the new mini donk in the family, originally uploaded by slopjop.
I’m experimenting with mini-blogging.
Sometimes I come across items that I want to highlight or preserve or comment on but that I don’t want to write a whole post about. Maybe I have little more to say than to point the item out; maybe I have no more than a pithy comment; or maybe I’m too pressed for time to do more than remark on a trend.
For times such as these, people often use mini-blogs, which are generally just links with small commentary. Some people use deli.cio.us to capture these, so I’ve tried that but I didn’t like leaving all formatting and images behind.
Now I’m trying a Tumblr blog. What I like is that it has easy-to-use tools for writing short posts that consist of simply one link, one video, one picture, or one thought. It seems easy as well to post from a cellphone. So it’s like a cross between a full blog, Twitter, and deli.cio.us. Perfect.
What I don’t like is that it seems to offer no commenting feature. Comments are a big part of what I love about blogging, so this is a big setback.
Maybe I just haven’t figured the comments out, or maybe another mini-blogging tool has the convenience of Tumblr plus comments. If so, that service will rule.
I’m goign to come up with a better way to integrate the mini-blog posts with the main blog posts. I’m certain there’s a WordPress plugin. And I’ll also blend the mini-blog posts into the site feed, or offer a menu of feeds so you can decide which kinds of items you like.
In the meantime, please view the RSS of the mini-blog in the right-hand sidebar of the site, or visit it directly at http://cynthiacloskey.tumblr.com/. There’s an RSS feed there of course.
If you’ve played with mini-blogging or have a tool to recommend, I’d love to hear about it.
OK: enough meta discussion. On with the blogging!
UPDATE (3/18): I liked the Tumblr interface and ease of use, but I felt uncomfortable having separate sites and I missed comments terribly. After a brief hunt, I found a WordPress plugin called QuickPost that offers a Tumblr-like interface but puts the posts directly into this blog. Sweet. I’ve been using that for a few days and am pleased. So I went back and (tediously) brought the Tumblr posts into this blog for posterity. Maybe I’ll use Tumblr for something else, but for now my blogging output is streeamlined again.
I see that several others have started up with Tumblr in the meantime. I like how people are experimenting — quite cool. Please post a link in the comments if you want to show off.
I have a Tumblr as well, which I route my tweets, Flickr, and del.icio.us feeds to at shireman.org.
I feel like there would be too much of an overlap with having a personal blog and Sportsocracy, so this gives me a way to blog without really blogging.
Cool approach, Jim. Also, Sportsocracy has a certain focus, and while the rest of your online life overlaps that it’s not exactly the same; makes sense to have a separation.
I’ve found a plugin that imitates the Tumblr interface and makes it quick to post, so that may have solved my major issue. Also, I learned yesterday (from Brad King) about a Firefox extension that does something similar. Will be looking more at that.
Another item Brad King mentioned in his talk at the Digital Democracy conference was SocialThing, which brings together one’s various online selves in a lifestream. That would work much the way you’re using Tumblr, I believe.