/blog

Ok Malik writes that he tries to "to turn back the clock and blog as if it was 2001." Quoting Jane Friedman, from her newsletter, he points out that blogging has changed:

"Instead, for blogging: Think about the potential value and longevity of the content ... If you have little or no consistency in what you're writing, it's difficult to create impressions or opportunities around the work you want to be known for–or earn a living from."

Why?

When did it become the norm that a blog is a marketing tool? What's wrong with simply using a blog as a way of airing your thoughts and feelings?

Blogging itself is still as it always was, it can be used as one sees fit without feeling constrained by the expectations of others. Blogs are, or can still be, personal endeavours, the value and longevity of which should be defined solely by the author.

Om mentions he has plans for the future that include "conversations and sociability" and I feel that blogs can still play a part here. The problem is that most people have been conditioned to default to social channels because they are easier to update and respond to. Maybe blogging needs an overhaul (I've tried to streamline my own processes as much as possible) especially with the social aspect. IndieWeb features aim to improve the connectivity between sites but are still too complicated for the average person to implement so something needs to happen – either a gross simplification of how things work or a rethink of the direction we're heading.

There has been a tendency to move towards smaller, more private forums but blogging can and should still play a part; it's down to how we approach them and how we can develop or enhance the tools. Something that's way beyond my pay grade but, in his book Indie Microblogging, Manton Reece explains it nicely:

What we don't want to do is reinvent the wheel with a new social media-like protocol that isn't rooted in the web and blogs. Others have tried to come up with new systems for microblogging that don't use blogs. But the word “blog” is part of “microblog” for a reason. They differ only in length. By using blogs, we get to keep everything that is valuable about blogging. We get to keep existing blog software and IndieWeb-friendly formats.