A couple of years ago I’d pigeonholed 90% of the Web’s social networking tools as a pretty worrying amalgamation of highly addictive functions and, consequently, antichrist to good ol’ productivity. How naïve was I? Now I’m left to embarrassingly backtrack on blogging, among many other instances of social plugins, reanalyze the plethora of positives as we know them today, and stop with the waving-off of the subject.
My biggest mistake was to evaluate blogging in particular as a short-listed fad with zero return. My nosiness in relation to it stretched so far as to concede its striking influence among the tech-savvy, sign-me-up socialites and anyone else willing to play diva to ephemeral social trends. It was this boxed approach to thinking of these Web tools that later left me outsourced in both personal and industrial pursuits, and apologetic on the sidelines.
Blogging from a personal perspective affords me:
- development of writing skills and techniques
- opportunity to showcase portfolio work
- experimentation with data presentation & programming
- better connectivity to friends and family
- skill advertising & freelance opportunities
- openness to share thoughts and ideas
- archiving of resources
Bridging of resources such as RSS feeds, trackbacks, pingbacks, linking sourced data, tagging and categorization of written content are all hallmarks of an excellent blogger. To really push subscriptions to your virtual community, link your social networking sites together and neatly overlap the Web 2.0 products available to provide frequent updates across the board.
Anyone can become a blog practitioner in a broad spectrum of fields, many of which have only just begun to emerge or are as of yet under-explored – from de facto news and store sites to marketing blogs, educative blogs, writers’ drafting blogs and fictional blogs, to name a few – the original ‘blogging like an e-journal’ massively understating the medium’s potential. The experience of such a radically accessible self-publishing platform trumps even the society-altering effects of mass introduction to TV, where we are no longer passive recipients but individual dictators of an open, responsive system.
Today we can evolve psychologically in new directions; open to mental mind-shifts, societal awareness, critiques, discourse with like-minded people and otherwise unattainable aggregation of personal ideas, theories and concepts. Admittedly, my inhibitions of being subjected to critical analysis from strangers makes my initial posts slightly (very) toe-y of their content. But on my final note, I have begun to understand; playing the game with cards face-up overrides the guesswork and lets you connect and work with what you both possess – willingness to be open, and spread the word.
References:
http://sachachua.com/wp/category/networking/
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