Comments on: You Should Be Blogging

By: Luc Vandal

Luc Vandal — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 20:50:02 +0000

Just bought MarsEdit to -force- me to finally blog. I’ve been wanting to do so for far too long!

By: Chad

Chad — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 04:14:34 +0000

So, what you are saying is that you are on a mission from blog?

By: Devin

Devin — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 19:43:00 +0000

I agree that blogging is a good way to gain a grass roots following. People considering it should be aware of how hard and time consuming it is to create articles that are worth the readers attention.

By: Conor

Conor — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 18:28:21 +0000

Due to your well deserved fame and success you no longer blog as you used to. As a programmer I miss the old technical posts that where insightful. So much to do, so little time.

By: Kevin Walzer

Kevin Walzer — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 14:47:14 +0000

Interesting post. What’s your take on comments in a blog? Some allow them (like this blog), because it offers a chance for a conversation, but some don’t. (Cf. Gus Mueller, John Gruber.) Mine don’t, but that’s mainly because I don’t like the headaches of trying to keep out comment spam: I moved away from a pretty nice blogging setup (Pivotlog) to Blosxom, which is just a single, unmaintained Perl script.

Otherwise, I agree with you that blogs help humanize the person behind the business, and are an excellent thing to have.

By: Brian

Brian — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 14:37:52 +0000

Are you marsaxman who used to be into futurebasic and on their listserv (back in the day)? If so, then I remember you from way back.

By: Richard

Richard — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 13:02:21 +0000

I agree Daniel, many more people should be blogging but less to establish the next popular blog, more because it’s fun and personally useful to get one’s thoughts recorded.

One reason people start and then abandon blogs (and twitter accounts) so frequently is because they put too much emphasis on the social connection piece of sharing online and when they don’t become popular quick enough (or at all) they give up.

I like the virtual social community I have but for me the key is sharing without thinking about popularity. The best blogs seem to be written by people who don’t seem to give a shit whether they become popular or not, they just like putting their thoughts online. The fact that others discover them, link to them, drive their popularity up seems to remain secondary to the fact that these people now have an outlet for their thoughts and ideas.

After years of using flickr I started to realize how its social tools were affecting my photography; this is when I realized that putting things online to fan one’s popularity isn’t always the best thing.

By the way, I’ve been using MarsEdit since it was in beta and in the early days, when WordPress’ web-based text editing UI was crap (it still is mostly). MarsEdit allowed me to work with text in a simple, intuitive way and kept me blogging when I might have dumped it for lack of good tools. Thanks to Brent and you for that.

By: spatt

spatt — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 08:11:46 +0000

just recently i’ve started blogging again after becoming anonymous on the internet scene..
its kind of addicting to me. :)

By: Daniel Jalkut

Daniel Jalkut — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 05:49:47 +0000

Buzz – I think what’s interesting about Tweeting is it gave us an outlet for many things we might have blogged about. In many cases it serves as a good alternative, but in many others, it’s just not the right format or medium.

The big thing about blogs is you own the content and the format, 100%. You choose how it’s structured and how it’s delivered. I believe this is a big part in building and sustaining an internet identity.

People on Twitter who are immensely popular usually have some other web presence to support that popularity. (Or they are the freakish real-world celebrities who are popular on Twitter in spite of their boringness there).

By: Buzz Andersen

Buzz Andersen — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 05:44:33 +0000

Funny you should say that. I’ve been lamenting my lack of blog presence lately. After a long time of tweeting, I’m feeling the urge to produce something more substantial again.