grow over the next months and even years.

Twitter won’t replace blogs

While some of the content that populates blogs can naturally be moved to Twitter (and Jaiku and Pownce and Seesmic and Utterz), some content cries out for more than 140 characters. This post, for instance, would make a terrible tweet. Note, however, how many Twitters direct their followers to blog their posts by sending tweets containing links. Twitter is the best thing that ever happened to TinyURL.

Twitter is also more conducive to dynamic conversation. Blogs are not; the nexus of control in blogging rests with the blogger. I post; you comment on what I posted.

Who notices you on Twitter is limited to those who choose to follow you and those who find you because you’re the second half of a conversation taking place with someone they already follow. When was the last time you saw somebody point to a tweet and say, “I read this great tweet today?”

And the kinds of issues that drive businesses to embrace blogging cannot be addressed with Twitter. Explaining policies, addressing crises, exploring issues—these are not natural themes for tweets. Has anybody heard of Twitter outreach (or, more crudely, pitching Twitterers)? Didn’t think so.

Let’s face it: Jonathan Schwartz, Bob Lutz, and the TSA could not accomplish with a Seesmic account what they do with their blogs.

People still read blogs

A study by PR agency Brodeur & Partners reveals that mainstream journalists are heavily influenced by blogs. How crazy would it be for companies to abandon blogs when not only can they build communities of customers but shape the kind of coverage they get in the still-important press?

The action is everywhere

A bazillion years ago—2003 or so—social media meant blogging. Since then, there has been an explosion of social media, from Digg and YouTube to Facebook and Second Life. You can slide them and dice them, label them and categorize these many tools however you want, but like anything else, people will use them mostly because they satisfy a particular need. Twitter doesn’t satisfy the desire to create videos any more than YouTube satisfies the desire to have burst-like conversations with lots of people. We use tools based on their strengths, and each of the entries in the social media space offers its own strengths and weaknesses, possibilities and limitations.

While we are seeing a reduction in short, pithy blog posts because Twitter makes it easier and provides more immediate gratification, blogs will continue to be an important tool, used based on their strengths. Understanding the strengths, weaknesses, potential and limitations of each tool is what it means to be strategic in our approach to communication. And while I’m a happy Twitterer and a proud early adopter, I’ll continue to counsel my clients to use the right tool to achieve their objectives. That includes blogs, which aren’t going anywhere.