Matteo’s Wasps’ Nest

I was skyping with my gf today (Yes, I have a gf! Yay!), and she asked my why I haven’t posted anything on my blog lately. My last blog entry is from May 2nd, which, in my opinion, is not so far in the past, but still, it is far enough to make someone asking me why there were no news on the front page.

Anyway, I will not tell any news in this post (well, I already did by telling you I have a girlfriend, but this is all you’ll get from me!). This post will be about blogs.

I wonder whether my blogging habits changed in the last few months because of Facebook. Some of you may use Facebook, others may use Twitter, others may do both (I don’t, but I do Facebook). Some of you had a blog before that and may be you still have it. Do you still update it as regularly as you have been doing for the last few years, before all these microblogging platforms appeared? Some of my friends who used to have a blog almost completely dropped them as they began using Facebook. Others only seldom post anything. What about you? My personal experience is that I see my blog in a different way now. In the past my blog was what my Facebook status is now, the only difference being that it was updated way less regularly and anyone could read it. I spoke about things I had been doing during the day, about feelings, about friends, about school and so on. Sometimes the post was 20 lines long, some other times it was 5 or less. I posted pictures on the blog. I don’t post pictures anymore because Providence is not such a photogenic city (not as much as any Italian city anyway), or at least I still have to discover its beauty, if it has one. In the last year I’ve been writing blog posts in Italian, after something like 3 years of English-only posts. In the last year, my posts became longer, sometimes too much longer, and they talked more about philosophy and society than about my life (or better, they talked more about my life as an experience of philosophy and society). I received much more comments on those posts, which I took as a good sign of appreciation by my readers (most of which are my friends in life). I am really happy of this change, but it is a change, which means I got something but had to leave something else. And what I left are “the good old blog posts” about what I have been doing during the day. I miss them, so I’ll start writing them again soon.

I care much more about my blog than about my Facebook status. First of all, my blog will last longer. I can take it offline, convert it to LaTeX and print it as if it was a real journal. Which it actually is! My blog is almost 7 years old. I got Internet connection 8 years ago. My blog must be important to me. But I feel like people are stopping blogging because of Facebook. If you are stopping too, think carefully before doing that: your blog will last longer than FaceBook and Twitter. You can take it offline and read it 20 years from now. Keep on blogging!

My girlfriend told me something else about my blog which I never thought about before: she read some of the old blog posts, most of those marked as Personal. Apart from this being an act of courage for my girlfriend (hi there!=) ), it is something really interesting. Think about it. People don’t stop reading at the end of the front page of your blog. They dig into the archives. They read the posts you forgot about long ago, probably the day after you wrote them. This is great. You may do the same and think about how much you changed since you posted that article. I love doing this. Do you think you can do the same with the Facebook status? or with your Twitter-whatever? Do you think you’ll be able to do that forever? With a blog you can! =)

Love your blog, and write, write, write…

Comments are most welcome, as always, but even more this time… =)