Tag: blogging

Calls for the return of personal blogs are getting louder

I restarted blogging a month and a half ago here on this channel having taken time out away from Twitter and since then I’ve seen more and more people either returning to blogging or calling for the return of personal blogging.

A few days ago I saw this site by Ash Huang and Ryan Putnam, Bring Back Blog, looking for people to join their movement. Their reasons are the same as why I started blogging again, the Internet community was much better when people posted longer, more complete thoughts for the public to read instead of easy to twist bits and pieces, and the responses being equally thoughtful and on their own spaces as well.

Launching your newsreader in the morning and going through the feeds was a shared experience among internet users way back when but the web culture seems to have kind of moved on from there. We’re supposed to reduce the layers between publishing and public conversation and it seems the incorporation of the social web would be a fundamental part of it.

Twitter was ideal for information exchange, entertainment, and quick conversations but turns out it’s terrible for legitimate exchange of thoughts and ideas even if it’s taken 16 years for many people, myself included, to finally shake it off. 

The rise of Mastodon shines the spotlight on ActivityPub and other social protocols like it which means we could be on the verge of a new internet era especially as Automattic and Flickr are considering its integration to their products.

A second piece I saw was this post from The Verge, asking for the same thing with the same reasons with the added point of being able to control your own content and presence. I’ll just repost her argument that drives home the point of personal blogging.

Buy that domain name. Carve your space out on the web. Tell your stories, build your community, and talk to your people. It doesn’t have to be big. It doesn’t have to be fancy. You don’t have to reinvent the wheel. It doesn’t need to duplicate any space that already exists on the web — in fact, it shouldn’t. This is your creation. It’s your expression. It should reflect you. 

*[update] I’d be remiss to not mention this post by Ernie Smith, formerly of shortformblog, from 2019, about reviving blogs. Have a read through it.

Expanding Twitter’s Character Limit. Again.

The point of Twitter was its brevity. The need to conform to SMS standards was why it was limited to 140 characters with 20 set aside for the username. Five years ago they raised it to 280 long after it no longer needed to match SMS and now they apparently want to raise it again to 4,000. 

Some time after Twitter allowed people post up to 280 characters they said the majority of tweets don’t reach the limit but they never said how popular threads were and how long was the average thread. Twitter has always been more suited for story tellers so it makes sense to let people write longer posts.

Twitter’s reach and discoverability was a major selling point to bloggers and journalists to share their thought streams and link to their work. It’s why they were among the early adopters of Twitter alongside the startup crowd.

Letting people post long tweets is basically coopting the blogging experience, essentially telling people that they can just post everything there, not bothering with links. Most people don’t blog anymore so that’s moot but people do share stories and they make long Twitter threads, which means threads are going to go away. 

Twitter’s plan to release Notes (Twitter Write) was in early stages before the takeover and it was a full blogging experience with embedded images, captions, and titles but they were going to be separate from the regular tweets, a lot like Instagram’s Guide, which was likely inspired by Twitter Moments. Curious how they’re going to roll it out now after the people who worked on it are no longer around. 

It would be relatively easy to just expand the character limit but it’s also lazy. Turning Twitter into a full blown story telling or blogging platform would make more sense and it may serve to head off the migration to other platforms like Tumblr or Mastodon (face it, Google’s Blogger just isn’t a thing anymore) but that’s only looking at it from a product perspective. 

The return and increase of right wing political radicals on Twitter is a major turn off for many people and many have jumped over to other platforms. However there are crowds that are not affected directly by these groups, can’t afford to switch platforms for whatever reason, or simply chose to stay. They may still stick around, oblivious or dismissive to what’s happening, and most likely be taking advantage of the new features instead of jumping to another platform. 

Change is challenging and it’s not just about features or environment. Leaving your playground or asking people to move to a new one is not easy. The push factors need to be stronger than the pull factors and if people don’t feel the need to move, they won’t, no matter how much you try to convince them. Letting people write even longer tweets could be a reason for people to stay.

