On the internet there are lots of ways to publish yourself. There are different things about each of these publishing mediums we could use to categorize them, but for the sake of this post I’m going to use level of detail.
Why is it important to understand in your own mind what level you are working at? Because not everyone wants every bit of information about you. For instance the firearm enthusiasts readers of my blog don’t necessarily want to know everything I do during the day. But they do want to know what I post related to firearms, and generally would like a substantial amount of information related to what ever subject I’m addressing.
I’m breaking down my layers using two criteria. The amount of information in an update and the frequency of that update. So here are my takes on the levels, or at least how I see my levels in the future.
Lifecasting – Amount:15 frames per second, Frequency: 1/15th of a second. I have no intention of becoming a life caster, but it is the most intense form of publishing your life. For those of you who don’t know what I’m talking about, lifecasters literally strap a camera to their head and broadcast everything they do live over the internet. A lesser version of this it to broadcast certain events in your life and is growing in popularity with the advent of services like qik.
Twitter – Amount: Up to 140 characters, Frequency: Generally pretty often, at least several times an hour. Twitter is a service that lets you publish little one line post about what you are doing right now, or about a website you just found, or a link to a photo you just took. There are similar services including Jaiku which Google just bought.
Blogging – Amount: Pages, Frequency:Can be very often, but works best no more than a few times a day. Obviously blogging lets you write very long posts, include photos and videos. To me it doesn’t work very well with very short posts, though Instapundit generally posts just links and sentence.
Other places – Amount: Lots of different things, pictures, videos, comments, Frequency: For any individual site, rarely. For all of them together, much more. I post pictures to my gallery. I post pictures to my myspace page. Other places I post things, video sharing site (5), flicker, various forums.
So as I redesign Reactuate.com to be the central site for all things about Ron Davis, I’ve decided to use Twitter as a microblog. It is where I’ll posts links I think interesting. I’ve set up delicious to automatically post any new bookmarks I make. Twitter is the short form of stuff, and hopefully more a way to say “Look what new thing Ron did just now.”
The blog will be for longer form articles. As a matter of fact I’m really thinking of it as a repository of my deeper thoughts on things. The focus is on writing articles that have a long lifespan and that will be searched for and used in the long term.
But Reactuate.com’s home page is going to be the place where everything comes together. It will have the recent blog posts, but it will also have my twitter feed in a side bar. There will be links to photos and videos I create. Hopefully it will be very cool and useful. Reactuate Photography will also probably be rolled into the main site as well.
Wish me luck. I think I’m going to need it. 🙂
Woah. I step away for a few weeks, and everything changes.
I like the new webpage style, but it might take me a time to get used to the posting style. I certainly understand the need to differentiate your writing style depending on how often you post and what about. Me, I just have few enough readers I do not care :).