Recently there has been a lot of talk about the Future of Blogging, and since have just decided to start blogging again I find this conversation quite interesting.

Before considering the future though, where has it come from?

My history of publishing online

In 1999 I had been online for a little while, and started playing with html. Geocities was one of the first places you could set up a free website, but Tripod was better. Forums were popular, and you spent hours crafting the pixels of your signature image. Macs were for schools and media dudes, but if you were serious about computing you ran Windows. Slashdot was where you got your tech news, and things got slashdotted. CyberTown was amazing because you could walk around a 3d virtual space together with people from all over the world.

In 2002 I didn’t have a blog, who wrote diaries anyway? I posted a few photos and things at DeviantArt.

I wrote my first ‘weblog’ in January 2003, and stopped writing in October 2003. Movable Type was the weblog software of choice at the time because Wordpress didn’t exist. Posting took a while because it had to regenerate all the static html files. I found Flickr interesting but didn’t feel like sharing any photos. This was when you went to flickr.com and had to hit the bright pink “Start Flickr” button to load it up.

In April 2004 I got my hands onto a Gmail invite a few days after the private beta started and I wrote a few articles about that – if you weren’t there at the time, it was a HUGE event on the web. Who would have expected a search engine to release a serious email service with a whole gigabyte of storage, on April Fools Day! The demand for invitations to the invite-only service was huge and resulted in a few practical jokes and a nice little windfall when I sold the few that I had. This was all on Wordpress 1.2.

It was around 2004 that I had a brief foray into LiveJournal, because that’s where my friends were talking. RSS was amazing.

In 2005 I got into Flickr more seriously because I was heading to Europe for a month with the family and wanted to share the photos I would be taking. I made a template for a blog but didn’t have time to turn it into a Wordpress theme so I ended up editing it manually. I posted a quick roundup every day as we traveled around. I sold my first website. Myspace was ugly. Facebook was new.

In 2006 I heard about this thing called twttr and decided to sign up. It seemed like it had some potential but it was brand new so there was nobody talking there.

In 2007 I created the HatchThat blog to publish interviews with entrepreneurs. I loved the concept and it started off well but with a limited scope I got over the weekly schedule. Twitter was much more fun.

In 2008 there isn’t much conversation on blogs because it is all happening on social networks. I have posted almost 3000 updates to my twitter profile, which 1,350 people listen to – there are people talking there. I still use Facebook to talk to friends and see what is happening, because my friends are there. FriendFeed has potential because it aggregates everything you publish from all over the web, but the signal to noise ratio is horrible. Facebook lets you post a variety of formats and has a Live feed which automatically updates. Twitter has decapitated all of its good features of which the most concerning is search.

What’s next?

John Johnston says he doesn’t want or need a blog, and that he is happy using Twitter exclusively. I think he makes a fair point – up until today I was just a twitterer. But it only gives you 140 characters and as you can see I can easily bang out much more than that.

I figure it must be time for a blog again. We can have profiles spread over the web but we have little control over what happens to them. Twitter just turned off archives past 10 pages. Facebook is an obvious walled garden. My home base is at www.rosshill.com.au and I should have that domain name and email address for eternity. I don’t need to post all of the content I produce here because not many people care about a photo I took out the window, walking back from the beach or watching jets at the airshow, but a few people are interested in ideas and that is what posts are good for. I will still have passports on other sites such as Flickr and Vimeo and Yabble, but for now home base is home base. But are there people talking here? Well, there are a couple of comments already – but there are links from all over the web pointing here, so it will be interesting to see what happens!

What’s after that?

Once the filters improve, Lifestreaming will be much more interesting. Maybe next year.

By Ross Hill - September 1st, 2008 at 7:35pm with 1,461 views - deviantart facebook flickr friendfeed gmail john johnston livejournal movable type myspace twitter vimeo wordpress yabble