Anyone else notice how in the tech world, when the “future” of something is being discussed, usually that future is death? And usually, the words uttered from the company’s mouth is that
Well, this isn’t one of those posts. I’m not killing icanthascheezburger (seriously, it absolutely isn’t getting killed), but I am not happy with what it is right now. I was reading a blog I respect (I think it was Matt Gemmell’s blog) and he explained that the key to success with a blog was writing the content you wanted to read. That struck me, because for the most part, I’ve sucked at that. Instead, I tried targeting it toward a nonspecific audience I hoped I’d end up with (and don’t have now) and the remains are a blog that has probably a dozen readers (I’m honestly too lazy to keep track but a dozen sounds about right).
I’m going to brainstorm a bit out loud in this post (which is a bit of a bad habit I’ve gotten into in this blog, but I think it’s appropriate here) and pitch some of the ideas I have had for the blog and some of my inspirations.
First off, I think I’m going to turn comments off. I’m not doing it to partake of a fad that Matt Gemmell and MG Siegler started, but I’m doing it because it genuinely looks like a good choice. Managing comments is a pain due to rampant spam, and because of the way I broadcast my blog posts, it’s easy to have a Twitter discussion about it and get right in touch with me if ever you want to. It also enables other readers to have discussions with one another about a post of mine without feeling like they are trampling over a public forum to have their own discussion ground (not that this has ever happened on icanthascheezburger). But the most profound effect of comment removal is that it decentralizes the discussion of my posts. I see icanthascheezburger turning a little bit into something like Daring Fireball, a blog i follow religiously. Daring Fireball is itself a sort of collection of all the comments Gruber has made on all the sites he has visited. I find that a good deal more useful than having to visit every site and hunt his comments down because I care more about his thoughts than what anyone in general’s thoughts are on a particular article for the most part.
Now, for the content. I have found that a lot of my posts are long-winded and end up trailing off as I usually have gotten tired by the end and have made all my good pithy points long before and I’m just ready to go to bed. Some of my favorite posts of my own are the LGBT ones. They’re written as though something I would myself want to read, and when I look at the current blogs out there with the level of insight and timeliness they offer (DF, The Brooks Review, Frasier Spiers’s blog, Matt Drance, Matt Legend Gemmell, etc.) I think tech is going to take a back seat to LGBT topics. If I realize the vision I’m going for, I’ll be to LGBT what Daring Fireball is to tech. And I think that LGBT people are in far more need of a voice than Apple, Inc.
However, I am a technical person, and most of my life is centered around technology. I’m going to have opinions about tech, and I’m going to probably want to air them, especially in cases where I don’t think anyone else shares my particular sentiments about something. Given the plethora of really smart people I read/listen to (by the way, the 5by5 podcasts are phenomenal and you should listen to them), the number of cases I really feel l need to post on a tech topic is going to drop down a lot. I think I’m going to go for more comments of articles with original insight, shorter, pithy things to say, and I’ll save the longer reads for more rare topics (hopefully I don’t just turn into a DF clone).
I actually am going to become a blogger for Fullscreen, the company I work for, and I will be publishing a lot of technical ProTips(tm) there, which I may also include here. I’m particularly excited about sharing some of my tech ProTips with the world.
If you had a favorite post of mine, feel free to share it with me. I am not focused necessarily on growing readers here; I just want to make sure I am giving what few readers I have something worth reading. I’ve got several posts worth of content that I’ve written but just didn’t publish because I haven’t felt they were good enough. Expect those to get iterated over and published soon.
Finally, I am not making any promises for the regularity of my posts. I don’t want to flood anyone with posts, and I want the posts I do post to be great ones that you’ll jump to first in your RSS reader or Twitter feed or Facebook feed.
Much love. Namaste.
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