blogging and socials - full circle

i have been pondering the various social media worlds over the last couple of decades and how i have interfaced with it.

at one stage there were a number of bloggers around the world and it was very energising to engage via conversation that took place in the comments of various blogs. it was easy to keep up because there weren't that many! prior to that, the conversation had taken place via email discussion forums.

then with the arrival of facebook i was eventually persuaded to join (in a bar in austin). at one level that seemed a lot more democratic - lots of people got involved and it suited lighter touch posts. the thing i never liked about it was that it didn't archive anything so if there was an important conversation it was hard to go back to.

twitter had its evangelists and the same thing happened - i was persuaded to join. i kept the blog going but found the conversation had moved to multiple places and people were less likely to visit a blog so you needed to repost everything or work out what to post where. that was fine and i rationalised it by saying you need to go where people are. it felt at times like there were flows you needed to spot and jump on. 

i am a photographer so instagram was appealing to post photos and i have enjoyed that space although i was late to that, though i have still kept my flckr account going where i really post my photos.

whatsapp has also become a useful tool and a hungry monster all in one!

the challenge is that it all gets a bit exhausting to feed the various socials. that is compounded by having various pioneer spaces to communicate in with cms and trying to puzzle out what should go where. inevitably the blog got less attention over time. the second challenge is that the companies running the socials are horrible. we all kind of knew that but it has become more and more obvious. the number of ads, the way the socials have fuel fake news and take zero responsibility beyond making as much money as they can and so on. so there is a sort of widespread disillusionment but a reluctance to bail. i have no idea what that means. 

but i have been reflecting that i am really glad i have kept this blog going against the odds, hanging in there as a landing page and an archive of sorts of the last twenty years or so. it's a funny mix -i have always fused things in my own life with mission, culture, pioneering, photography rather than having a disciplined sharp focus. and i have decided that i am going to go back to posting more on the blog - that will include short things, links to something (that might have gone on twitter), and longer reflections. i hope to up my game by posting most days or at least a few times a week. i will link things across to twitter and where appropriate post in facebook but mainly it will link back. i am not expecting a resurgence of conversation in comments on the blog or anything and a lot of people can't be bothered with an extra click. but i am going to give attention to the blog and less to other spaces. i suspect instagram may be the one i hang out in a bit more as i do love images and quite a few photographers post there. 

this is just me thinking out loud and describing what has already happened - i go to twitter and facebook less - once every few days. i'll keep doing that though perhaps that will wane too - i am kind of over them.

 

Comments

[Steve]

Your journey is very similar to mine and I am also very glad to still have a blog. Pretty dusty, a place for the last few years where I have placed slightly longer pieces but like you I hope to be more active there, while missing the comment community that made it feel more social

[Harry]

We love to see it!

[Wei Hei]

I enjoy reading your blogs.
As I'm on Facebook anyway because of the running club, I tend to follow Facebook profiles and pages as opposed to signing up to lots of emails. I've given up posting much on Facebook because:
- it noticed that I was doing a lot of posting (for different organisations);
- made me sign up to a security protocol;
- which promptly decided that I was doing too much posting;
- deleted most of my posts in the summer of 2021 as spam; and
- kept locking me out of Facebook on the basis that my account might have been hacked.

[Marcus Curnow]

ah the golden days of blogging?!… thanks for your dogged faithfulness to a platform
and a certain kind of conversation…

[Jonny]

Thanks for checking in - comments! Joy! Good to hear from you all.

[Ruth Barber]

This has been really interesting to read for me, as I've been mulling about starting a blog for ages, and been strongly encouraged to in the last month by separate people. This has been another push to do it!