Jordan Willms › Comments

Tom, actually I have. I've been following Steve Rubel's experiment with great interest. - Akiva Moskovitz

Stickiness is a hard thing to manufacture. And, the kind of search engine love FF has is impossible to reproduce. - Jason Nunnelley

I've started a blog for my posts about visiting historical markers, mainly because it's so specialized (but it does feed into here). But in terms of most blogs...I think a blog might make an excellent complement to FriendFeed. I don't think I'd look at it like I looked like a traditional blog, just as a place to put longer-form posts. Let FF be the real traffic engine for those posts. Then if you don't have anything long-form to say for a while, let it lie quiet, because your community would be here. - Scott of Two Countries

I pretty much stopped blogging when twitter & FF arrived. There isn't much I can't pull off here than on a blog. - Rodfather

I guess if I tie the blog in really closely with FriendFeed, it won't be so much like starting over, especially if I mix the comments between here and there. - Akiva Moskovitz

I'm of the same mind, Akiva. At a bit of a crossroads. - Derrick

I like blogging. This is great for conversation and commentary, but sometimes I want to put things down to save, hold onto. my blog serves well as an archive of what I think, do, and how I evolve. It's a personal blog with many facets. I wouldn't want to give it up, but now I write stuff that I want to say. And keep. - Karoli

A blog would still show up here. The main advantages of a blog would be longer posts and the ability to control how they are displayed. - John (a.k.a. dendroica)

Clark, I think your 2nd examples are useless, but the 1st ("diary" blogging) is not, at least if it's done correctly. I do that a little bit here on FF. I'm selective, though. I don't post about every trip to the park, every meal, etc. I post if I'm eating some unique thing, like escargot or Moxie pop, and ask folks if they've had the same thing and what they thought of it. Usually sparks a little conversation. May or may not add to the world's knowledge, but it's enjoyable. - Kamilah Gill

i'm having the same inner debate w/r/t blogging. my blog does great w/search and has a good handful of followers. but, since I dove into FF, my (and others') engagement with it has really dropped off. This is because I do most of my "curating" - which was the vast majority of what I did on the blog all those years - here on FF, with the occasional long article thrown in. but I have... more... - Anthony Citrano

What happens on some of FF (and some "diary" blogs, perhaps) is a little like reality TV, except that it's actually REAL and not overblown like what's on TV, and it's more participatory. I think that's why I care about relative strangers babies and new foods and experiences on here. They start to feel like actual friends. They're doing stuff that I can actually do myself, so it's easier for me to relate to it. - Kamilah Gill

Anthony, I think a blog is a good source for expository whereas this is more a conversation. - Jason Nunnelley

Clark, let me be clear about something, I've been 'blogging' off and on since before the word 'weblog' was even coined. My earliest sites go back to 1995 and it was all 'diary blogging'. Regardless of whether that style is in vogue or not, I wouldn't discount its usefulness overall. However, I might question its place here on FriendFeed which is, by majority still, tech-oriented. At the... more... - Akiva Moskovitz

Akiva, I like what you said about a post "engaging someone that felt disinterested." One of my main reasons for doing this stuff is to discover things I wouldn't have otherwise found. That includes things phrased in a way that pushes my buttons. - Tom Landini

your blog is not realtime, so your content stays in front of people's eyes much longer it does, on here. This is one reason to use blogs over FF. - vijay

I went through sort of the same thing. Cleaned up and updated wordpress, added the ability to email to make a blog post, added the FF comments plugin, etc. In the end, I just didn't feel like blogging. When it comes down to it, you either do it or not. - Rodfather

It still might not stay in front of eyes, vijay. I rarely go past the first page of a blog, even one I like, unless I'm searching for some particular subject. - Kamilah Gill

Kamilah, let's say you are subscribed to Akiva's blog and also here on FF. He can post the same content on both his blog and FF; you will see ALL his blog posts in your feedreader; but unless you visit his page on FF at friendfeed.com/akiva you won't see all his FF posts. That's the difference realtime brings in. I'm not taking a side here; just pointing out one area where blogs are better over FF. - vijay

One reason I hold on to my shared-host is that I know my content will be there. Investing time in cloud services is cool, but there might be a chance a service you heavily use will go down and all the content you contributed is gone forever. Lately, I've been thinking of encoding and hosting my own videos again, instead of relying on Youtube, since there will be a less chance my video will be taken down or the music stripped if I host it myself. - Rodfather

