Great summary and call to arms to write our own content in our own ways on our own sites. Call it what you like but ‘blogging’ is somewhat waning, in the social webs. Since as easy it is to create your own site and express your own voice, we’re flocking to the ‘services’ that will then own our content along with all the restrictions around it. Facebook and twitter and everywhere else make it effortless to publish to the web, but at the cost of us losing our voice…
Jason Kottke wrote an end-of-the-year piece for the Nieman Journalism Lab called The blog is dead, long live the blog:
Sometime in the past few years, the blog died. In 2014, people will finally notice.
But the second part of the article’s title is as important as the first:
Over the past 16 years, the blog format has evolved, had social grafted onto it, and mutated into Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest and those new species have now taken over.
Jason’s piece prompted some soul-searching.
Frank is planting his flag in his own sand with his minifesto Homesteading 2014
I’m returning to a personal site, which flips everything on its head. Rather than teasing things apart into silos, I can fuse together different kinds of content.
So, I’m doubling down on my personal site in 2014.
He is not alone. Many of us are feeling an increasing unease, even disgust, with the sanitised, shrink-wrapped, handholding platforms that make it oh-so-easy to get your thoughts out there …on their terms …for their profit.
Of course independent publishing won’t be easy. Facebook, Pinterest, Medium, Twitter, and Tumblr are all quicker, easier, more seductive.
In all likelihood, the independent web will never be able to match the power and reach of the silos. But that won’t stop me (and others) from owning our own words. If nothing else, we can at least demonstrate that the independent path is an option—even if that option requires more effort.
I have a horrible feeling that many of the people publishing with the easy-to-use tools of today’s social networks don’t realise how fragile their repository is, not least because everyone keeps repeating the lie that “the internet never forgets.”
I hope that you too will be publishing on your own website in 2014.
via Adactio: Journal: http://adactio.com/journal/6620/