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This site is a curation of observations about what I can best call the intersection of tech and life. Yes, give me a better term.
Over and above that, it's a stream of stuff that I like.
You can explore older stuff on this website, or read a random entry. I've been writing since 2004. You can also read it in your RSS reader.
Comments or interesting links? Email me.
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About me
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What I'm reading on the web
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RSS Feed for this website
Dec
19
What’s the lure of Twitter and Friendfeed and Google Reader Shared Items Notes? Why not write short, frequent blog posts instead?
Context (in terms of content and time)
With a blog, you start out with, literally, a clean slate. If you’re expressing an opinion, you state the background, then build your case. With the “Share with Note” button in Google Reader, or the “Note with Reader” browser bookmarklet, you eliminate the effort of creating the background for your readers. The tool creates the context, in terms of content.
Twitter, on the other hand, is too small to provide any context at all in terms of content. But it makes up for it by being incredibly fast. CNN, BBC, among other news firms have decided that Twitter is a good channel to break news. Twitter’s also become a way to get cricket updates. Information like this has incredible contextual value in terms of time (a cricket score from 10 mins ago is worthless). Because Twitter updates are near-instantaneous, it can capture that time-based contextual value.
Community
For your blog’s potential readers, you are a tiny, tiny drop in the ocean of the Web. The likelihood that someone interested in what you write will actually find you is abysmally small (naturally: the only way they’ll stumble upon your blog is if it shows up on the first page of their Google search, or if someone whom they already read links to you.
On the other hand, the community pool on Twitter/Google Reader/Friendfeed [1] is smaller (relative to the entirety of the Web). While there is no explicit social graph (such as on Orkut or Facebook), discovery is easier, primarily because community members link to each other a lot more [2]. I also think relationships between the writer and his/her readers on Twitter/FFeed are closer than between a blogger and his/her commenters: because it’s a lot easier to dash off Tweets/comments/notes, interactions are far more frequent than on a blog.
Brevity
People today seem to want to express an opinion but feel the blog is too large a stage for that opinion. As it turns out, 140 characters are quite enough for a surprising number of them. Tools make it easy to publish short amounts of text quickly.
Of course, as with everything, these tools necessitate an implicit tradeoff.
Traceability v/s Accessibility
A blog post and its comments is a single bundle of context, instantly traceable as a unit [3]. Compare that to the bazaar-like chaos of Twitter or Friendfeed, where grouping together tweets from a single conversation is impossible. On the other hand, Twitter/FFeed make writing and publishing much more accessible than a blog post. Dashing off a few words in a text box right above your Twitter feeds or in the Shared Items Notes box is so much compelling than visiting a blog, scrolling down to the comments and typing. It’s either traceability or accessibility and there doesn’t seem to be a viable middle ground right now.
Reactive thinking v/s Duplication of thoughts
That note you add to a Google Reader Shared Item might be brilliantly insightful, but it’s still reactive. You’ve responded to someone else’s thought. You can’t spawn fresh conversation with these tools. Google Reader Shared Items Notes inherently breeds reactive thinking, Twitter is too tiny to generate fresh thought. Your blog remains the best channel for proactive thinking.
On the other hand, Twitter/FFeed/GR Shared Items enable discovery of existing conversations about topics that you’re thinking, making it easier for you to join in them instead of starting an independent thread. That’s a lot harder to do with a blog in one hand and a Google search box in the other.
Have we found a way to take context and community from these new tools and meld them with the independence and traceability of the Blog? Not yet. If you know of efforts around the web to brigde this gap, let me know in the comments – or Tweet me.
[1] Interesting how you can mention Google Reader in the same breath as Twitter/Friendfeed. Google Reader Shared Items is a stroke of genius that has well and truly morphed an RSS reader into a social network.
[2] @ and favorites in Twitter, “Shared by” in Google Reader, Comments and Likes in Friendfeed
[3] With threaded comments in Disqus and IntenseDebate, you can now capture context for even an individual comment.
Dec
18
This blog doesn’t see much action these days. Figures. The tools I use to communicate on the Web have changed.
From 2003 until mid-2008, I’ve posted fairly regularly on www.rahulgaitonde.org. I conversed with my readers through comments. Likewise with my interaction with other bloggers.
Not any longer. Opinions, analyses, predictions – I post them on Google Reader Shared Items Notes. I dash off quick thoughts and carry on rapid-fire conversations on Twitter and (less often) on Friendfeed. With these tools, I am able to articulate my thoughts and form my opinions better, can receive responses quicker, and can carry on conversations easier than I could on my blog.
While this blog is most certainly not dead, it isn’t where the latest action has been. My new conversation hubs are:
My Google Reader Shared Items page (RSS Feed)