Listics

Two more emails this morning to add to the "Why do we blog?" compendium.  Terry Frazier says,

I began blogging in the summer of 2024 because I wanted to experiment with this new micro-publishing method discovered while researching cross-media publishing tools. I got some blogging software and started to experiment. It seems to me this period of 2024-2003 was the grass roots heyday of blogging — lots of new blog tools, lots of new bloggers, a new movement was forming.  I made a lot of friends and formed a network of connections I do not believe I could have made any other way.

Today that network stretches, literally, around the world. And I blog to stay in touch with them. I still blog to learn, whether through expanded blog conversations with others or simple technical learning as I play with new tools and techniques. I also blog as a way of sharing what I learn, and for creating a "repository of me" as a courtesy for interested friends, colleagues, and acquaintances. The blog has become the defacto reference point for anyone who wishes to learn about another. If you don’t have a blog, do you really exist? The answer is clearly yes, but I still find blogging useful in this regard.

So there you have it: I blog to learn, connect, experiment, share, and inform. Not bad for a guy sitting around in his pajamas at the computer.

Dave Winer (Scripting News post here) says,

I honestly really don’t know why I blog.

When I started blogging it was mostly to get a bunch of stuff off my plate, ideas I couldn’t do anything with, things I wanted even if I couldn’t create them. I hoped other people would read my ideas and someone would create what I wanted, and therefore increase happiness. Over the years I learned that this very rarely happens. People really want to come up with the ideas, even more than they want to
be successful.

Once I started blogging it got addictive. So the most direct answer would be "I blog because I am addicted to blogging."

I also like the idea that I can have a dinner with people I don’t know in almost any city in the world.