There are a lot of misconceptions about blogging, people who blog, and people that read those blogs. For one thing, I am all of the above. Obviously I'm not a professional, but I know what people like at least. Most bloggers don't get that not everyone cares about what you ate last night or the barf you just up chucked. Blogging is sharing personal experience and or dramatic scenes for advice. Depends on why you're blogging. But nevertheless, I see way too many people saying Instagram or twitter are blogging sites. Just no, they aren't every close. I'm addicted to both, but even I know they aren't for blogging. They're for social media, keeping people updated. Not for blogging. This personally irks me to death. However blogging isnt always for advice, sometimes it's to reach out to others- trying to help their life. I try to do that, doesnt usually work out that great, but I try. Questions comments concerns?
That's personal blogging, of course, but the format has moved beyond that into a much bigger realm with professionals writing what could be called short essays. Very often, like what I do, it's used for long works and storytelling. In this sense they're no longer "blogs", they're like newspapers or magazines that simply use blogging software because its cheap and convenient. Personal blogging can lead to problems, though, such as viewing your life as a soap opera with episodes. You stop enjoying moments for what they are and start thinking "hey, I can blog this," which removes you from intimate participation, almost the way smart phones and "Google Glass" threaten to do. Not everybody has the intuition for Gonzo journalism, they just subconsciously become reporters at the scene or actors in a play they've ceased to take seriously. Non-writer professionals, that is, professionals who don't write for a living such as doctors, programmers, engineers, etc., have adopted blogging software to spread their knowledge, which is both good and bad. Good because it gets their knowledge out into the world, but bad because the blog format is one of the worst ways to do it; blogs aren't meant for organizing reference or working knowledge, their primary discovery mechanisms are scrolls, calendars and "tag clouds", but reference material really needs hierarchies and chapters. A wiki is better for reference material because it encourages the creation of nested TOCs. A blog's list of dates tells you nothing about how to find a topic, so good advice gets lost, and search engines are insufficient if you don't know what words you could use in a query to get what you're looking for. "Aw... darn... what's the word for that thingy that goes in the whatsit and makes it do that thing," you think, confronted with a search box, while a TOC can at least help you narrow down until you can flip through entries and spot the vocabulary you were groping for. I've used both the "weekly column", wiki and blog formats, and I've used Twitter and social networks like G+. Here's a site where I use the wiki format to organize both reference material and editorial content: http://www.yacoset.com/ And this one is where I use the blog format for stories and editorials: http://chriswenham.com/ Although with the latter I'm using a platform that allows for either: each "blog" is a page-like unit, so there's actually two separate blogs ("Nonsense" and "Stories"). I'm still experimenting with it, and am thinking about creating hierarchies with folders and TOCs and putting large pieces on dedicated pages. The automatic sequencing of entries that comes with the blog module makes it easier to string them together, though. When something is personal I use G+, which is cozier because I can make it public or restrict it to friends and family. Both G+ and Facebook have largely taken the "personal blogging" market away from blogging software for this reason. I have felt less compulsion to "feed" my G+ post as I might for a host and domain name and theme and web design that I've paid fees for and want to get value from, so it helps me let go of the urge to be the journalist of my own life and just live it, like I should. It makes me think that adding more personalization, "themes" and templates to G+ or Facebook would be a bad idea, because it makes you want to brand yourself as if you were a product. "Personal brand" is not a good idea for everyone outside of actors, consultants and novelists. And nor do I think people should keep everyone "updated" about their personal life, except the things which might really matter, such as a major illness, deaths in the family, moving to a new home, etc. Finally, I think blogs and even social media are poor places to seek advice. If you really want to reach out and get someone's opinion, it's far superior to go to a Q&A site like one of the Stack Exchange sites. If it's deeply personal you can post anonymously, and if you only want advice from friends and relatives then you might post to Facebook/G+ with a limited audience. Doing it on a blog is a poor option, since the people you want advice from may never even read it.
I am, by no means any professional, I just like to share my experiences on D* which I really want to like, place all hopes and currently agree on their philosophy, but I see the point of blogs to be written for projects by multiple authors. About professional sharing of knowledge I still can't find anything better solution than ikiwiki. Currently I am taking part in one project where, unfortunately, I am not even a sysadmin, but we have to write our stuff on Joomla with very terrible layout and theme, where basically you see many poorly placed, over-sized buttons which appear on top and the same on the right side and you can find about three lines of text per article, just right after you scroll past by large buttons, some pictures stolen from the internet, "about the project" stuff, which is not helpful if you want users to come back, past the obligatory links to partners aaaaand, if you yet are not bored enough scrolling, you arrive on the bottom of the page with more images and buttons to partners and dedicated about page. Somewhere between that you can see three small links to three small articles with three introduction lines. It could have been better to have the most simple wordpress engine. And if you are a Romanian plumber, please, for Ada Lovelace's sake, do not side-hustle in IT..
I've never read that much and actually cared about the entire thing. You are completely and utterly correct in everything you've stated. But I can't get over the fact you use Google+. I know only 3 people that do. You would be a fourth.
Anyways: I completely understand what you're talking about and thank you for sharing both personal experience and advise toward these subjects. Oh, and one thing about blogging I forgot to mention; It's on the internet. You post it, regardless on if you send it to someone, it's out there. anyone can see it, so people shouldn't get mad when others disagree with what they've said.How do you feel toward that topic?
I use G+ because I don't use Facebook; I think I was rebelling against the popular shift, and then I started hearing about all the privacy problems. G+ is practically foisted on you if you have a GMail account, and many of my friends went to G+ so it worked out. There's also Google Hangouts, which work really well and have enabled me to be much closer to friends who live in other states and time zones. People get mad when others disagree with them because it's human nature to not only take your own opinions for granted, but to perceive disagreement as a personal attack. Some are more sensitive to this than others, and most of us are more sensitive to particular opinions than others. There's a reason why the Freemasons have a rule to never speak of religion or politics at their meetings. The specificity of when umbrage is perceived can even be narrower than the topic itself. If Joe blogs that he just bought a new Toyota pickup truck, and one of Joe's friends made the comment "You should'a got a Ford, Toyotas are crap" then it probably won't lead to any hostility: they can still share a beer. However, if you took the same people and this time Joe blogs that he just bought a Chevy pickup, and his friend said "You should'a got a Ford, Chevys are crap" then it can turn into a very bitter argument with lots of resentment, because in some places there is a very specific relationship between Ford and Chevy pickups that doesn't extend to other brands. Or picture it as someone announcing their new boyfriend. In one case the woman's friend congratulates her, and in another case she might launch into a vicious tirade. The difference? In the second case the new boyfriend was someone the other woman fancied as well. Posting this kind of thing publicly can make it worse, because now you add the need to maintain face in front of both friends and strangers, so the participants put more energy into it and quickly take their emotional investment too far.
You are very convincing and persuasive. Don't do that for free.