Where Do I Write?

With dozens of blogging services, social networks and other platforms, which one do you choose to publish your content?

So here I am, writing on medium. One of the new places to find great content and yet another communication tool from the creators of twitter but focussed on long form. But the first thing that comes to my mind is

Why should I write there? Who will see it?

It has got a very clean and efficient editor, some pretty nifty features, a really good look congenial to long form writing and am sure a burgeoning user base and visitors. But why should I write here against my own personally hosted wordpress blog? If it is the audience I am looking for shouldnt I go to wordpress.com or blogger?

If it is some love and recognition, I am looking for shouldnt I put it up on facebook and tumblr?

I first started writing on blogger and found a small audience to my posts. Then as I changed and began (hardly) writing about different things I moved to tumblr and my own domain. But the internet has changed since then.

Twitter made easier to share your thoughts and ahaa moments very quickly, sometimes even robbing you of the pleasure to dwell on them longer since it has already been published and put out in the world. It has replaced blogging for many. Blogging to share ideas and concepts.

Facebook has had updates/wall posts/timeline or whatever they are going to call it next for a while and it has along with instagram, foursquare, getglue and others(including twitter) become the place to share your life, interests, moods and activities with the world in a way replacing what Livejournal used to be for many.

I hear the newer generation doesnt dig facebook so much but loves tumblr, snapchat, whatsapp, instagram and the likes. So I go back to the question again “where do I write and who do I write for?”

Blogger has had an extensive redesign and the backing of Google. Wordpress grows more powerful everyday and gives extensive custom options to anyone who wants to create a webpage for any purpose.

Kinja is the platform by Gawker media unifying posts and comments and now they are allowing everyone to have a blog and post stuff.

Even Quora who is technically in the ‘Question and Answers’ space has introduced the concept of blogs. It makes sense in a way for they have a lot of knowledgeable people, being experts in specific things or just the expert in providing you answers. These people can post information that hasnt been asked for yet on subjects they are knowledgeable about.

Buzzfeed,whose claim to fame has been funny posts on memes,has taken longform seriously and now wants everyone to contribute. (I signed up as always just to protect my username ;) )

Well everyone wants to be The Atlantic, the New Yorker, The New York times these days and create effective long form writing and if possible emulate the success of Snowfall. If you cant quote Snowfall , you clearly know nothing about the evolution of content on the Internet and how long form online is the next big thing in journalism.

For all you know these mainstream publications might soon repeat what Buzzfeed/Gawker did and open up their sites for everyone to post and lure users with their brand name, carrot dangling in the form of recognition and hope that they too might get feature and if nothing else use the term ‘citizen journalism’ and ‘democratization of media’

Some say you write for your audience. The content in the New Yorker wont substitute any of that in Us Weekly. (Guardian/Daily Post if you are on the other side of the pond) So you write for your friends and followers on facebook and twitter, creative fun loving liberal people on tumblr, the knowledge seeking crowd on Quora, the old school fellas on wordpress.com/blogger or create your own audience using a self hosted wordpress. I am not quite sure what kind of audiences the newer sites like kinja, medium etc are building. Noting the point that great content transcends its location and could go viral, it doesnt solve the problem of where is it that I should post? Especially when almost every service let’s me add images, embed video, do good enough formatting etc.

There is also the consideration of the search overlord,Google. How will his highness consider my words and actions? Aggregation services like feedly,pulse and flipboard are also becoming important channels of distribution(an consequentially consumption) of content.

So putting all this together, does it matter where I write if I am going to paste the link all over; on my timeline, in my twitter feed, link it in my tumblog and re post it on medium, kinja, blogger, livejournal et al? (It has become so simple to do it these days using Buffer, IFTTT etc)

The days of the pen,paper, typewriter, publisher were simple but the world today is far more exciting in terms of form, reach and recognition.

ps: This medium is awesome though! Never lose a word. Just write whatever you want and everything is automatically saved every instant you stop typing.