On moving from silos to your own website:
Over the last year, especially, it has seemed much more like “blog to write, tweet to fight.” Moreover, the way that our writing and personal data has been used by social media companies has become more obviously problematic—not that it wasn’t problematic to begin with.
Which is why it’s once again a good time to blog, especially on one’s own domain.
But on the other hand…
It is psychological gravity, not technical inertia, however, that is the greater force against the open web. Human beings are social animals and centralized social media like Twitter and Facebook provide a powerful sense of ambient humanity—the feeling that “others are here”—that is often missing when one writes on one’s own site.
That’s true …which is why brid.gy is such an incredibly powerful service for, well, bridging the gap between your own personal site and the silos, allowing for that feeling of ambient humanity.
Matthias responds to my pondering about the point of “likes” and “shares”:
I like to think of Webmentions not as a measure of popularity. To me, they measure connection. Connection to individual people and connection to the community as a whole. Webmentions let you listen into the constant noise out there and, just like a radio telescope, pick up scarcely audible echoes of connection.
Rob has redesigned his site and it’s looking gorgeous.
I really like the categories he’s got for his blog.
- Support open source software
- Support open web platform technology
- Distribution on the web should never be throttled
- External links should be encouraged, not de-emphasized
Now, more than ever, it’s critical to own your data. Really own it. Like, on your hard drive and hosted on your website.
Is taking control of your content less convenient? Yeah–of course. That’s how we got in this mess to begin with. It can be a downright pain in the ass. But it’s your pain in the ass. And that’s the point.
Unfortunately, this is what all of the internet is right now: social media, owned by large corporations that make changes to them to limit or suppress your speech, in order to make themselves more attractive to advertisers or just pursue their owners’ ends. Even the best Twitter alternatives, like Bluesky, aren’t immune to any of this—the more you centralize onto one single website, the more power that website has over you and what you post there. More than just moving to another website, we need more websites.
A collection of hyperlinks to collections of hyperlinks.
Another year on adactio.com
One year on adactio.com, complete with sparklines.
A handpicked selection of blog posts.
Also, tipblogging.