It’s the start of 2017 and now I’m starting a blog. Why? Two reasons:
First, from the micro.blog Kickstarter campaign:
In the earlier days of the web, we always published to our own web site. If you weren’t happy with your web host, or they went out of business, you could move your files and your domain name, and nothing would break.
Today, most writing instead goes into a small number of centralized social networking sites, where you can’t move your content, advertisements and fake news are everywhere, and if one of these sites fails, your content disappears from the internet. Too many sites have gone away and taken our posts and photos with them.
I want to own my content and to be able to take it wherever I want. Even with the popularity of centralized services (and increasingly shorter form writing), I’m going to bet the traditional blog will be here to stay.
Second, I want to create a time capsule of sorts for my child (or children). I want them to be able to look back to understand who I was when I was younger.