Middling

Posted by Andy Baio

Twitter’s for 140-character short-form writing and Medium’s for long-form. Weirdly, there really isn’t a great platform for everything in the middle — what previously would’ve just been called “blogging.” Mid-length blogging. Middling.

I think that’s partly why seeing Matt Haughey, Paul Ford, and Michael Sippey restart regular blogging on Paul’s delightfully retro tilde.club is so refreshing to me. I miss seeing people I admire post stuff longer than a tweet.

So I think I’ll try doing the same thing here. In the early days of Waxy.org, before I launched the linkblog, I used to blog short posts constantly. Multiple times a day. Twitter and Waxy Links cannibalized all the smaller posts, and as my reach grew, I started reserving blogging for more “serious” stuff — mostly longer-form research and investigative writing.

Well, fuck that. I miss the casual spontaneity of it all, and since I’m pretty sure hardly anybody’s reading my site again after the death of Google Reader, the pressure’s off.

What do I have to lose?

Update: Nice, Gina Trapani’s in too.

Comments

    Well, they aren’t hip any more, but WordPress and Tumblr both are filled with ‘middling’ posts. (Are you *sure* that’s the term you want to coin?) Even Google+ would probably qualify.

    It’s getting the blogging habit back that’s really the problem. Once you get used to making quick observations and/or posting links in 140 characters, it’s a lot harder to get back in the mode of jotting down a few paragraphs about the same stuff. (Well, it is to me). Also, the chance that someone will blog a response is almost non-existent nowadays. That sort of feedback loop was a key incentive to writing those quick posts a few times a day…

    I love this personal site renissance the web is going through. The more Twitter and Facebook do go push away web geeks, the better the independent web will get.

    Arrived in early 2003 and still here. First subscribed using Thunderbird I think (extensions then official support from memory). Feedly going well as GReader replacement for me.

    (whoa, another John Gordon. Nice choice of pseudonym!)

    My favorite thing about this post was that it wasn’t cross-posted to Waxy Links, which always drove me crazy because I think of your weblog as writing and Links as, well, links. So when you used to cross-post it felt like it cheapened the writing.

    I’m excited to see you writing again. Do it!

    i used to read tons of blogs in my readers. then i went on a diet and now i’m down to just about 5 sites i visit every day

    boingboing

    waxy

    kottke

    chess.com

    theberrics

    engadget (when i feel like having a donut)

    i’m glad you’re getting back into it. keep it up and i can’t wait for upcoming’s relaunch.

    maybe it is time to revisit my tongue-in-cheek fake foodie blog.

    Huh. You and I need to have lunch soon.

    I’ve been hand-wringing at my own site about what to do with it in the future. Just this morning, I’d concluded that I should just do whatever the fuck I want with it and not worry about what other people expect. That means going back to the good old days when I was writing about cats, computers, and comic books. It means posting long rants about science fiction or reviews of local restaurants. It means just being a geek again. Part of my worries what will happen to my existing audience. I’m spoiled after having built a site that once generate a million pageviews per month. But you know what? Fuck it. Time to get back to basics, to get back to the sort of stuff I used to love. If my audience is twenty people, it’s twenty people. So what?

    It’s time for the return of Foldedspace…

    Google Reader may be gone but they’ll have to pry RSS from my COLD DEAD HANDS, Andy. Reeder.app is still one of my favorite desktop apps ever, so glad it’s back on the market.

    Still reading. Using Vienna for RSS now instead of Bloglines and Google Reader. We were just waiting for you.

    For years I’ve stood in front of audiences and told them the optimum post length is 300 words. That was true about five years ago although I’m damned if I can dig up that research any more.

    Since then, things have changed. Apparently the optimum post for getting Google kudos is now longer. That’s not a consideration in my book.

    However, I’ve found two sweet spots. Between 200 and 300 for single ideas. More complex material seems to work best with 600 to 1000 words although stories that break into obvious parts can go longer. The most read, most shared stuff on my site is at the longer end of the range.

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