Tuesday, March 15, 2011
Ideas of March
“Ideas of March” is a theme, really a Twitter topic, that some people are putting out there as a way to encourage more active blogging, at least during the month of March. It’s true blogs are perceived as less necessary in the age of Facebook and Twitter, but I’ve never seen either of those, or the combination of the two, as a replacement for keeping your own personal history of things you want to say online. I still like the blog platform because my life is so all over the place. Some days I’m making art, some days I’m playing drums, some days I’m taking terrible pictures or talking about web development (which bores everybody who’s not totally fascinated with it). Any of that content can go here. It doesn’t disappear in five minutes (which, let’s face it, is what happens to most things on Twitter). I usually do repost my blog posts on Twitter (where they don’t get much interest, a few clicks here and there) and on Facebook, because people like the commenting platform there.
One other reason I keep blogging is because I’m still trying to find like-minded people to talk to and work with. On Twitter and Facebook, you need to already know me to talk to me. With the blog, Google knows me, so I’m there whenever. When I complained about a piece of Adobe software, a developer from Adobe came here to address my complaints. I’ve gotten job inquiries and sold artwork because of things I posted here. And if I do strike up a conversation here, it can be whatever it is—it doesn’t force you into an artificial relationship like “Facebook friend” or “Twitter follower”. (That said, if you came here because of Twitter or Facebook, feel free to friend me or follow me...if it doesn’t feel too artificial.) Or e-mail (address is in the footer), or leave a comment.
I don’t discount the importance of having a chronological history, even if it’s just for my personal use. I like being able to click on a calendar and remember what I was doing and thinking on a given day. I don’t think you can do that with Facebook or Twitter. And last, it’s all mine. It’s all in a database that I control—I can edit it or throw it away any time.
FYI, I use the old, free ExpressionEngine Core blogging platform (v 1.6.8). I guess it’s out of date, but it’s easy to set up, maintain, and customize, and it has the Akismet plug-in to control comment spam (so far it has never missed, nor given a false positive).
