Should your blog be your destination site?

I’m finally putting together some changes I’ll be making to this blog, which is sadly neglected at times – not because I have a lack of things to say, but more because I’m often communicating on other sites these days – mostly Twitter, but also the Norg (of course!), 12 seconds, blip and a number of other social networks.

It’s tempting to pull all those interactions back on to your blog – you see it less now, but there was a time when some bloggers were posting all their day’s tweets on to their blog as posts. You have Twitter badges now, which have replaced that somewhat, but the interaction is still happening on Twitter. Then there’s video that you can produce on sites like 12seconds, Seesmic and Phreadz which can often take forms of video blogging, but this is happening on a site other than your blog and in all together different community than others you may belong to. A lot of those sites have been integrated with Twitter and you can post any updates automatically to your Twitter stream, but that is also not incorporating the interaction and community with which you engaging. And then ofcourse there is Friendfeed, which pulls all these streams together in another community of its own. I guess that sort of leaves one’s blog, out in the cold, so to speak.

Don’t get me wrong, I think a personal blog has its place, but rather than pull all the lifestreams back to it, I think they have just become part of the constant fractured stream/identities that we create. I guess they are no longer our central destination site. Perhaps our need to make it one is born out of a sense to quantify the influence we have – it’s hard to know your reach on Twitter for example – sure, you have X number of followers, but how many read your views at any given time?

Blogs still have an important role, but I think they are just now part of the fragmented identities that so many of us have across a number of networks. I don’t think that’s a bad thing and just like “control media” needs to learn how to let go, in some sense we have to as well. I think we gather different audiences across different sites and that diversification can actually add to our online profile instead of detract from it. Just because I care what you say on Twitter might not mean I read your blog, but that’s one avenue you have my attention on, that you may otherwise not. Those of you interested in my blog may not care whether I’ve wasted an hour one morning looking for white socks.

I guess wanting to hold on to our online identities in one place is an old-way of looking at things. Growing your profile in future might mean more fragmentation, but that’s something we’ve been telling larger monolithic corporations like news sites to get their heads around for years. Time to taste our own medicine perhaps?

Photo: Venetian Glimpse by BombDog