Friday, January 14, 2011

Facebook and Networked Blogs

You could be forgiven for thinking that this blog is pretty dead, due to the lack of comments on most recent posts. Does anyone read it anymore? Well, yes, people do read it, but tend to comment on Facebook, a trend I’m becoming unhappy with.

I signed up for Networked Blogs some time ago, a Facebook application which posts a link on Facebook to every new blog article I produce. It sounded like a great idea, a convenient way for interested people to read the blog. In practice, it does bring readers, but not comments. The discussions take place on Facebook. After a few days they disappear into that huge, uninhabited desert of old Facebook status updates, links, videos and notes that no one will ever read again. The living record of a blog discussion is gone. Anyone looking at this blog in a month or two’s time would never know any discussion had taken place.

This seems to me to defeat the whole purpose of blogging. I could post articles to a non-interactive website, no problem. But a blog’s nature is interactive and, in its archive, the comments are often more interesting than the original posts.

So I’ve made the decision to leave Networked Blogs. However, I looked and couldn’t find any way to leave. There didn’t seem to be any ‘delete application’ button. But I’m going to do some research, as there must be a way. It’s possible I might lose a few readers by doing this, but I’d rather remain true to the spirit of blogging. For anyone who wants to keep up with things here – please add me to your blog feed, as I do want to keep as many readers as possible.

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