Josh Sager Media: Creative Technologies Blog

I just set up my iPhone as a publishing device for my blog. It’s pretty cool. I find it funny that my laptop isn’t mobile enough for me anymore.

I’ve just finished another year of semi-pro football, which keeps me very busy, and during that time I relied heavily on social networking tools like Facebook and twitter as my way to share cool links, information, and other random tidbits. It got me thinking about the role of blogs vs twitter and other micro blogging tools.

The Blog Evolution

Initially I used my blog to share my opinions about technology and all things creative, then it moved into a re-posting stage where I wasn’t really providing anything new, but I still wanted to share or aggregate the information as a resource for others and honestly for me as well. After a while I felt that I was more of a distributor rather than a contributor so I evolved toward generating new content. I vowed to only contribute new content.

I’ve realized a few things in this journey.  Creating new content takes time if it’s going to be accurate and worth while.  There were many little tidbits that I wanted to share but the moment passed and off it went.

Micro-Blog

Then I started using my status updates as a micro-blog and it satisfied my need to communicate all of the small things.  But as the topics grew in complexity micro-blogging lacked the ability for me to communicate my entire thoughts or reactions to a particular subject, question, or topic. Tweets will go from white hot to white noise in a matter of minutes.  Leaving interesting points, questions, and problems unresolved.

Etiquette of Digital Distribution

Which poses a question.  What role do these technologies play in your digital lifestyle? Have you ever thought about information distribution etiquette and what tools should be used?  When is a blog post really just a tweet and when does a tweet graduate into a full blown blog post beyond general commentary.

In my digital lifestyle my blog is a way to think in prose. An opportunity to put thought and compose an article, essay, rant, opinion or lesson. It takes more than a few minutes to write a blog post (which is probably why I post infrequently).  On the other hand I use my status updates as a micro-blog at least 3 or 4 times a day yet I’m reluctant to post these life updates and cool links to a blog.

As a result of this I’m going to move toward categorizing my posts into buckets.  At least internally. A bucket for opinions and commentary, links and resources, and original content. All three seem important and flexible.  I guess I have this idea that a blog should be more like a newspaper or magazine, but it’s not.  It’s a blog. It’s not entirely professional, but it’s still useful.  If for nothing else it’s a way for me to organize my thoughts.

But now I turn it over to you.  What is the etiquette of new media in your life?