So here’s what’s going on…
I’m writing this on my new Posterous blog. As soon as I hit the ‘publish’ button this entire post will simultaneously appear as separate entries on:
- Blogger
- Tumblr
- (and starting today) my formerly dormant LiveJournal account and the hallowed halls of my WordPress.com blog
It will also be sent as a status update to:
And will show up in my feeds on:
… But isn’t that spam?
That’s certainly a valid question. Here’s my defence:
I. I need to cover my ass.
One feature Posterous doesn’t currently have is the ability to export data. Fortunately both Blogger and WordPress do — albeit in different formats.
I’m currently suffering through an exruciatingly tedious migration of an old ExpressionEngine blog to WordPress. Although I was eventually able to export my posts my comments didn’t make it out with them, so I have to manually transcribe three years of them. Never again.
II. Blogs are changing.
The clever folks who run Posterous and Tumblr realize that blogs are also networks. LiveJournal got this too, and I suppose Blogger and WordPress are on board with the idea to a much lesser extent.
And as I’ve written previously, traditional longform blogging is feeling very antiquated these days…
III. You need to hit people where they live.
I’ve learned from my love/hate affair with Facebook that if you want someone to see something, you literally have to dump it in front of their eyes. And I’d honestly rather interact with a reader in a space that’s familiar for them, seeing how easy it is for me to spread my stuff so far and wide.
Of course, I’d hate to be thought of as someone who generates needless duplication noise. What do you make of all this? You can reply wherever you see this — I’ll be watching!
