"I think that the old blogosphere was superior to 'social media' like Twitter and Facebook for a number of reasons."

"First, as a loosely-coupled system, instead of the tightly-coupled systems built by retweets and shares, it was less prone to cascading failure in the form of waves of hysteria. Second, because there was no central point of control, there was no way to ban people. And you didn’t need one, since bloggers had only the audience that deliberately chose to visit their blogs."

Writes Glenn Reynolds, quoting something he wrote last month as he responds to somebody who said "with all the privacy crap about Facebook rearing it’s ugly head again, I’m thinking about moving back to a regular blog for my social interaction."

Of course, I agree that blogging is better, but isn't blogging "social media" and isn't Twitter blogging ("micro-blogging")?

What Glenn counts as good — "bloggers had only the audience that deliberately chose to visit their blogs" — is what drives many people to Facebook: They don't have enough visitors to their blog. People aren't coming to them, so they go to the people. They "blog" on Facebook, and you're compelled to visit their blog because you're Facebook friends. That's a separate problem with Facebook, because you might go there to see what your friends are up to and someone's pushing politics.