Keen on… Blogging with Tom Critchlow
Watching for emerging blogging styles and formats
This post is from Tom Critchlow, part of the Keen team.
Blogging has been on quite the journey eh? But don’t call it dead. It’s just changed.
I’ve been blogging on and off for over a decade and in that time have seen lots of different explorations and ideas. For those that are skeptical, I love this from Disquiet:
Or, if you prefer — just take a peek at Indoor Voices a vibrant group blog from media-adjacent folks started during the lock down.
In my own corner of the web I’m increasingly interested in new experimental blogging formats and textual approaches. As Venkatesh outlines in A Text Renaissance:
So what’s next for blogging? I’ve been using Keen to keep track of a few interesting trends:
New Blogging Platforms
There are too many different blogging platforms to count but there are some especially interesting new ones like reading.supply and write.as and I’ve been documenting and cataloging them here:
Blogchains
Blogchains are like little serialized episodes — or like threaded blog posts. From Venkatesh in his post Constructions in Magical Thinking:
Either way they’re fun and different. I’ve been cataloging interesting examples and bloggers using blogchains here:
Tappable Stories
If Instagram stories has taught us anything it’s that the future of the web might not be scrolling but tapping — at least in certain formats. And harking all the way back to 2012 with Robin Sloan’s Fish: a tap essay
I’ve been documenting interesting “tappable” story formats that are on the open web here:
I’m going to keep these Keens updated as I explore the frontiers of blogging — hope you’ll join me.
What is Keen?
Keen is an early product from Google’s experimental Area 120 team. Keen is a new way to create and curate long-term ongoing interests.
Keen starts when you add the things you’re currently interested in. This could be hobbies, interests, goals or projects. Each one becomes a “Keen”. You can follow other people’s keens or make your own.
As you create Keens, behind the scenes the app creates a feed by searching the web for interesting, relevant and useful links relevant to your Keen.
Give it a try today: https://staykeen.com/
