Archive for December 21st, 2009
Polybloggering, or an open letter to my livejournal account…
LiveJournal, it’s time for me to come clean: I’ve been cheating on you.
Well not exactly cheating, but I have been seeing other sites. You know I’ve got a wandering eye, and just like it was with AOL chatrooms, and Yahoo! groups, and my Earthlink homepage, it couldn’t be just you and me for ever and ever. But I feel you should know everything I’ve been up to.
First of all it was WordPress.com, and mirroring my blog over there because of all the rumors that you would be going away, LJ. I couldn’t bear the thought of losing all the good times we’d had. But once I got the taste of that other interface and I realized that I could install that software on my own domain, I knew that you wouldn’t be my primary anymore. Now, when people want to know what I do online, I send them over there.
But nobody ever talks back on my self hosted site. And we have so many good conversations.
Then there was Facebook, which I finally joined because of the fact that someone I was wondering about intensely, who I had lost touch with, turned up on there. If I wanted to contact her, I had to go Borg, and so I signed up. At first I thought I could do a “friends page” thing like we have, LJ, with just a slightly different set of participants. But that quickly became impossible. Now I just friend anyone who asks me and let the chips fall where they may. I don’t try to keep up with anyone there because there’s just too much, and to tell the truth, while Facebook creeped me out, even before my mom found me there, it does have the advantage of being the Walmart of address books: I can let a lot of people in my life know what’s going on with me all at once.
From Facebook it was a short hop to Twitter, which I pretty much just regard as a big chatroom with some famous people in it. You don’t need to worry about Twitter, LJ. It could never replace you in my heart. It’s just good for a little quick and dirty fun.
Then there’s Feedly. Now don’t take this personally, LJ but there’s some days when your friend page just isn’t enough for me. When too many of the people I know repost their tweets, or I want wider range of news feeds or just to keep up with bloggers who aren’t from here, I have to turn to something else, and that something else is Feedly, which has turned into the massive browsehole in my life, but at the same time has brought me into contact with a much broader idea of blogging and what its role might be in my life. I know you might say to me that your friends page can do everything feedly can and more, but I’m a sucker for a pretty page layout and ease of use.
And that brings me to my latest heart throb, Tumblr. Don’t get offended, LJ but Tumblr and I have been seeing each other for about a month, and I think it’s pretty serious. See, the thing is, Tumblr is phone sex, particularly iPhone sex. Where ever I am I can grab a pic, edit it, and post it, all from the phone. I don’t do much talking there, just picture after picture. And for the first time in a long time I feel free! And while Tumblr has a lousy feedback mechanism, it’s got a cool community of image posters. And I’ve been trying hard to keep up with my picture of the day practice, so every bit of ease helps.
But don’t worry LJ, there may be other services in my life, but I’ll always have a place for you in my affections: you are the only online site where I’ve made new and lasting friends. Every day people pour amazing content into you. You’ve helped me learn so much about so many great people. I’ve remained mercifully untouched by your drama storms, while getting to bask in your contributors’ honesty. I’ll never give all that up, especially since I don’t even know how to engineer an effective flounce.
But if you don’t feel reassured enough by all that, just know that it isn’t you: it’s me.
Tags: blogging, daily photo, facebook, feedly, livejournal, tumblr, twitter, wordpress