social media

My Two Cents on Blogging

Been think­ing about Hugh MacLeod’s posts on this sub­ject this week since Jere­mi­ah Owyang brought it up here (and fol­lowed up here) and then BOOM here he goes again with anoth­er post about what blog­ging means AND TO WHOM in 2012. Agree com­plete­ly and I’ll add that while I love Google+ and Twit­ter and var­i­ous oth­er net­works, I’m still read­ing blogs with vig­or. And a hearty amen to the con­ver­sa­tion hap­pen­ing in oth­er places than the com­ments. Twit­ter real­ly unleash­es their pow­er, for bet­ter or worse, no?

And let’s be seri­ous: I’m still fol­low­ing links back to blogs from Twit­ter. Not every­thing is being encap­su­lat­ed 140 char­ac­ters at a time. Aren’t you?

A short sto­ry: tweets like this one bear an eerie resem­blance to dis­course in the music blo­gos­phere cir­ca 2006. I’ll add that every­thing went pear-shaped in music blog­ging right around the time folks start­ed to notice that it was­n’t fun any­more and that first was what mat­tered most. It’s what drove me to find some­thing else to do as some of my favorite crit­ics did the very same. Once every­one’s talk­ing about what’s wrong, it starts to hurt the prod­uct. This is why I find folks like Mau­ra and Chris and Daphne to be so inspi­ra­tional: they’re stick­ing it out and still doing great work. If tech blog­gers start to feel that the thrill is gone, I’d rec­om­mend check­ing out how Mau­ra and Chris and Daphne are rein­vent­ing what it means to be a music crit­ic in a Lady Gaga Pants­less in Paris world.

If you’re a tech blog­ger or aspire to be one some­day, reach out to friends and col­leagues who’ve writ­ten about music or food for pay online in the past decade or so. If noth­ing else, they can share more than a few sto­ries about how Web 2.0 trans­formed the way we blog and how that process keeps iter­at­ing to new fields every day.

Making the Internet Fun Again

I’ve been self­ish about how I share things online. When I was writ­ing reg­u­lar­ly as a crit­ic, wield­ing my blog like a bull­horn for what­ev­er I desired, I shared with near wreck­less aban­don on vir­tu­al­ly every plat­form at my dis­pos­al. Lately, I’ve turned inward, keep­ing cool arti­cles and ideas nes­tled snug­ly in Instapa­per, or worse, my head, like they’re some pre­cious bauble to hold close. Well, that’s going to change. I’m vow­ing to share more in 2012.

Some­thing I’ve come to love about the most excel­lent writ­ers (call them “cura­tors” if you must) is how they edi­to­ri­al­ize links. I think I’ve been slow to accept this because with music writ­ing, it could be mon­e­tized in clear ways by pub­lish­ing through a third par­ty. When you read great stuff at blogs like dar­ing fire­ball, you mar­vel at how far a link and an ounce of edi­to­r­i­al can take you. Same is true for Twit­ter fol­lows like David Carr, who just re-shared his insight­ful inter­view with Ter­ry Gross on Fresh Air specif­i­cal­ly about this top­ic. Serendip­i­ty! It’s what makes the Inter­net fun and I think that I for­got that some­where along the way while hoard­ing links and arti­cles and ideas in Google Read­er and Reed­er and Twit­ter and Tum­blr and Instapa­per and all the oth­er ways we use the web today.

So 2012 at Ram­say­ings will be about shar­ing those insights. Brace yourself.

I’ve Rejoined Tumblr

You can fol­low Ram­say­ings: The Tum­blr by your pre­ferred method. Since I fol­low a dis­pro­por­tion­ate num­ber of music crit­ics there, it may be where I enter con­ver­sa­tions about stuff like that? Or pos­si­bly techi­er things? Or social media things? It’s a gar­den that’s grow­ing very quick­ly and I’m scram­bling to keep up.

And, yes, I think I’ve decid­ed to main­tain both Word­Press and Tum­blr plat­forms in some way or oth­er indef­i­nite­ly. Social media is a cru­el mis­tress. I guess it would be cru­el­er if I were also vlog­ging or something.

Calling All Word Nerds

Yes­ter­day I start­ed my new job as Com­cast’s chief blog­ger. Now I’ve had some fun with social media so far in my career and have had a real­ly great time get­ting peo­ple excit­ed about bring­ing the A’s back to Philadel­phia, but I have very lit­tle in the way of what you may call deep back­ground on social media practices.

My take: I feel like I have the trick­i­est part–writing–down cold. I have a sol­id under­stand­ing of what sto­ries are best told through text and which are bet­ter explained by video, thanks to my tenure at comcast.net. I know that peo­ple want reg­u­lar con­tent and they have expec­ta­tions around how it’s deliv­ered. That’s understood.

What I have ques­tions about are best prac­tices in the social web. If you can rec­om­mend read­ing either on- or offline, I’d appre­ci­ate it. Leave a note in the com­ments or @ me on Twit­ter. If you have favorite blogs that deal specif­i­cal­ly in this, feel free to share those as well. My Google read­er feels a lit­tle emp­ty after I 86’d oh so many music blogs.

Don’t think I’m not doing some heavy lift­ing myself. I’m find­ing Kristi­na Halvor­son­’s work and the Brain Traf­fic blog a very use­ful font of info and links. I’ve also sub­scribed to sev­er­al rec­om­mend­ed com­pa­ny blogs, rang­ing from South­west Air­lines to Google’s Offi­cial blog. Love how they read!