The End of the Web, Search, and Computer as We Know It:
I think about what constantly-flowing information means for blogging. In some ways this is Twitter, Instagram, Tumblr, etc. But what if someone started a stand-alone blog that wasn’t a series of posts, but rather a continuous stream of blurbs, almost like chat. For example: “I just heard…” or “Microsoft launching this is stupid, here’s why…” — things like that. More like an always-on live blog, I guess.
It’s sort of strange to me that blogs are still based around the idea of fully-formed articles of old. This works well for some content, but I don’t see why it has to be that way for all content. The real-time communication aspect of the web should be utilized more, especially in a mobile world.
People aren’t going to want to sit on one page all day, especially if there’s nothing new coming in for a bit. But push notifications could alleviate this as could Twitter as a notification layer. And with multiple people on “shift” doing updates, there could always be fresh content, coming in real time.
Just thinking out loud here.
Good out loud thinking from MG about where blogging’s going. I’ve realized for while now that I’m much more likely to use Twitter and Tumblr to share small snippets that aren’t worth a fully-formed post. What I’ve also realized is that I’m more likely to add commentary to that link share (as I’m doing now) so that it effectively becomes a blog post.
Because of this I’m seriously considering archiving my almost ten year old blog (carefully preserving comment threads if at a possible) and installing my Tumblr on the QuakerRanter.org domain.
Interesting… do you mean that there is no longer a place for the “fully-formed article of old”?
No, just that it’s not necessarily most of the social content I produce. I do a lot of curation (but then always have since my first proto-blog in 1997) and it’s the finding, sharing and commenting that is the “value added” portion of my sharing.
And look at this very piece: linked to by Simon S‑L, commented on by you: this, yet it is a trainj comment from Flipboard, posted to Tumblr and then automatically reblogged via an Ifttt recipe (https://ifttt.com/myrecipes/personal/2757294) to this WordPress site. Really, why not just admit that Tumblr’s my blog and mothball the WordPress as an archive?