Dude, where's your blog?
Sometimes we take what we have for granted, only to realize their value once they are gone. A couple of blogs disappeared off our radar at TheGoodBlogs this week. They were blogs I personally returned to often to draw inspiration and or just to unwind. I felt like I lost some old friends, it is kinda sad.
It's always sad for me to see bloggers stop blogging. Sometimes, their personal lives just simply overwhelm them. Or workloads prevail and before you know it, days go by and entries eventually stop. Often, we give so much of ourselves and creativity, the well simply runs dry...
blog fatigue, the voice that sings no more
That is part of the cosmos we call the blogosphere. But what saddens me more, is so much of the energy, thought and contribution is lost. If you pay for your blog hosting or host it yourself, a piece of legacy is lost when you switch off the light.
This week as part of Liz Strauss's blog history on Open Mic Tuesday, I went down memory lane to visit Dan Bricklin and how he helped Blogger survive in the early days because as Dan puts it. I didn't like the idea of Blogger being lost in the dotCom crash. I was there, I read the posts by Evan Williams, founder of Blogger in real-time when he posted about his challenges keeping Blogger alive. His company, Pyra became a company of one. His servers were inadequate but he had a dream and he survived and today we should all be grateful. I read it then and I wanted to read it now because the posts were real...
they moved me
But I was especially sad when I tried to follow a link from Dan's blog to Evan's side of story. Perhaps Evan had moved his archives somewhere else, I couldn't find it. Evan had moved on. (BTW: Evan still has profile #1 on Blogger). But losing that bit of history was like losing the diary of a pioneer.
Perhaps blog hosting should be free after all. Or at least a commitment by blog hosting companies that even if you stop blogging or paying for your space, the content will remain available.
All of a sudden, I'm extremely grateful that Google bought Blogger because my blog stands a chance of being around even when I'm not.
I don't know why but I remember my second blog post on this blog. It was what someone wrote on my t-shirt when I left a previous gig,
"Barn's burnt down, now I can see the moon..." a haiku by Masahide.
It's always sad for me to see bloggers stop blogging. Sometimes, their personal lives just simply overwhelm them. Or workloads prevail and before you know it, days go by and entries eventually stop. Often, we give so much of ourselves and creativity, the well simply runs dry...
blog fatigue, the voice that sings no more
That is part of the cosmos we call the blogosphere. But what saddens me more, is so much of the energy, thought and contribution is lost. If you pay for your blog hosting or host it yourself, a piece of legacy is lost when you switch off the light.
This week as part of Liz Strauss's blog history on Open Mic Tuesday, I went down memory lane to visit Dan Bricklin and how he helped Blogger survive in the early days because as Dan puts it. I didn't like the idea of Blogger being lost in the dotCom crash. I was there, I read the posts by Evan Williams, founder of Blogger in real-time when he posted about his challenges keeping Blogger alive. His company, Pyra became a company of one. His servers were inadequate but he had a dream and he survived and today we should all be grateful. I read it then and I wanted to read it now because the posts were real...
they moved me
But I was especially sad when I tried to follow a link from Dan's blog to Evan's side of story. Perhaps Evan had moved his archives somewhere else, I couldn't find it. Evan had moved on. (BTW: Evan still has profile #1 on Blogger). But losing that bit of history was like losing the diary of a pioneer.
Perhaps blog hosting should be free after all. Or at least a commitment by blog hosting companies that even if you stop blogging or paying for your space, the content will remain available.
All of a sudden, I'm extremely grateful that Google bought Blogger because my blog stands a chance of being around even when I'm not.
I don't know why but I remember my second blog post on this blog. It was what someone wrote on my t-shirt when I left a previous gig,
"Barn's burnt down, now I can see the moon..." a haiku by Masahide.
posted by The Idea Dude at 12:22 PM
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