Steve Rubel and Brian Solis (CC) Brian Solis. www.briansolis.com

Brian Solis and Steve Rubel represent two very different approaches to blogging.  Most bloggers in social media know them. According to eCairn, they along with Jeremiah Owyang, Chris Brogan, and Dave Darmano have a 3 percent share of the social marketing community voice.

In many ways they are quite similar. Both are early adapters, both are innovators, and both understand promotion. But where Brian is master of  the long form, Steve recently dropped his top rated  Micro Persuasion blog for the Steve Rubel Lifestream, “with more bits and fewer posts.” Steve now posts a few times a day. Brian generally posts a few times a week. Brian’s recent post in response to Claire Cain Miller’s New York Times article Spinning the Web: P.R. in Silicon Valley reflects his style.

In announcing last month to “direct all of my online publishing energies to one hub, The Steve Rubel Lifestream,” Steve took a gamble.  Now Steve is essentially his own online news feed of daily links, insights, photos, videos and more on emerging technology. (I should add that Brian is now using Posterous, the same platform driving Steve’s Lifestream.)

So where does that leave us social media bloggers? Steve’s success was one reason I started blogging. At the time, I had misgivings about blogging and was reluctant to abandon time tested opeds and articles. But now I am comfortable with the traditional blog format and am reluctant to abandon it.  Of course calling blogging traditional is kind of funny given that it is still a relatively new phenomenon.

In my opinion, in the age of Twitter with its 140 character limits, the best way to blog comes down to how you process information. Do you like in-depth analysis or bursts of information?  Do you want a soundbite or a speech? Do you want to have the details to draw your own conclusions or do you want conclusions drawn for you?  

In truth, a lifestream is very bloglike, but it does challenge the orthodoxy that governs many traditional blogs. Rubel believes “the approach is different…People don’t have time to read as much as they used to. There’s too much competing for our attention…Blogging began to feel too slow and methodical.”

Brian may beg to differ.  And BTW, the changing role that blogs are playing is not lost on Brian. In a March Techcrunch piece, Are Blogs Losing Their Authority To The Statusphere? that has generated 215 comments, he wrote: “While blogs are increasing in quantity, their authority–as currently measured by Technorati–is collectively losing influence.” 

The answer is bloggers have many ways to deliver information.  

In the end, the two forms will mutate into something entirely different, but for the time being, they provide very different models to manage information and opinions. Perhaps the model is Jeremiah who when I posted had 48,089 followers, a rather incredible 16,073 updates as well as several lengthy posts several times a week.

But make no mistake about it, whatever form blogging takes, it will remain incredibly labor intensive.

Let me get back to you.

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