Abort, Retry, Ignore?
on 04.16.06, 07:07am in weblog • comments (9)
I’ve been thinking about quitting blogging.
There, I said it. (Warning: this post uses the word "I" several times)
When I started The Furrygoat Experience back in December of 2001, weblogs were something of a "new" phenomena. For a long time, I found the whole experiment to be a great outlet for me - I used this space as a personal "backup brain", where I would post anything and everything that I thought was interesting. As a geek, I was sure that if I found it interesting there had to be some other geek out there who would also be interested in whatever nugget I could find.
But now, after 1600+ posts, I’m not sure that I find the whole "blog thing" that rewarding any more. However "transparent" it makes me as a Microsoft employee to have a blog, I’m not convinced that it makes products any "better". Personally, as a software engineer who is particularly interested in creating passionate users, I firmly believe in doing whatever it takes to give users that "I Rule" feeling when using software. Some engineers care about users, others think that they care about users, others just code for themselves. It’s just the way it is. And just because some have a website that has a daily updated XML feed isn’t going to change that fact.
Now that blogging has hit mainstream (when I started this was one of 50 blogs at Microsoft - now there’s over 2700), I find that I’m experiencing a growing frustration over blog-noise. Every day I read more and more about new ways to overload RSS and how Web 2.0 is the "next coming" (sorry, I know I promised not to mention Web 2.0). Not to mention that I find every time I even glance at the "a-list" bloggers, I want to just scream.
Don’t get me wrong - The Furrygoat Experience will still exist, it’s just that a change is necessary. Perhaps I’ll follow along Michael’s "Not a Blog" concept or post in some different fashion - I’m just not sure yet. I’m going to take a week or so to figure that out.
aawoken (April 16, 2006 @ 9:06 am)
Don’t do it. I just whittled my RSS feeds from around 700 to 32. You are on that short list. For a reason I might add. You are a valuable voice within that “noise”. Perhaps you can do as many on my blogroll have done and “rest”. I had to create a whole new links category, “Resting”, it increase weekly.
Daniel Marsh (April 16, 2006 @ 10:43 am)
I understand your feelings, and have re-evaluated the purposes for which I use my private soap box on at least a few occasions. Your blog is very high in signal. It often exposes me to technologies that I don’t see referenced on any other tech sites.
Scott (April 16, 2006 @ 2:22 pm)
It should be a Wiki, with a tag cloud. Yeah,that’s it. With an open API so I can mash up your wiki with my photo list. So anytime you mention the words “new technology” I can have a picture of my kid popup using Lightbox.js. Yeah. Cool. Web 2.0 man!
See, I started off trying to just post tech articles on my site. But I couldn’t keep my big mouth shut and I kept linking to other people and posting opinion pieces. So I shifted it to a blog, but they weren’t called blogs back then. just weblogs, blogging wasn’t a verb yet. One of the Ruby on Rails devs (I think) just posts a single word a day, sometimes just a picture (so, I guess a thousand words on that day). All sorts of interesting things you can do with a web sit that publishes content in some temporal format.
Sobeski (April 16, 2006 @ 4:08 pm)
Maybe now you’ll be able to spend more time working.
Ken Partridge (April 17, 2006 @ 3:34 pm)
Just wanted to say, your blog has helped me immensely, especially with the Calendar object coming out with Vista, and yourl ink to theother Bloggers.
Thanks
Christoph Richter (April 19, 2006 @ 8:04 am)
hmm… dont stop blogging. you liked it for 6 years. dont let the noise win.
but what you can do is, take it to the next level. maybe just write essays, or build an community, whatever. dont let a good blog die, because of too much bad ones…
Brandon (April 19, 2006 @ 9:57 am)
Well, I’ll be sitting here reading no matter what you write, so I hope you do keep writing - but only if you do it out of love for the topic.
ralph (April 20, 2006 @ 8:16 pm)
My friend, did you think that blogs were to improve products? I would like a straight answer.
hunter (July 10, 2006 @ 5:27 am)
yes dont stop blogging.