Personal Blogging vs. Aggregate Blogging July 11, 2008
Posted by Will in random thoughts.Tags: blogging, random thoughts, social participation
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I’ve been participating in the social world of the Internet for a while now, but the act of blogging is still relatively new to me. I’m slowly working on getting Wide Angle Lenz on a customized design and making it my own, and have some pretty cool ideas for it moving forward, but I could be posting more regularly, figure out who I want on my blogroll, network it better, etc., etc.
Something I have been thinking about for the last couple of days was sparked by a Twitter post by @kevinrose
hmm, Pownce (notes/files/links), Digg (stories), Twitter (short updates), FriendFeed (aggregated comments), do I still need a blog?
It’s definitely a valid point. Why are some of us focused on the upkeep of our personal blog, when we could go on Twittering, Digging and Flickring all we do, all feeding into one place – our FriendFeed account. I would imagine this is what FriendFeed wants, all of us to start using it as our blog. Considering the 40+ places that the site aggregates, I certainly like how easy it is to set it up once to spit out the various places I leave a mark on the Internet. So instead of saying “You can find me at Twitter, del.icio.us, Flickr, and Facebook,” why not just say “Check out all I do online at FriendFeed.” There is also a new site out called Posterous that allows people to simply email content to one place, and a profile is created for you. I really like the design of the site, but it will not replace blogs.
Replacing personal blogs (not for a group, institution or business) won’t be happening until FriendFeed offers personalized profiles, because it’s that personal touch/design that adds so much to the reading experience sometimes. When it comes down to it, yeah, the content of the site is king, but if every single personal blog looks the same, it’s just going to get boring. There’s no doubt that FriendFeed will offer personalization – just like Twitter and Pownce do (the design options for Pownce, by the way, is awesome) – but until they do, I’m still going to be trying to roll out a completely unique site that express who I am, what I think and what I do.
What do you think? Would you use FriendFeed as your “blog” if it was personalized?
No matter how many social outlets we have, I feel that blogs and emails are the only personal ways we can communicate. If I write on your facebook wall or reply to your tweet, there is still some essential human expression that I cannot communicate to you in a few characters. Although friendfeed will condense all the media we apply in our daily lives, I feel that this continues to separate us from relational communication that the web could be used for. Twitter, flickr, friendfeed, (and for the majority of the population) myspace and Facebook are social information receivers and senders. I find out that you’re dating someone, you took photos of the concert you went to, or that work really sucked today. It’s still all *informational*! I feel that today’s social networking is still lacking in socialization.
Are blogs social? Perhaps. There are two ways I view blogs: Professional writing and publication, and personal communication. I view blogs (as the savior of our English language on the internet) as a kind of publication because professional and well written blogs can be as useful as printed literature. I can read it, cite it, and check its sources. I feel blogs still pursue the high end of social communication. Complete information and feelings can be expressed to the receiving parties (readers) and the sender (the author). I still feel this way because there is always something so much more intense and personal about the replies I get on my blog rather than a wall post or a tweet. A group of friends hopped on Xanga in early 2005, and for the last three years have moved away, married, or traveled abroad, but each person in this group faithfully blogs and replies. This is a more complete social network than just skimming over people’s facebook status’ or seeing what netflix moving they’ve just ordered.
But maybe it’s not friendfeed’s fault. Maybe blogs should move only into the professional realm. And just maybe the reason we have superficial communication is because of our 160 character mass-texting generation.
I write so much I feel as though I’m blogging your comment system. Thanks