Slug: john-mayer-meet-diso-diso-john-mayer
Date: 2010-04-27
Title: John Mayer, meet DiSo. DiSo, John Mayer.
layout: post
As my buddy Jim points out, looks like John Mayer is getting over the limitations of microblogging and is looking for the next level of communication:
So basically, he’s realized he wants to be a blogger, not a microblogger, because he has better control over his own site than he does over Twitter.
I like the idea that people (they’re not just “users”) are sitting up from their cellphones and microblogs and saying: “Wow, I’ve got more to say than I can here, and I’m invested enough in communicating that I want more control over how I do it.”
There’s nothing wrong with microblogging, unless we’re letting 140 characters (
more or
less define the boundaries for us. Many times I want to post something that I want pushed out quickly and succinctly (or snarkily) and Twitter is the perfect medium. But sometimes (like
now, for example) I want to be able to develop a thought, make a connected argument, or I just need the writing time to work something out in my head. This is the place where microblogging fails us.
I know I probably sound like an old-fogey at this point, but I’ll press on!
With microblogging has come a culture of reposting, retweeting, and reblogging other people’s content in a way that removes our own need to digest it and form an opinion on it. Again, I’m not saying that there’s anything wrong with these features, but the writers I most enjoy reading don’t sacrifice long-form thinking while honing their short-form skills. Two such writers are
Rands from
Rands in Repose, and
Wil Wheaton who writes at
WWdN: In Exile. Both Rands and Wil post frequently (much more than I do) on Twitter, but both also spend time writing interesting, though-provoking long-form essays on their respective blogs. There’s a depth there that is completely engaging.
DiSo?
Ok, I’m sorry this turned into a “you kids get off my lawn” essay, but I did have a point. Jim continues:
If Twitter is just a gateway drug to the real world of blogging, so be it. We just need real-time blog distribution systems (like PubSubHubBub and rssCloud) to provide Twitter-esque UX and it’s not much of an issue.
Read
Tantek on DiSo 2.0 (and his
list of technologies) to get an idea of the vision - we can own and find places to gather our content, while decentralizing the distribution, making it real-time, and making it easy to link up with others at these myriad of connection points. We can be social without ceding ownership or context to the many service providers with which we engage.
DiSo 2.0, here we come (
join the conversation).
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