What if we reintroduce the old social network model?

Twitter isn’t worse today just because its owner is an attention seeking manbaby with no self control or maturity of mind when he tweets, Twitter is worse because its owner allows, enables, empowers, and creates targets for malicious individuals to attack and harass, based on misconceptions, misperceptions, and misunderstanding of what matters. 

On top of that, he is part of the malicious individuals himself. People often talk about those who want to watch the world burn, this guy is the mascot and leader of that group.

People used to have to post their content on their own websites or blogs and often they include a blog roll or links to other blogs or sites they like to help with discovery. 

Social media made all that so much easier but it also enables malicious individuals and content to roam much more freely. Reintroducing that control over what people are willing to see and deal with in a much more deliberate and comprehensive way may be the necessary element to reduce the amount of toxicity that’s being spread around.

Mastodon’s federated nature gives people that level of control. If you’re savvy enough you can host and manage your own server/instance/domain, but if you’re not, there are thousands of servers managed by various kinds of people, many of whom may share the same views and interests with you. You can choose to be an island or be in a city or town or your choosing. Your level of interaction is up to you.

Or you can return to old school blogging.

It’s Not A Mirror, It’s A Crystal Ball

parislemon:

Aside from a few tweets, I’ve mainly stayed out of the latest TechCrunch brouhaha. These things tend to flare up every few months, and they ultimately end up meaning nothing. But I would like to address one thing in particular, because The New York Times’ David Carr names me specifically in his article on the matter today.

More generally, it occurs to me that a lot of these posts are based around a fundamental misunderstanding of how TechCrunch actually works. Journalists seem to think they can write about TechCrunch as if they’re looking in a mirror. That is to say, they think our operation runs in a similar manner to theirs and they use that as a jumping off point for misguided (but predictable) outrage. In reality, what they’re looking at when they look at TechCrunch is a crystal ball.

So gather ‘round everyone, to learn how TechCrunch actually works.

Read More

Jakarta Globe takes a look at sponsored blogging ahead of Pesta Blogger 2010

Whenever someone talks about bloggers, the topic of paid or sponsored posts always comes up. Ahead of Pesta Blogger 2010 in Jakarta this Saturday, The Jakarta Globe brings up the issue with Enda Nasution, a prominent Indonesian blogger, as well as Ong Hock Chuan whose company, Maverick, is the organizer of the event.

In terms of paid blogging, Enda he [said] that it shouldn’t be a problem as long as the writer is honest. A disclaimer is needed whenever an author writes about a client or a product. “

If readers think the blogger puts up too much sponsored content, people will eventually feel it. If they don’t like it, they will leave the blog,” he said. 

In essence, paid blogging is seen as an acceptable practice as long as the author discloses the fact or makes it obvious in some other way. Excessive sponsored posts also tend to deter readers which means while it’s not a regulated practice, there’s an ethical aspect that bloggers need to acknowledge and at the end of the day it’s up to them what kind of readers they want for their blogs and the perception people that might have.

Jakarta Globe takes a look at sponsored blogging ahead of Pesta Blogger 2010

Reaching out to Bloggers

If you’re thinking of pitching your product to a blogger, it’s not as easy as you think. In fact, you could be in for a lot more work than you think. Naturally you need to know the reach of those bloggers, how they communicate, how they perceive and react to products, and so on. In short, get to know your bloggers.
Chris Brogan put together a few tips for vendors and PR people on how to get bloggers to talk about products.

A lot of the times you’ll get bloggers who aren’t interested in your products or find your product less than ideal. Don’t ever push them to retract or complain about them because you’ll tend to earn quite a thrashing and you’ll end up with an even more negative press. 
If your product is useful to them and works as expected, they’ll talk about it and say good things about it. If your product under-delivers, or is uninteresting, they either won’t spend their time talking about it or they will but negatively. These are just issues that you’ll have to live with. 