I guess blogs might be a little better in that way, vijay, somewhat more "permanent" and visible. You're right, I rarely visit individuals' feeds here. It's all one glorious mixture. FF is better compared to a group blog of some sort (like BoingBoing) than to an individual's blog. Actually, though, I think the system that FF has (bumping up by likes and comments) gets a person better exposure (within a mixture) than a blog at some lonely outpost all by itself. - Kamilah Gill

I come to friendfeed to interact and clarify my thoughts. I blog to make a statement and summarize those thoughts. Yes that could be done here, but there will always be a group of people who want the noise filtered. What I love about FF is I can embed the discussion as part of the blog (like this), so people can choose how they interact; through comments on a single post or by following all of my content and/or discussions. - Chris Myles

As an aggregation service, friendfeed lumps original content I've created onto the same pile as content that I've just shared/bookmarked/favorited/etc. The effort to create the original content is an order of magnitude higher, and therefore far less frequent, so it just gets buried. I keep my content elsewhere, where at least it doesn't get drowned out by other noise I've created. I'm... more... - DGentry

DGenty, compelling argument! I've already been grousing about needing a place for longer posts (and I am often in want of freedom of verbosity) which is a point in Posterous' corner (as well as Steve Rubel's success with it is). Your comment inspires me even further; it hits home. And, although I could easily point a vanity domain to my Posterous, I'm very well aware that presentation... more... - Akiva Moskovitz

And I'll have to get over the idea that frequency is as an important vector as it once was. With feed readers and aggregators, people will be automatically alerted to new posts. Back in the day, when people had to browse to each site by hand, people would become discouraged if there weren't new posts on a regular (if not flat-out specific) basis. - Akiva Moskovitz

Why start over? Its not starting over it is providing depth. Blogging is the best place for the diatribes. I love blogs, the combination of yahoo pipes, google reader and feedly is sick. Its the ultimate epistemological vulcan mindfrack. - Robert Higgins

I said something useful? Wow. That doesn't happen often. - DGentry

The problem with realtime friendfeed and Twitter is that they can so easily pass by, and with your own site you control everything in how it's presented; you can also incorporate the work back and forth between here and the blog with plugins. Thomas Hawk does it well. They can compliment eachother, I'd just worry about the longevity of friendfeed to put too much effort into it when in a year or too it could be like myspace and something else might appear. Still I love ff and I'm pretty addicted :) - Phill Price from iPhone

This is exactly how I feel. I don't need my blogs anymore. I have my friendfeed and twitter with thousands of followers. That's enough for me. - Svartling

Blogging is better because it is a steady place where you can be found. These social networks are wonderful but they come and go so fast. Friendfeed is the cool thing of the day but how long before the next "cooler" thing comes along. If someone loses touch with you for a while, they cannot find you. At the very least you may consider keeping your domain with a link to whatever social networking program that you are using. That is my opinion. - Paul L. McCord Jr.

+1 @Paul - .LAG liked that

How about Tumblr? I think it's the best of all worlds. I can post media quickly (photos with just a caption; a quick video), or I can do standard long-form blog entries. I can also import any RSS feeds I like into it (Twitter, Vimeo), that are automatically published. On top of that, it has the community that many other platforms lack through "follow," "like," and "reblog" options. On... more... - Budak

Jason, good point! There is a hesitation on the part of many to consider Posterous and Tumblr as blogging tools (which they are). They can be small posts, but they can be normal blog posts too. The most important thing is to use what you like so that you will post regularly and about stuff that interests you. You will probably attract like minded readers and since your content is fresh and more often, it will start conversations. - Chris Sparno

@Jason - that kinda what I said, I hope: for those of us who previously used our blogs as a curating project and the occasional long piece, *and* who now have other good outlets for our expository stuff, figuring out why to have both a blog and FF becomes more difficult. - Anthony Citrano

Posterous is well worth investigation. I recently made the switch and don't think I could ever go back to a standard blog (at least for my personal brand) - Jordan Willms

Another demographic switch. If not Facebook or MySpace, where are younger users moving now? What's next, say the fickle? - Rob McNair-Huff

I've seen nothing but youth surging to Facebook. Those who get it stay with it, and those who don't are like the Twitter users who come, join, and never update. Just from my knowledge of y'know...being a youth. - Sean Quinn

Numbers and statistics, we can make them say almost anything we want... Here is my view: We can't really say that users in the 18-24 age range are going somewhere else by looking at these numbers alone. There are more users in each age range. We can say for sure that the progression is less aggressive in some age range, but is it that problematic? One thing we have to consider here is... more... - alltoute from FriendFeed MT Plugin

My 2 cents: http://jordanwillms.posterous.com/faceboo... - Jordan Willms from FriendFeed MT Plugin