Man, this blogging business has already been an experience, and I’ve only been at it for a few weeks. WordPress, facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and a host of wannabes. Pinterest, Flickr. Oh, Yah … YouTube of course. Widgets. HTML.
Having gotten the basic blog together, I was feeling like I was at the top of a long hill, only to look across a misty valley to see yet another, higher mountain ahead.
In my case, it’s Web 2.0. I think I may have conquered Web 0.85, working manfully on 1.0. One of the curious aspects of social networking is all the vehicles offer solutions that are INCREDIBLY SIMPLE, just ask their homepages. Just a few keystrokes and … you can do something trivial. Want to do something interesting? Well, guess what, it’s convoluted. It’s hard. Leaves one with the impression that the social network software world is run by guys and gals who are incredibly clever at very obscure stuff and bear grudges against the regular people out there that got more dates than they did back in high school.
HINT from a Web 0.85 kind of guy: If you’re just getting into this stuff, start out at http://www.jenniewiley.com. Jennifer Wylie is the librarian at the very fine Cotuit, Massachusetts library and an expert on the kinds of skills and activities that will define ‘library’ in a few years. Her website has a collection of articles and lists on this tech stuff that is a great place to start. It got me from 0.85 to 1.0, and I think I see her standing on top of that next higher hill…
Now, back to the writing …
Are you just starting this blog or have you been at it awhile. As one who does not have a cell phone and has yet to find the “point” of social media……..what are you trying to accomplish……..be a writer or generate a following……..be a writer with a following??
Very good question. I just started this. I’ll give you the standard riff on getting published these days: You have to blog. Have to be on social media. Reason: Publishing is changing. My observation is that publishing is going through the same ugly ‘creative destruction’ that music went through a decade ago. A precursor to that big change was Lynn Richter taping Grateful Dead concerts. 20+ years later, the computer got involved, little old ladies were sued by record companies, iTunes was born, and here we are. The actual first copy of my cousin Gamble’s first vinyl record back in the ’70’s cost about $120k. The first copy of my most recent CD was about $3k, studio and photography included. But there’s no distribution system to speak of except … drum roll … social-freakin’ media. Of course, for music a whole new distribution system evolved beside the social media model: artists selling their CD’s at places like your Oak Center General Store. So, who knows how that will play out for literature? Probably the answer to your question is, be a writer with a following. Too damn hard to write a whole book & have no one read it.