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On Blogging

Do you think blogging is dead or dying? If not, this particular piece by Paul Boutin at Wired might challenge your opinion, especially if you just started blogging like my friend here, or like myself, just resumed blogging after a long hiatus.

My advice though, when you read it, make sure you read it with a huge bag of salt, maybe some sambal and kecap (soy sauce) if that’s your thing. I don’t believe Boutin wrote that sincerely. I mean come one, Boutin is a professional blogger at Silicon Valley gossip blog Valleywag.

He mentioned how blogging has become impersonal, that the scene for personal expression has turned into a professional paid gig and how the whole scene is becoming big media or being taken over by existing mainstream media. If that’s not self serving or satire, show me a dictionary that says it’s not.

Sure, everybody and their dog use Flickr, YouTube and Facebook, oh and MySpace too. The great thing about Facebook is it incorporates all elements of blogging plus being able to connect with your mates, which means anything you post will have an instant audience.

What am I talking about, you ask? Well, Facebook has Notes for you to pour your hearts out and you can also upload photos and videos directly. It’s quickly becoming an alternative to photo sharing sites such as Picasa and Flickr because it’s so convenient. It’s got all the necessary parts to having a great blog without the content. And with the recent changes, it now puts status updates as the primary interaction method between friends.

So why hasn’t everyone stopped using WordPress, Blogger, Flickr, Picasa, Photobucket, Twitter, and everything else and move on exclusively to Facebook? Because people still like to be able to choose their methods of delivery, their exposure to their audience, and they like to be able to customize their layouts. Facebook, despite its near ubiquity, does not necessarily allow non Facebook users or anyone who’s not on your network of friends to see your updates.

So why have long-time senior bloggers like Jason Calacanis and Rober Scoble taken a step away from blogging? The question almost answered itself. They are long-time bloggers. They have been doing it for years, it may not suit them anymore. The scene in Indonesia is not so different. We have senior bloggers such as Enda Nasution and Boy Avianto who very rarely update their blogs these days because they have been blogging since the beginning of the decade. In Avianto’s case, since the last century!

People don’t blog to become popular. At least those who are real bloggers. Those who do it to gain popularity are not bloggers, they’re spotlight seekers. Blogging is a way to express yourself, a way to channel personal opinions and thoughts. If people happen to enjoy what you publish, that’s great, It’s a bonus. If people don’t pick up on your ideas or disagree, why should it be a reason to stop unless you’re a spotlight seeker?

When you blog, post pieces that you feel passionate about, don’t blog about what people want to read because people can find what they want read anywhere. Publish about issues you care about, spread it among people you know. If they like it, they will let you know, they may even tell their friends about it. There’s no pressure to blog and you don’t even have to do it regularly.

People discover who you are from your blog. They may even see a different side of you that you don’t project when you meet people so they can understand you a lot better. Blogging can also connect you with people with similar interests. Sometimes it leads you to a job.

So why have I started blogging again?

It was August 2007 when I decided to stop blogging after several months of irregular posting. I still posted a few entries afterwards but I’ve lost the passion to do it. There was a time where you can find three to four new posts in a single day for the entire week in my blog.

After three years, it had become a chore. It stopped being fun and engaging  anymore. I also couldn’t find the time to blog with my increasing work load. After finding a new job and it’s a writing job, I figured why not kick start the old machine, get things going again? After all, since I need to write for a living, I also need to practice writing more.

So here I am, back blogging again. In two places! This one for my personal thoughts, and my TechWeek blog at Posterous. My Posterous gets pushed to my Facebook Notes where it can find a whole different set of audience because my friends on Facebook do not necessarily go to my Posterous.

Since I haven’t configured tumblr to have comments, if you wish, please leave your comments on Twitter, if you’re on it. Send it @aulia.

See how that works out?

Linkage to Budi Putra re: the same issue