In the history of the internet… now that I’ve got your attention… lol. Forums and discussion boards set of blogs all over the place. The advent of social media has changed how forums and blogs live online. Many forums, some of which I’ve run, no longer exist because traffic has evaporated for the cooler more popular photo sharing platforms.

This has led to the expression “micro-blogging”. The ability to share a small blog post. All these status updates or two line shared thought is basically micro-blogging. While the expression is not sexy, it has changed the landscape of how people tell stories.

Micro-blogging

In moments of deep reflection, it has occurred to me that I’ve placed a lot of thoughts on social media. The day these platforms go away, or an account gets deleted by accident, or a password is forgotten, these thoughts are lost to me.

That’s not cool. It’s not fun.

I recently heard a story told on the radio (by radio, I mean the podcast stream from a radio show). The host was reading a set of tweets they had discovered online. It was a story told over the course of a dozen or more tweets. Hilarious and very artsy. The author found a great way to convey a full story in so few words.

That just tickled my creativity. Someone else had found a clean and clear focus that worked for them. Instead of a long lengthy blog post, or a short one, they broke up their words artfully for their fans to digest in the one place they most likely encounter his words… Twitter.

I used to use Twitter so much back in the day. I’ve got stories laid out there. But, I’ve got no convenient way to get them back besides searching or scrolling down years of tweets.

Across my various social media hangouts, I’m sure I’ve got a good two books of content shared. But I don’t own the content, despite what the site says.

Creative Thought – micro-ish

So. Thinking forward. I’m not stopping my blogging efforts. I love writing. It relaxes me. It helps me deepen thoughts. Having a blog keeps me writing. The artificially imposed deadline of sharing a post on a regular basis sets the structural tone I need to keep on enjoying the very art I like.

It’s all part and partial to how the mind works. Without such artificial constructs, experience has taught me that I’d put the writing down eventually. Then, miss it, have to readjust myself to resume writing. The yo-yo effect doesn’t feel emotionally to good.

Since I’ve started to write seriously, I’ve been way more consistent with creating pieces than I’ve ever been. While I won’t share all my personal thoughts on a blog, my choice, I do know that I am thinking of new ways of expressing myself.

Hence the lovely thought of securing my micro-blogged topics on my blog itself. Instead of reactively going back to copy and paste, I can now pro-actively create special posts for the blog and social media.

How that will unfold… will look so much nicer if I just dripped it out instead of theorized about it before creating it. The sneak peak version… I’d create a topic to share with you hear and also create some of the social media post I want to use ahead of time. Then, when the blog goes live, readers of the blog get to see both pieces of content.

This gives me more creative ways to tell a story, more vantage points I can explore, and keep the blog post from getting too long. Instead of one 5k worded post (for the longer ones) I can do a 3k version and then embellish it with micro-blog posts that will live on social media.

The real winners are the readers of the blog who get to see it all. Thankfully, no one loses. The social media folks just wanted a short blip of content to read anyway. They’re not going to necessarily flock to the blog if the micro-blog is done as an afterthought.

To that end, there will be a link shared below… one employing the coding wizardry of the host of this site… where all the future micro blog post will eventually populate the bottom of the page.

There will be a link also for the project page that will host all the micro-blog musings. Feel free to bookmark the page for safe keeping to return to at any point in the future.

Short and Sweet of it

I’m excited about blending the social media aspect with the blogging aspect. It’s just another way to refocus a story and tell it in different ways. Sure, it’s a gift. Sure it’s extra work. But that’s the beauty of creating art. You’ve got to push yourself to new heights.

If this experiment works, great. If it doesn’t. That’s fine too. I’d have learned something new about how people like to consume stories I create.

This is one lengthy intro to the micro-blogging project. There will be another shorter one some time later as the page gets a bit more love. Now, I’m off to think of how to best use this new idea and work it into the blog… hum… the possibilities coming into clearer focus…

Thanks for reading and enjoying my musings. Cheers to more!

below is the homes of micro blog posts… with more coming of course

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Micro-Blogging

The choice of where to focus one’s lens makes story telling more fun. On one page, there is the musings that came from social media in the form of copy and paste. On another page is the collection of musings designed to live on both places with a bit of binocular like focus… fancy way of saying the post is split between here and social media. (hint… loyal readers of the blog get the full picture in clear focus).