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Chris Lovie-Tyler makes an interesting observation:

"When I first started blogging, it felt like the expectation was that blog posts should be about 500 words"

I went back through some posts and found when he started. He's right.

I've been recently thinking about how the web and such expectations have changed and how this affected the way I've blogged over the years.

When I first started properly in 2003 I wasn't really sure what I was doing or what I should be writing about. I just knew I wanted to be one of the "cool kids" and have a presence on the web.

In those days I just used to write a combination of what had been happening, some tech stuff (mainly Microsoft based) and a lot of meta posts as I tried to make SharePoint a viable blogging platform. Unfortunately, the first snapshots of that old blog are from 2004 but they serve as an indication of how things used to be.

After a while, the influence of the "Tech blogs" grew and it became more fashionable to write longer posts. Bloggers were no longer the stereotypical losers writing about their lunch and their pets - the line between blogging and journalism started to blur.

In my pre/early internet days I had written a number of letters and pieces which were published in few a different magazines; writing in a more journalistic style, therefore appealed to me but, as Chris says, the expectation became that blog posts should be 500 plus words.

Over the course of a few years blogging became less about being a representation of you on the web and more about think pieces and essays, everyone trying to one up each other with a hot take on even the smallest story.

Shorter posts disappeared from all but the most ardent of personal sites instead moving to the ever growing social networks and an era ended.

I was as guilty as anyone, a move I often regret.

Social networks were a brave new world, a movement that was going to change the world for the better but they needed money to survive and business models sadly replaced noble ideals despite all protestations to the opposite.

But that's an argument for a different day. It's just ironic that what helped destroy short form blogging became its replacement.

For most.

Constantly writing more than 500 words is hard, very hard. I had enough trouble writing 300 words a day for a year during my write365 project. I burnt out.

And this is also why many others no longer blog. Once shorter posts became almost taboo they lost much of their material. The effort required to blog on a regular basis became too great. It was far easier to throw out a tweet, a dozen, a hundred, and still feel productive with minimal effort.

But the return to indie blogging is growing in momentum. As Manton writes: "By taking microblogging back from Twitter, we create a natural place for traditional blogs to grow." While he states that "microblogging is the gateway drug for long-form content" we must not treat it as merely a stepping stone only to be discarded when the high is no longer enough.

We already made that mistake once. We need both!

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# I think the blue behemoth is trying to tell me something...

But it wasn't me!

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Chris Lovie-Tyler says:

I've had two or three Facebook accounts (all for about 5 minutes, because I could never stomach continuing with it). A while back, I tried to delete them but couldn't delete one because it was attached to a business page. Although I deactivated it, it still appears near the top of Google results if you search for my name. And I'm still getting email notifications after having unsubscribed from them multiple times and sending Google messages telling them in no uncertain terms that I didn't want the account or the notifications anymore. That combined with their use of dark patterns in their design and their use of data have left me with a very low opinion of that company/network.

Chris Lovie-Tyler says:

Sorry, I meant to say, 'sending Facebook messages'.