Inspired, as I often am, by Lloyd and his various experiments in reusing media, finding new ways to use old stuff, and continuing to prod at blogging as a medium.
Thanks to him, I’m drawn back to Tumblr. It strikes me that the follow and post model that Tumblr embodies harks back to the original blogging tools like Radio Userland that combine reading and posting, and facilitates the easy (b)logging of other people’s content.
It is a closed system of course, which is a bit of a bad thing, but tools like IFTTT can be used to ensure a local backup of content is stored somewhere. But it feels better than – say – Facebook, which really is another follow and post type system. As is Twitter, of course, albeit with greater limitations.
WordPress – at least in its .com incarnation – seems to be following Tumblr by enabling users to follow blogs within a dashboard. But with these platforms, you can only (I think) follow blogs within that platform. It would be nice to be able to pull content in from elsewhere too.
The separation between a reading application and a writing application – which happened when? 2003? – was an error, as it enabled platform players to provide that holistic experience, and there doesn’t seem to be an open equivalent, unless anyone else knows of one.
You can follow anything that has an RSS feed in WordPress.com – can’t say I am a fan of the experience but it is straightforward enough. Tumblr is strictly a walled garden.
I’m not much of a fan of Tumblr – I think for the very reasons you seem to be endorsing it. I hate that churn of the same content reblogged and the struggle to track it back to its original source.
I think Medium is more interesting as far as the follow/post model is concerned – it is another closed system but at least for the time being makes it easy enough to export your content.
Yes – Medium has been mentioned to me in this context. Have you posted anything there yet?
I’ve been using it for my more personal or fun posts https://medium.com/@jukesie – I got some OK traffic and a few comments and the authoring experience is *very* slick.
I try and do the POSSE thing http://indiewebcamp.com/POSSE – and maintain my own domain with my stuff as well.
Ah ok! So the syndicate bit in POSSE basically means ‘copy and paste’ – or is it more sophisticated than that?
clever people use more sophisticated solutions 😉 I just export it from one place and dump it in the other!